CPU vs HDD

[stevej696]

Hi guys im currently doing a lot of dvd copying and have found that it takes around 20mins to encode a avi file for a dvd disk with my current setup of 1gb corsair ram, e1200 @stock and WD320gb 16mb cache HDD.

Im looking to upgrade the rig so that its quicker at these tasks but have come across a lot of opinions the main being the hdd will increase the speed it encoding and the cpu will

So im looking to upgrade the pc but dont know where to start cpu or hdd??

If i have to upgrade the storage drive then what speed?? or cache would be best for the performance improvement??

SSD or HDD??

Cpu??

I havent got a lot of budget for these upgrades but would say no more than £150 for both if needed.

Really confused guys all help will be very appreciated

 

[killablade]

Well since your budget is 150 that pretty much rules out SSD

And just so you know... your sig makes me angry xD

 

[stevej696]

Well im stumped on this one...

Im thinking on going down the 1tb f3 for £66 and e6500 for £60..

Any thoughts??..

Sorry to offend ya killablade

 

[WelshD1K]

well if you can id get a q6600 second hand for 380 -100 ish and then a f3 samsung and bobs ur unncle and DEFO upgrade ur ram get 2gb or if u can 4gb will help heap loads

 

[thestepster]

you can definitely get a q6600 for that kinda money i just paid £85 for my second one thats done 3.7ghz on an asus p5k-e with the vdroop mod (also bought the mobo) :bow: then u can get a tb f3 for around £45-50 second hand, if ya wanna throw more at it you can get 4gb second hand for around £60-£80 but if ya get all those u will have a bad ass rig

might be worth thinkin about gettin a couple of lower capacity discs or high rpm ones and settin them in raid0 that might be even better ive not tried to encode a file using my raptor raid0 set up but i think it would be pretty damn good, i might give it a shot 2moro afternoon and let u know how speedy 10k drives in raid0 are for encoding

 

[Rastalovich]

Best way to speed up ur encoding is to read from one physical drive and write to another one. Speeds of the drives is only really important if everything else is top notch.

The cpu conversion of the media won't be significantly increased with an ssd unless ur already using the best cpu out there, with 4g+ etc, or using cuda. Cuda would wipe the floor with all ur expectations, especially if ur using a standard format like dvd.

MediaEncoder is a fantastic app for all media conversions, and it's free. Not as straight forward to use as FormatFactory, but it's geared towards the more advanced options including cuda.

Cheapest way to speed it up inherently is to buy a cheap 8800 or above.

 

[stevej696]

Ok thanks for all advice guys. The problem is that there are so many different opinions out there but when you have to spend your hard earned on them it is specially more important...

The q6600 and f3 combo sounds really good and i had suspicions about the ram may be bottle-necking it..

I currently use ConvertXtoDvd for my avi films to dvd writing and it does the job but obviously the faster the better.

@Rasta are you sayin that if i spend my budget on a 8800 or above graphics card and Media encoder the cuda support will give me the performance i want when burning a standard avi file onto a dvd-r disc??

*Note would this be any good if i have got the right end of the stick http://www.ebuyer.com/product/165582

Thanks for all help guys very appreciated

 

[cl0ck_ed]

Using that cuda card may be your answer, But you need a dvd ripper software that will utilize the card. What motherboard do you have? This will determine the compatible cpus. Also get 3gb of ram if on 32bit windows it won't recognise more than 3.3gb anyway. So an 2gb stick of ddr2 800mhz for 20pound.

 

[86sixsix]

What OS are you using? The first step, without spending money, is to log what your machine's actually doing whilst encoding/transcoding...

The CPU will no doubt be maxed (it presumably always will be whilst transcoding unless you're offloading the work to a GPU or somewhere else)

As for RAM, looking at hard-faults and the like might tell you if that's the slow bit.

Same for the drives...look at their throughput and see what's what.

I can't see drive throughput being the issue... would a drive take 20 mins to burst off 4 and a bit gig?

Look and see if your system is paging to disk during these operations - that really would need to be elimated.

If it were me... Be on an OS and hardware that lets you play with CUDA or DirectCompute and the like. Use software to transcode that actually uses these features. Don't read and write simultaneously to the same drive controller/channel - for example read from a SATA hard drive, and write to an IDE burner...

Buy a bit more ram to avoid paging and OS nastiness, a cheapo readyboost stick, and be sure you're reading from one controller and writing to another...

 

[stevej696]

Im using xp64 and the Motherboard is a gigabyte ga-73vm-s2 mobo. Its a budget rig so nothing special but does the job....

I knw 20mins aint bad but just wondered if there is a way to speed things up without upgrading all of it..

The software im going to use was recommended by rasta in above posts with the cuda gpu aswell but i was wondering if the gpu listed above would suffice.

Cheers for all advice and comments though im finally starting to understand the encoding process a bit better

 

[86sixsix]

I also agree with Rasta's comments... an 8800, a CUDA driver, and CUDA aware software would at least free off a few CPU cycles here and there thus helping any IO operations drive and burner-wise.

Perhaps a hunt on fleebay for a seller with an 8800 and 2gig of cheapo ram could do you a good deal?

I couldn't comment on how much you'd free off the chip... I've no idea whether encoding on a 8800 as opposed to your chip'd be faster or slower...

It must be said...software mpeg2 encoders vary greatly speed-wise. To throw something in here... how much would a cheapo 2nd hand PCI mpeg2 board cost these days? Have you looked into the video-editing world to see the options there?