System optimisation Help Needed Please

[fletch]

Hi All,

I noticed in a previous post that many people running AMD 1.4 Athalon Thunderbirds were getting a encoding speed in CCE of between 1.1 and 1.5...

I have a brand new system and I am only getting a speed of between 0.765 & 0.86 ... Much slower as you can see... This is adding HOURS onto any multipass VBR encode I do and I would be very appreciative if anyone might point out to me any optimisations that I can do to increase the speed... Please note I have a clean install of XP and no other junk loaded at this point, just essential stuff...

My system consists of -

EPOX EP8K7A+
528M DDR RAM
AMD 1.4 ATHALON
MATROX G400
O/S WINXP

I have downloaded and installed the first service pack from Microsoftfor XP. I have heard I do not need to install the VIA 4in1 Drivers as I am running WinXP.... I am mainly ripping PAL DVDs....

Thanks guys,

fletch

[mrbass]

this sounds about right. PAL normally take longer to encode 480x576 rather than 480x480. CCE RT of 1.1 to 1.5 are reports from Althon XP not Thunberbirds I believe. So I think your getting decent speed.


your can Turn Off System Recovery but it doesn't make much of a difference. DMA on your hardrive if not enabled WILL make a HUGE difference though since if it's in PIO mode it'll be sucking the CPU for I/O. Remember 16:9 takes longer than 4:3. PAL takes longer than NTSC. IVTC (anime) is slow beyond belief.

[markrb]

For better information on optimsing your system go to www.amdb.com and check out their Epox forum. They are much better able to help then a site dedicated to a piece of software. There are always Bios tweaks you can do that might help a little.

You may want to head over to the forums at www.viahardware.com and find out if the PCI Latency patch will work with your board. You have the famously bad 686B southbridge. I don't know if the patch will work with your board or not, but ask there in the Via Tweaks forum.

Your encode speed does not seem that bad for Pal encodes. NTSC will tend to encode much faster.

It's very hard to compare encode speeds anyway. One person maybe doing PAl, the other NTSC, one may need IVTC the other not, one person may use TS and so on.

Mark

[nfl2k2]

my encoding speeds are wierd too. One day it will go at .480 and the next it will go at .810. It encodes slow when the dvd takes a long time to rip, I dont know why though.

[fletch]

Thanks guys for your prompt replies. I will certainly head over to those boards and check things out.

Sincerely,

Fletch

[ev]

Hi Fletch. I have to agree with you. That is definately not right. I run a 1GHz Athlon and Pal movies normally run at about 0.73 so your 1.4GHz should be heaps faster. Take mrbass's advice and check that DMA is enabled.

[markrb]

Although I have great respect for mrbass I do not see DMA vs PIO making much of a difference in CCE. In some of the other disk intensive programs maybe, but since CCE is much more CPU and Memory intensive and not a heavy disk user DMA will not show a large gain if anything. Don't get me wrong new disks should be set in DMA mode I just don't see it as a difference maker in CCE.
Considering you are running XP I can almost be certain you are in DMA mode. The older OS's defaulted to PIO while XP defaults to DMA.

Things that will make a big difference are:
Memory Bandwidth (tweak your bios settings)
CPU usage (make sure that as little is running as possible, look at the taskbar and make sure virus checkers and other programs are off)
Proper drivers and settings in the OS.


One thing that makes a huge difference came to mind AMD sells 2 front side bus speeds of Athlons 100/200 and 133/266. The 1.4 comes in both flavors. If you have the 100/200Mhz FSB that works with PC1600 memory you will not get the kind of scores that the 1.4 that run on a 133/266 Front side bus will get with PC2100 memory. Your motherboard supports both. Find a copy of Sisoft Sandra or WPCPUID you can find them at most shareware download sites. These will tell you what speed you FSB is running.

I will bet that you have an older version that runs on the 100/200 bus.

Mark

[chainsaw135]

1 more thing I noticed with xp pro atleast not sure if home has the same updates, but at windows update site they had a patch for users of amd k7 chipsets, so maybe try installing that if you havent.

