Understanding the difference

Conanius

Conanius

Conanius

Soldato
Joined
18 Oct 2002
Posts
12,712
Hi there,

Current setup as follows

2.66ghz, 1333FSB Core2Duo Wolfdale (E8200?)
Arctic Freezer Pro cooler
2x1GB DDR2 OCZ "SLI" memory
Gigabyte DS3-R Mobo
ATI 2400Pro Silent GFX
1x500GB Samsung Spinpoint SATA Boot
3x500GB Samsung Spinpoint SATA RAID 5 Storage

I've found trying to do some video conversion work through Handbrake is taking quite some time (film time circa 2hrs, conversion time circa 4 !)

Currently everything is at stock, but I'm considering either throwing another CPU in (core2quad?) or just overclocking this CPU. I did overclock it ages ago and it immediately hit 3.5 without any real challenge but I never pushed it any further. Without messing around, what sort of ballpark speed improvement will I get going up another ghz on the video conversion?

I guess my options are -

- Buy 2x2GB Ram, OC this CPU, SSD boot and 3x2TB drives in RAID5 for Storage
- As above but get a C2Quad
- Go Bulldozer/Sandybridge/Phenom X6/Whatever will be best for this sort of video work.

Reality is I don't game anymore, but I'd still like a snappy PC if possible.
 
Lots of quick cores and plenty of RAM is what you need for video work. Thats why you are struggling with a dual core and 2GB RAM.

A Sandybridge i7 and 8GB DDR3 would be perfect, but you'd probably get good results from a Phenom II X6 as well for a lot less cash.

If you want to spend as little as possible, a Q6600 and as much RAM as your current motherboard will take is your cheapest option, but nowhere near as quick as the two above.
 
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Thanks for the reply guys, appreciated.

Probably important to say im running Win 7 Home Premium 32bit at the moment, unsure if 64bit would assist (bar making more ram addressable of course) Obviously if over 4GB of ram is going to significantly improve things then I'll look to get 64bit windows as part of the upgrade.

I think I need to be realistic and say with an upcoming wedding, i7 sandybridge is probably too much money.

Based on that...

Current setup
Vs Overclocked current setup with 4gb RAM
Vs Q6600 Overclocked with 4gb RAM
Vs x6 Phenom @ 4ghz Setup with 4gb RAM

I assume I've written them out in the right performance order, but with my current machine configuration taking the best part of double thelength of any video I try to convert... can someone give me some finger in the air numbers for how the other CPU's might fair
 
The above have got the solution, in terms of an idea though I am running a 1090t @ 3.2Ghz with 8gb of ram and can get a 1.7Gb 3.5 hour video (5 x 45 min 350mb episodes) to dvd in about 1 hour 15 mins using handbrake.
 
Video encoding scales very well with extra cores. Simply changing your current CPU to a quad should get you a nearly 100% performance increase. The X6 will add another 50% to that. All that is dependent on having enough memory. You need 64 bit windows and as much RAM as your budget will allow.
 
thanks for the replies guys, appreciated.

As I understand it, memory gets upset during overclocking if your using all the dimm slots, and the best option is to get 2x4gb opposed to 4x2gb ....
 
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