P4 or XP for CCE Basic, DiVX?

[KuroNeko]

Upgrade time! Need some advice.

I'd like to upgrade my encoding machine. Budget is limited so price is a factor. Main purpose is MPEG2 encoding with CCE and DiVX encoding. Paired to that of course Vdub/Avisynth with all those nice filters :)

I've been running a few Basic CCE tests on some PCs at work (older XP and P4 Northwood - 533MHz FSB - machines). Amazingly, something is holding back the P4's. The XP really flies compared to P4. Maybe the new HT/800 MHz machines fixed this?

I do know that a P4 with 800MHz bus on a 865PE flies in all tests I could find. Just none that used CCE.

Please let me know you experiences with P4 and AthlonXP for CCE! The P4 setup I have in mind is $300 more expensive than a XP rig, so it'd better be worth it.

Also, just about every bench I saw puts the P4 ahead of XP for DiVX encoding. But the difference varies wildly (compare Tom's with Anand's). So I am wondering here if the P4 is worth the extra money for DiVX too.

TIA!

Neko

[int 21h]

With my 2.8ghz 800fsb, HT enabled, 1 gig of DDR400 ram, and an 865PE Neo2 board from MSI, I get 2.950-3.100 in CCE, and around 65-72fps with Nic's latest XviD build.

[KuroNeko]

Thanks for your quick reply!

Just a few questions: which version of Basic CCE or CCE SP are you using? Also, what settings (how many passes) did you use to get this speed?

Neko

[int 21h]

CCE SP 2.5, I used VBR 5 pass (which is what I normally use) and XviD I used 2 pass with motion precision set to 5.

[KuroNeko]

Thanks!

Could someone post with results for an Athlon XP2800? From all the posts I read here and all benchmarks I saw, my estimate would be that the P4 is about 20% faster than the Athlon. But also almost double the price...

Neko

[lilhobo]

is that 3:1 encode ratio in a top of the line P4???

can't you get realtime mpeg2 hardware encoding from the Pinnacle PCTV deluxe line?? for AU$600....

does this mean that the quality of mpeg2 hardware is less than on a PC?

tis a learnign process :D

[int 21h]

A Pinnacle PCTV Deluxe won't play StarWarsGalaxies.

[lilhobo]

no, but in realtime means you will have the time to play that game :D

[dvd_maniac]

with ht you could encode in both cce and divx at same time at almost same speed as running them alone. that right there imho is worth it.

[int 21h]

You could except that Avisynth isn't really made to run two instances of itself, multi-threading issues will probably arise (at least according to Avisynth developers)

But I can also play StarWars at full framerate while encoding a DVD, anyways, this was the hardware solution I selected for me, perhaps a different solution will suit your needs.

[ppera2]

I agree that P4 is faster.
But can't undertand why people still gives speed examples without relevant datas.

What is source? Methode of frameserving? AVISynth script? What is target resolution?
Only with those parameters it has sense.

Just to say example: I had speed factor over 4 with Athlon XP 1700 in CCE 2.66 .

Guess what was resolution, what was target? :)

[int 21h]

Originally posted by ppera2
What is source? Methode of frameserving? AVISynth script? What is target resolution?
Only with those parameters it has sense.


CCE encode: VOBs from a DVD, Mpeg2dec frameserve with Avisynth 2.5 in YUV color space, script only had plugin loading, Mpeg2dec invocation, and convert to yuy, target resolution was full D1.

XviD encode: same script, resized within Virtual Dub to 640 x 272 with bicubic, full processing enabled.

[dvd_maniac]

I was just making an example of the features and benifits of HT. You could do so much more than with an AMD cpu. For instance today I was doing a d2s encode with CCE of LOTR TT, capturing mpeg-2 720x480 at 5mbps on ATI AIW 9700 Pro and editing out commercails of vcd captures with tempgenc all at the same time. CCE hovered around 2.7 RT, no frames dropped on capture, Tempgenc was a little slower than normal but everything chugged along nicely.

[ppera2]

dvd_maniac:

Can you describe it more detailed?
Why you need it to capture with analog card? Was it on some analogue cable channel?

Whar means this: "editing out commercails of vcd captures with tempgenc all at the same time." ?

What is d2s encode? What was your target format?

[dvd_maniac]

I was backing up a dvd of LOTR TT
I was capturing an episode of Fantasy Island on Cable TV, I put these on DVD-r's, As I love this show
I was cutting out commercials of some tv series that I captured to put on VCD.
I am sorry to not have put this more clearly. I think you thought that I was doing all this just to LOTR TT, right?
I was simply pointing out all I can do at the same time on my hyperthreaded P4 to give KuroNeko an idea to make an informed decision.