[The Incredible One]

He hello,

For optimalisation of you pc people can go the the follow site:

http://members.tripod.lycos.nl/tuneyourpc/begin.htm

This is a very good site with programs etc. Only one thing: the site is in dutch!!!

[Patjen]

Fletch,

on my previous system which was an Athlon 900 with 384Mb SDRAM on a Raid (Stripe) configuration I got like 0.68 speeds...

Now with an Athlon XP 1800+ with 512 DDRAM and Raid (Striping) I get a fluent 1.2 speed.

Always PAL....

I ditched Win XP after only 2 days and reverted back to Win2000 Pro....

Faster and more reliable in my opinion, especially for VIA chipsets.
Try installing the latest 4-1 drivers (v4.37) and the PCI latency patch

[markrb]

Patjen that motherboard is NOT based on a Via chipset.
It's the AMD 761.

Do not install the 4 in 1's or the latency patch.

Check with Viahardware.com and ask George Breese if it's compatable he wrote it. You can often find him in the Via Tweaks forum there.

Mark

[fletch]

Yeah, something seems amiss here... Are the new flavour of Athlons (XP & MP) optimised more for this type of thing than the previous versions ?
My processor is an unlocked Athlon 1.4 Thunderbird only about 3 months old..The mobo is set to 133/266 Front side bus which the CPU supports..
I was under the impression that my Athlon is pretty much side by side with the Athlon XP1800+ processor wise ? I would have thought I'd have similar results with CCE speed...
Will try some bios adjustments and see if there is a new bios to download (for what its worth).

Thanks for all the replies, I do appreciate it.

Take care

fletch

[chainsaw135]

The tests I have seen on the 1.4ghz is more the speed of the xp1600 not the xp1800. Far as i can tell the xp1800 is a bit faster then 1.4 Athlon. Tho Pal is slower then NTSC I have a xp1600 and the 1.4ghz Athlon..and I only do the NTSC movies. I get around 1.444 when doing multipass vbr 4, with my 1.4ghz Athlon, all defaults selected in the cce tab, no temporalSmoother selected. If i do temperal then i'm like .888,.9xx ect. Pal is slower by how much I have no clue. Try some benchmark tests sandrasoft or 3dmark see how those tests turn out if you are in your" normal range" for that processor speed then I dont know what 2 tell you.

[markrb]

To say the Althon 1.4 is the same as the XP 1600 is a bit misleading.
Although they run around the same Mhz the XP has SSE instructions and a better design. The FPU is especially better. The XP is definately a superior CPU. However the Athlon is no slouch either.

I just want to say once again you cannot compare encode speeds head to head. There are just too many variables. The only possible way is to compare the same movie encoded with the exact same options and bitrate.
If I encode at 2600 MAX I will get a faster encode then if I encode at 2300 MAX, even on the same movie.

Your best bet would be to grab Sisoft Sandra 2002, run the CPU and memory benchmarks, head over to the EPOX forum, post your scores and ask if they are good or bad, making sure to post your setup as well. At least there you have a standard benchmark.

Mark

[chainsaw135]

Yeah I didnt mean for that 2 sound as if the 1.4ghz is the same speed as the xp1600 because its not tho they both run at 1.4ghz that really isnt the point. Just wanted him 2 know it was closer 2 that then the xp1800. Also if I do an encode with my xp1600 doing the same movie and settings as the 1.4ghz I get encodes speeds of 1.5 as the 1.4ghz with my settings gets 1.4 ect.

[Wh00pS]

i encode both PAL & NTSC movies.when doing a PAL movie i get roughly a 20% drop in speed :(
Also on the DMA not slowing you down,well i did a little test and turned off DMA and an encode of a movie i had just done at 0.801 dropped down to 0.421,i then turned it back on and the speed went back to 0.800,so maybe it does make a difference after all.

[markrb]

Wh00pS you may be right there on the DMA vs. PIO thing, but XP does default to DMA unless you force it into PIO mode. Win98 does not and defaults at PIO.

Mark