Multicore CPU's and Encoding video

[Legless]

Hoping to upgrade (well rebuild) my new pc, and would like to know how much of a difference a multicore cpu would make to video encoding... Would a dual core suffice, or is a quad core worth the extra cash?

Whats the real world benefits? Can anyone comment on the performance difference between dual and quad cores on encoding videos...?

Thanks in advance...

 

[Big.Wayne]

Would a dual core suffice, or is a quad core worth the extra cash?

What do you think?

Don't listen to anyone on these forums about encoding video lol as hardly anyone does that, a few pretend though.

Do you actually encode videos? Are you a professional or are you looking for a good excuse to buy a quad?

 

[PinkFloyd]

If your going to be encoding a lot of videos a Quad is going to be worth the extra money.
In theory an equally clocked quad will be twice as fast as a dual. In reality its not that much of a difference, but there certainly is a large boost.

You've got to weigh it up mate, your gonna get boost, but is it worth spending more than double the money?

btw, I have a quad, its great

 

[Andrew_McP]

I'm never quite sure what people mean by encoding videos. Perhaps it's a divX thing for uploading of a, er, piratical nature. Dunno.

However I can confirm that for video editing & rendering, multiple cores definitely earn their keep. I have a nasty flight sim addiction and justify the money I waste upgrading for it by making movies to spread around the community. I use the cheap version of Vegas (Vegas Movie Studio I think they still call it) and this definitely makes good use of both cores on my x2 3800 @ 2.4GHz when rendering a project. I think all the major editing packages do as well.

In fact it's only really video rendering where I've felt any benefit at all from dual core, and it's certainly the only application I could possibly justify moving to quad core for.

However money doesn't grow on trees round here, so if I go anywhere it'll be a 3+ GHz e6600 rather than a quad which -- with all those transistors -- is unlikely to overclock so well. And raw MHz is much more use to me most of the time (when flying and editing, rather than rendering) than a couple of expensive extra cores which would spend most of their lives twiddling their thumbs.

Andrew McP

PS. FWIW... Last movie, Red bear Rising, 300Mb, 17minutes, render time approx 3 hours: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=56GWIA0W
Or the 93Mb, low quality version at http://rapidshare.com/files/28222717/mcp12_95Mb_.zip.html

 

[Servo]

I convert a lot of dvd's to divx for my disabled grandson, we bought him a media player which plays divx's from the internal hd.

Using fairusewizard, and quality set on "insane", 2 pass the results were.

C2D @ 3.5 (6600)
First pass 15 mins
Audio convert 4 mins
Second pass 15 mins
Image size 800 Res 640 x 352


C2D @ 3.2 (6300)
Same time as above


Amd 4200 x2 @ 2.6
First pass 34 mins
Audio convert 6 mins
Second pass 34 mins
Image size 800 Res 640 x 352

Same movie, both using winxp and a sata drive.

The single core took almost double the x2 4200 time, except the audio which was pretty close.

Both cores were running @ 94% and 86%

Hope this helps.

 

[Andrew_McP]

Those are very useful comparisons Servo, thanks. I've been umming and ahhing about an e6600 for a while, and I'd probably have gone for it already if I could guarantee 3.4GHz (and I didn't feel guilty about adding to the pile of retired hardware I already own!) But despite the 6600's excellent track record there are no guarantees with overclocking. Your numbers definitely make the risk look a bit more acceptable though.

And I was forgetting about the plethora of "non-standard" video formats these days. Converting for use on PSPs, phones, PDAs etc. must be increasingly common.

Andrew McP

 

[Servo]

Those are very useful comparisons Servo, thanks. I've been umming and ahhing about an e6600 for a while, and I'd probably have gone for it already if I could guarantee 3.4GHz (and I didn't feel guilty about adding to the pile of retired hardware I already own!) But despite the 6600's excellent track record there are no guarantees with overclocking. Your numbers definitely make the risk look a bit more acceptable though.

And I was forgetting about the plethora of "non-standard" video formats these days. Converting for use on PSPs, phones, PDAs etc. must be increasingly common.

Andrew McP

Buying any cpu these days, there's no guarantee on how well they will clock, but with the 6600 there's more chance of getting atleast 3.3. My 6600 will do 3.6, but runs very hot. The best speed for it, is 3.4 @ 1.37.
Another nice thing about the 6600, if it fails at the x9 multi you can reduce it to x8, up the fsb and reduce the vcore.

