CCE very memory bandwidth dependent?

[brashquido]

Hi All,

Last night I set my gaming machine to do some encoding as well as my video editing machine and I noticed that my gaming machine was significantly faster. Machine specs are;

Gaming Machine

XP2400+ (11 x 200 = 2.2Ghz)
2 x 256MB PC3500
Epox 8RDA+ Nforce 2

CCE Speed = 2.25


Video Editing Machine

XP2100+ (13 x 133 = 1.733Ghz)
3 x 256MB PC2700
Gigabyte GA-7VRXP VIA KT333

CCE Speed = 1.55


Although there is almost a 500Mhz difference in CPU speed which will be a contributing factor, I couldn't help but notice the MBPS rating given by CCE was almost exactly equal to the maximum RAM bandwidth which is defined by the FSB.

I.e

133Mhz FSB on my video editing machine is equal to PC2100, or a maximum of 2100 MBPS and CCE was returning a throughput of between 2000 and 2200MBPS.

200Mhz FSB on my gaming machine is equal to PC3200, or a maximum of 3200MBPS and CCE was returning a throughput of between 3000 and 3200 MBPS.

Is this just a coincidence, or is CCE very dependent on availble memory bandwidth? If it's the later, the new P4 800Mhz CPU's should absolutley plough through CCE encoding. Even an AMD overclocked beast such as;

- XP2100+ (T-Bred b core, as these regulary overclock by 500Mhz or more on air cooling such as Volcano 7+)

- 1GB PC3700 DDR

- Abit NF7-S Nforce 2 V2.0 (BIOS adjustable VDD, and like all Nforce 2 boards automatically unlock all T-Bred and Barton core CPU's).

- 2 x 100GB WD 8MB Cache HDD's (one for read, one for write)

You could easily set this machine to a FSB of 233Mhz (466Mhz DDR) at 9 x 233 = 2.1Ghz and would have a massive 3700MBPS of RAM bandwidth. Maybe even push CCE speeds upto 3! RAM would cost you a bit, but otherwise you'd have yourself a very cheap, and very very quick CCE encoding machine.

[dante the dutchman]

I also noticed it with cce,i had a pentium 4 1.8 ghz overclocked to 2.4 ghz and a system with a p4 2.4 ghz overclocked to 2.7 ghz but they had the same speeds with cce until i changed the asus p4b533-e with a p4g8x deluxe with dual ddr. My speeds went about 25% up in speed. First i had about 1.5 and now usually about 1.9 or 2.0 even with high bitrates. I'm thinking about buying a xp3000+ with an asus dual ddr mobo with nvidia chipset but i don't know if that's faster.
Does anybody know that.

[brashquido]

I think one of the new P4 3Ghz with the 800Mhz FSB would be the king, and from the reviews I've seen it really pulls ahead of the crowd for non overclocked systems. Get one of these systems with a GB of PC3700 and overclock the FSB to 235Mhz (3525 Ghz) and I don't think any AMD machine would struggle to keep up.

That said, I believe the new Abit board I mentioned above has an adjustable VDD, and FSB speeds of 230Mhz are quite achieveable. Basically it seems if you follow the rule of thumb of getting the highest FSB possible, you're going to get some impressive CCE encoding speeds.

[Milkman Dan]

CCE scales VERY well with processor speed on Athlons, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if almost all of that increase was from CPU speed.

If you really want to know, underclock the proc on the gaming machine, and re-run the encode. See how much faster it goes compared to the other rig, and that should be roughly the difference from memory.

[SurfDrifter]

Hi...
I had a AMD 1600+ with two 512MB DDR@400mHz and a Gigabyte 7VTXP Ultra Motherboard.
My CCE speeds with Avisynth 2.52 and DVD2AVIdg + mpeg2dec3dg.dll decode fix v.1.00 were about 1.10.
I bought an AMD 3000+, and i was hoping for a huge difference, since i had seen speeds of 1.90-2.00 with a 2.8 P4 and 1GB memory.

Sadly, my DivX speeds stayed exactly the same and CCE speed avarages at 1.3-1.4...
I noticed that now the memory is "locked" at 333mHz and cannot be set at 400. When i had AMD 1600+, 400mHz was selectable in BIOS...

Is this normal?

What speed is "normal" with an AMD300+ and 1GB memory?

I have a WD 40GB-8MB cache just for Windows XP as Primary Master,
a 80GB with various files as Secondary Master, a SATA 120GB drive and an external 120GB USB 2.0/firewire hard disk

[lilhobo]

the dual channel i hear is not as important on the athlon platform as it is on the Pentiums......

the Fx on the other hand has it own on-die memroy controllers.

someone will correct me am sure

[Solo]

More overclocking DivX encoders ! Cool !
I think one of the new P4 3Ghz with the 800Mhz FSB would be the king, and from the reviews I've seen it really pulls ahead of the crowd for non overclocked systems. Get one of these systems with a GB of PC3700 and overclock the FSB to 235Mhz (3525 Ghz) and I don't think any AMD machine would struggle to keep up.
PC3700 is not necessary on a P4 system or even PC4000. I've posted links to articles so many times already and here is a new one that proves it yet again:
http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleid=873&page=1
Anyway I don't mean to fight about it. I agree with the 800 FSB kicking some butt though as in the benchmarks the 800 FSB outperforms the 533 FSB P4's by a substantial margin in encoding. I myself went over to P4 after being loyal AMD supporter (and still am) for a long time. One of the reasons being the 800 FSB although it was originally to get better gaming benchmark scores.
I basically "created" my own P4 3.25 Ghz CPU from a 2.4 C ... he he.
The 2.4C is such an amazing overclocker !!! I have run it at 300 (1200)FSB on my Abit IC7 which is 3.6 Ghz, but don't just yet as I need better cooling on the Northbridge. However I run it 24/7 at 270(1080)FSB with my wonderfull PC3500 Mushkin Level II black memory (had to import)and I can tell you the encoding speeds rock !
I don't do CCE encoding but my memory bandwidth in Sandra 2003 is about 5950 MBPS. With the latest Gordian Knot a 90 min 1 CD divx 5.05 only resize filter divx movie takes like 40 mins. Not too bad ...

the Fx on the other hand has it own on-die memroy controllers.
someone will correct me am sure
Yes you are correct.

Speaking about FSB and performance I just happened to read this last night in a review of a Pentium 4 3.0 C.
What's in a faster FSB.
http://www.anandtech.com/cpu/showdoc.html?i=1810&p=2
http://www.anandtech.com/cpu/showdoc.html?i=1810&p=3