[ppera2]

I see. But don't agree that you can't do it with AMD based system.
Hyperthread is just for some faster task switch, nothing more.

As I see Intel's propaganda is very strong, and makes people to believe wrong things. As in one thread here, where starter thinks that Xeon 3.06 with Hyperthread will act as 2x 3.06 GHz CPU. This is ridiculous.

There is a lot of componets which have influence on multithread multimedia beside CPU. Mainboard and RAM in first place.

[ppera2]

Well, this inspired me to capture while encoding in same time.

Surprisingly, I hadn't any dropped frames while captured at 704x576, with Mjpeg codec. Virtual VCR didn't report dropped frames, and by watching it later, I didn't see any sign of duplicated or missing frames. And my machine is much slower than your, with less RAM.

Btw. if you think that it's something special, that you run 3 programs simult. , you wrong. Win XP runs in every moment more than 10 threads, that's the normal work case. Even on poor AMD CPU's :)

[dvd_maniac]

I DO NOT think that Intel is the WORLD of CPU's and AMD is the gutter. I do even in fact think that AMD's are a much better value for the dollar. I have a HP pavillion notebook and a desktop system with AMD's in them. I did however spend the extra bucks on a a/v machine and went with the Intel. I notice that the Intel is slightly faster at encodeing, however I did a test with HT enabled and Disabled and came to the conclusion that Multitasking is Far, Above and Beyond superior with HT enabled. I know that it does not act as a duel proccessor. I also know that my XP machine runs 17 threads on a fresh boot, and many services as well. So I do not think that running 3 programs is Special. I did however pick these 3 cpu intensive programs to strech the limit. I specifically wanted to see how much I could do before CCE started slowing down RT. With Hyperthreading enabled, it Didn't stayed strong at 2.7. With it disabled it slowed down to 1.85. My conclusion (Just my opinion) is that if you are looking to do other things with your PC while encoding, you should give serious consideration to an Intel p4 800FSB with HT. If not, an AMD would probably be a better value...
@ppera
I will be doing another encode tonight, so I will try to add as many cpu extensive tasks as I can until CCE slows down. This way you can tell me how it would compare.

[ppera2]

What made me to react is: "You could do so much more than with an AMD cpu." Such statements aren't result of some testings and experiences, but just of propaganda, or simple - 'my is better'.

Every CPU design has it's benefits and downsides. I'm on that, that never give more than 100 bucks for one CPU. It will be near to fastest for some 30%, but 3-5 times cheaper. And fastest CPU will very fast be overtaken with newer, and price will fall very extremely. So, it's simple bad investment. I don't care to have fastest machine currently available, but to pull out maximum from what I have. When I go to sleep, for me is irrelevant will it finish encoding in 5 or 7 hours. Also, making capture and encoding simultaneosly is not something what I used to make, but it works, as I tried.
Motherboard is component which is main part of computer, and I always bought better ones. It not changes so often - I have now third CPU in same board.

[dvd_maniac]

As I stated, I think AMD is a much better bang for the buck, however, some people drive Corvettes, some drive Corollas. Both will take you from A to B but peoples preferences do come into play. I do not think that Intel is throwing out all propaganda, I think they are marketing to a different group of pc users. If someone makes one hundred dollars per hour, then his time is more valuable and having a faster computer might actually save money by saving a little time.

[int 21h]

The biggest difference I see with HT is the fact that I rarely see an hourglass in the UI of Windows. Whenever I launch a program, no matter what I am doing (encoding, burning, playing a game), I can launch a program just as quickly as I can while my PC is idle. This is convenient.

[dvd_maniac]

Do you in fact see a performance gain while running multiple programs as well? Do you or did you have an AMD? If so, what do you think of the difference in performance?

[int 21h]

At work I have two PCs (for compatibility testing), one is an AMD Athlon XP 2800+ and the other is an Intel P4 2.8 (800 FSB), they both have DDR (I forget the mhz). Their performance in most things is nearly equal (sometimes the AMD is a bit faster at certain operations), but the biggest difference is, even when I have the P4 pegged out doing something (i.e. 100% processor usage) I can still use it normally. If I peg out the Athlon, everything else starts to crawl, I can't hardly do anything on it without long wait times.

HT will definitely not give you a large performance increase, but what it will do is allow you to use your computer more efficiently.

[geoffwa]

The number of threads is not a measure of performance, particularly if they're idle.

I would recommended a P4 slightly over an XP if money was not an issue, since Intel's platform as a whole has better cache performance and memory bandwidth (which effects encoding/decoding). XPs are very nice for the money though (even if the motherboards can be stubborn).