Video Encoding on the EE

***Zardon*** · Jun 19, 2004, 12:44 PM

Some of you guys may follow our reviews, so for those of you who do, this will be an interesting little set of figures. Some of you may also have followed my last thread and be aware I picked up an Extreme edition P4 for my main rig this week.

Until today I havent had time to play with some things because ive been reviewing a new PCI express system (another EE cpu in that).

anyway on with the point

for those of you who follow our reviews you are aware we use a program called IMtoo DVD ripper, which will extract a DVD to your hard drive while encoding to whatever format you wish. Stuart and myself use DIVX for this test bench and then record the time and FPS it takes to finish our reference discs.

I have been doing encoding for many many years on various formats and ive been amazed over the last year or more to see encoding getting to "real time", meaning you rip and encode a movie and you can do so, in the same length of time it takes you to watch the film, 25 or 30 fps.

Well in the last year with the A64s and the high end P4s we have seen figures of 40-50ish fps in our test results which would mean a 1 hr 30 min film would finish in approx 1 hour or so.

this is a test I ran today on one of my reference discs which I keep for testing processor and system performance its 1 hr 30 mins long. and this is the kind of frame rates you can expect from an extreme edition processor at 3.4ghz.

Now while this may not impress alot of you as much as a 28k 3dmark01 figure or a 14k 3dmark03 figure which I achieved today, this is going to be an incredible set up for myself. look at the figures

amazing. It ripped and converted that movie in around 37 minutes....... Now its time to create some artwork in my professional applications and watch this level 3 cache eat my files up !

pr0digal jenius · Jun 19, 2004, 01:07 PM

holy &^$*&@^^$ thats amazing Z, i never much [payed attention to FPS..lemme go fire up my ripper and see what i get on dual xeons...but i'm betting you have even me beat by a long shot (i hate you...i really do...lol)

pr0digal jenius · Jun 19, 2004, 01:18 PM

EDIT: After much tweaking and fixing some HT problems...i must say I can keep right up with ya Z

Vampyromaniac · Jun 20, 2004, 03:41 AM

The Swimmer?

***Zardon*** · Jun 20, 2004, 04:03 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Vampyromaniac
The Swimmer?

hey you know your movies !!

Danhill · Jun 20, 2004, 04:15 AM

Ver very intresting.

Now how much would it take for my 2,4C @ 2,6 to do the same thing - 2 hours??

I'm thinking of buying a 3,4C or E in the next couple of weeks or months.

***Zardon*** · Jun 20, 2004, 05:08 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Danhill
Ver very intresting.

Now how much would it take for my 2,4C @ 2,6 to do the same thing - 2 hours??

I'm thinking of buying a 3,4C or E in the next couple of weeks or months.

you have brought up some interesting points dan, the prescotts are better at encoding by about 5 or more fps in this program probably due to the deeper pipe and 1 meg of cache compared to the northwoods 512k of cache. But, and this is an important but, unless this is ALL you do, encoding/decoding etc, the northwood is a better CPU overall.

Also bear in mind if you are contemplating a prescott make sure you have some serious cooling, meaning IMO at least an SLK heatsink with decent fan and preferably water cooling, they hit some INSANE temperatures. I was seeing over 20c more between a northwood and prescott cpu.

The Gallatin core (EE) of course is the best of them all, with 512 meg of level 2 cache and 2 meg of level 3 cache and the temperatures are actually lower than my northwood was, but they are out of the price range for the majority of people as you would expect.

Ill give you an example of some temperatures I recorded with using IMtoo dvd under full load with all three cpus.

with the Zalman reserator. LOAD. encoding a 1hr 30 movie to DIVX
Northwood 3.4 ghz @ 3.7ghz (volts 1.65) 43c - time 1 hour 10 minutes.
Prescott 2.8ghz @ 3.4 ghz (1.52 volts) 60c - time 57 minutes.
Extreme Edition 3.2 @ 3.4ghz (1.5 volts) 38c - time 37 minutes.

Danhill · Jun 20, 2004, 06:57 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Zardon
you have brought up some interesting points dan, the prescotts are better at encoding by about 5 or more fps in this program probably due to the deeper pipe and 1 meg of cache compared to the northwoods 512k of cache. But, and this is an important but, unless this is ALL you do, encoding/decoding etc, the northwood is a better CPU overall.