I did buy a 6400, and this does 3.2, but again runs quite warm, so while the wife was out, I swapped it with her 6600, she still ain't noticed.

If I was you, I would risk the 6600, with some better cooling and enjoy the extra speed, I wish I had done that instead of buying the 6400.

 

[adslegend]

As a rough guide, I have just been doing a few DivX in AutoGK and I would estimate my E6420 at stock is probably twice as fast as my A64 SD 3700+ @ 2.9 GHz.

 

[Euro_Hunter]

I'm never quite sure what people mean by encoding videos. Perhaps it's a divX thing for uploading of a, er, piratical nature. Dunno.

I encode all my favourite DVD's to DivX and store them on my hard drive to play through media centre or to stream them to my tv.

Not encoded with the quad yet though but got all 7 seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer to do so the Quad Core should come in handy

Nige.

 

[The Halk]

I encode all my favourite DVD's to DivX and store them on my hard drive to play through media centre or to stream them to my tv.

Not encoded with the quad yet though but got all 7 seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer to do so the Quad Core should come in handy

Nige.

I get other people to encode my DVDs to DivX and store them on my hard drive. It saves me buying the DVDs.

(Joking)

 

[supafly]

If you have an ATI video card you can use it's hardware avivo encoder which is faster than core 2 duo at 3ghz.

To use AVIVO hardware encoder go into 'Catalayst Control Center - Basic' and choose AVIVO Video Converter.

 

[Dan2kx]

i have a good comparison for ya,

using convertxtodvd for those unfamiloiar converts avi files to dvd
unfortunately it is not multicore tho (not the end of the world as you will see later)

on a p4 presscott (775) 3.6 @ 4.0 (ram 2gb)
- 2 hour film (700mb) takes on average an hour (1.8 -2.2x encoding at time critical (really slows down all other PC use)

on a quad x6700 2.66 @ 3.0 (ram 4gb)
- a 2 hour film takes 30 minutes to encode (~3.5x encoding)

---- here is the special bit.... you can do 4 at once!!
so you can do 8 times the number of dvds in the same time (if you are organised!)

 

[Andrew_McP]

I encode all my favourite DVD's to DivX and store them on my hard drive to play through media centre or to stream them to my tv.

Maybe it's a generational thing. I can't understand why people would want to watch their DVDs (movies or favourite series) often enough to justify that kind of bother. If I watch my favourite stuff more than once every few years I can remember too much of it, and that spoils the experience.

I imagine it'd be different if I had kids who want to watch the same things over and over again, then having a core library on a server might be useful.

Still, with HD space so cheap these days we've got to fill it up with something!

Andrew McP

 

[The Halk]

Maybe it's a generational thing. I can't understand why people would want to watch their DVDs (movies or favourite series) often enough to justify that kind of bother. If I watch my favourite stuff more than once every few years I can remember too much of it, and that spoils the experience.

I imagine it'd be different if I had kids who want to watch the same things over and over again, then having a core library on a server might be useful.

Still, with HD space so cheap these days we've got to fill it up with something!

Andrew McP

I keep meaning to get around to it.

The idea is to have it all set up so when you buy a DVD, you throw it in the DVD-R on the PC, hit a button and go make a cup of tea, come back, put the DVD back in the case and stick it up the loft. The DVD data is now added to your collection, and available at every output port in the house.

It's very possible with MP3s now - although it might as well be lossless. I dare say I could get it working with at least MP3s.

Don't see why it won't be possible with films sooner or later (I realise it's possible now, but it's not quite as easy).

 

[Johnnytoxic]

Im encoding an x264 with a [email protected], Taking 30hours !!!

 

[jbloggs]

I have encoded divx/xvid into MPEG2 using both an Intel P4 3.4GHz and C2D E6600 @3.2GHz, using TMPGEnc 3.0 XPress (which is optimised to use multiple cores). Both CPUs, when encoding, would always run at 100%, I found that depending upon the audio stream that was in the video file, the C2D was between 2-3 times faster than the P4.

I cannot comment upon the Core 2 Quad, but I would think, depending upon the encoding software you are using, that it would be a considerable decrease in encoding time over the C2D, but as already mentioned, getting Core 2 Quad would only be really worthwhile IF you are doing a lot of encoding.