system memory and encoding speed

[kharan5876]

Does the ammount of ram you have greatly affect video encoding speed or is it mostly based on raw processor power? Or does this change depending on which encoder your using? I am encoding x264 on a somewhat older machine and was wondering if upgrading the ram would be a worthwhile investment. This machine's only function is for encoding video. I dont use it for anything else.

Currently the machine has 512mb of ram. Would upgrading to 1gb make a noticable increase in encoding fps? What about upping to 2gb?

[Tagert]

I think the biggest effect on encoding speed would be to get a faster processor.
Ram doesn't effect it much if not anything at all.

What kind of processor do you have now?

[CWR03]

If you're running XP, you should have a minimum of 1GB of RAM. The overall speed of any machine will be affected with anything less. Other than that, the processor and the FSB of the system are the primary concern for encoding speed.

[setarip_old]

And, if I remember correctly, if you should happen to be running Win98, anything over 512Mb is wasted (The system doesn't access it)...

[CWR03]

And, if I remember correctly, if you should happen to be running Win98, anything over 512Mb is wasted (The system doesn't access it)...
From my own experience, I don't believe that at all. I struggled with a slow system (especially when loading games) with 98 and a 512 stick of RAM. When I replaced it with the identical type, only 1GB, overall speed was increased dramatically. Games that were taking 30 seconds to load were then taking less than ten. Perhaps the OS itself won't utilize it, but evidently other programs still can.

[kharan5876]

the processor is an Athlon XP 2100+ (1.73ghz)

[kmac61]

If you're running XP, you should have a minimum of 1GB of RAM. The overall speed of any machine will be affected with anything less. Other than that, the processor and the FSB of the system are the primary concern for encoding speed.
Would totally agree. With a 3.02 ht enabled 1gig ram
windows 21-23%ram
dvdrb + 1%
cce + 30%
cpu usage - 75-80%
with ht disabled ram usage is the same, cpu goes to 100%
oddity is encoding speed is 10% faster with ht enabled even though cpu is a max of 80%

[Jay Bee]

While I agree that an XP desktop system for general usage should have 1 GB of RAM it won't help encoding speeds at all.