Also bear in mind if you are contemplating a prescott make sure you have some serious cooling, meaning IMO at least an SLK heatsink with decent fan and preferably water cooling, they hit some INSANE temperatures. I was seeing over 20c more between a northwood and prescott cpu.

The Gallatin core (EE) of course is the best of them all, with 512 meg of level 2 cache and 2 meg of level 3 cache and the temperatures are actually lower than my northwood was, but they are out of the price range for the majority of people as you would expect.

Ill give you an example of some temperatures I recorded with using IMtoo dvd under full load with all three cpus.

with the Zalman reserator. LOAD. encoding a 1hr 30 movie to DIVX
Northwood 3.4 ghz @ 3.7ghz (volts 1.65) 43c - time 1 hour 10 minutes.
Prescott 2.8ghz @ 3.4 ghz (1.52 volts) 60c - time 57 minutes.
Extreme Edition 3.2 @ 3.4ghz (1.5 volts) 38c - time 37 minutes.

Thanks for the intresting results.

The thing is that I'm going to do a lot of encoding because of the DVD burner I bought, but also some gaming and regular stuff as well. When encoding now there isn't much I can do with my computer anyways due to the heavy load of the CPU, so for example I encoded a movie via Nero vision express and that took 3 hours and 50 minutes from MPG to DVD. (It was a spiltted MPG movie in 3 parts and in total 7 GB when the encoding was done)

I'am really not sure what to buy a prescott or a northwood, there are advantages and disadvantedes to them both.

About the heat issue well I'am not sure about that either, according to my ABIT EQ when encoding a movie let say for about 3 hours or so my CPU temp is at 63C constant. I have the default Intel hsf, and in my case I have 2 80 mm fans in the back & 2 80 mm in the front and 2 in my PSU so my case is rather cool, 31 C at load.

If I decide to buy a Prescott then I think I'll need a better HSF than the default Intel HSF.

Right now I just don't know what to get, for the decoding part the prescott looks stong but for the gaming part the Northwood looks stronger. I'll wait until agust before I buy a 3,4C or E, I guess by then that the prices are alot more attractive.

Anyway thanks for the input Z.

**dj_stick** · Jun 20, 2004, 07:12 AM

my barton took over 2 hours to transcode a movie to DVD format… oh well i'll just set it going before i go to bed or school

Danhill · Jun 20, 2004, 08:22 AM

Hmm I looked at default computer stores to see what a P4 3,4E costs but couldn't find a 3,4E only 3,2E.

Then perhaps it's better to buy a 3,4C if the 3,4E isn't avaible in Sweden for some reason.

Upgrading from my 2,4C to 3,4C will be a rather big step in improvment perfomance wise, the decoding is going to be faster and I don't need to worry about heat perhaps.

**Asmoday** · Jun 20, 2004, 08:35 AM

Daniel....have you checked out www.overclockers.se ? They don't have the 3.4C in stock, but they will get it for you if you want one... It's listed at their site for 4250:-. Pretty expensive, but that'll propably change during the summer...

edit : they propably can get you one of those 3.4E's too if you would want one...

Danhill · Jun 20, 2004, 09:28 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Cartman
Daniel....have you checked out www.overclockers.se ? They don't have the 3.4C in stock, but they will get it for you if you want one... It's listed at their site for 4250:-. Pretty expensive, but that'll propably change during the summer...

edit : they propably can get you one of those 3.4E's too if you would want one...

Thanks Cartman. I usually buy all my stuff at JME data, I find it better to actually go to the store and buy the things there and also I want the poeple there to change the CPU for me, I done this one time before and I'am never going to attempt that again. I bent alot of pins the first time and couldn't get another CPU so the I bougt a new one and were broke.

JME don't seem to have a P4E @ 3,4. Probably I'm buying a 3,4C later this fall. The speed of the encoding/decoding is going to be faster than my current CPU.

pr0digal jenius · Jun 20, 2004, 12:11 PM

you can easily get the 3.2E to run @ 3.4 if you want....lol

Danhill · Jun 20, 2004, 12:22 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by pr0digal jenius
you can easily get the 3.2E to run @ 3.4 if you want....lol

Yes you are right but I can also get the 3,4 to run at 3,6, I'm not a big overclocker.

And the Northwood seems to be a better CPU than the Prescott, maybe I can gain 10-20 sec or so but the heat is my enemy.

pr0digal jenius · Jun 20, 2004, 12:36 PM

yea...i would stay clear of prescotts...as for 3.2 or 3.4, that's your call either one is a huge jump and an awesome processor