Building a new computer

[Morden]

Hi there everyone, Ive been using Rebuilder for a couple of years now. Excellent program, thanks to JDobb for keeping up the good work on creating such an easy to use and very powerful software. But i also would like to thank everyone else who have helped with their input and ideas to help improve the product. Ok now that all is done, onto the topic of building a new computer.

Over the next couple of weeks i intend to put together a new box whose only purpose is to run Rebuilder.

Im just inquiring as to which way i should go for processor as in should i go thru Intel or AMD. And should the majority of you users say i should go along the path of Intel, should i go with Duo 2 Core or should i go the Quad Core. Or what kind of processor should i go with for AMD if most of you feel AMD is better suited.

What about ram. Should i go with the pc-6400 or pc-8500. I ask because i'm not sure whether the 800mhz or 1,066mhz will help make the transcoding go faster. I will probably put in 4gb should the 6400 be recommended.

Now how should i do hard drives. I was thinking 2 hard drives for sure. Like an 80gb for my operating system drive with the software installed on them and the 2nd drive will contain the decrypted files, working files and outputted files.

Or should i use a 3rd drive and create rebuilder output files on that 3rd drive? I ask because i read somewhere back awhile ago that the rebuilding runs faster when the working files and output files are on separate drives? I think it was jdobb that mentioned something like that.

Now how about the operating system. Which is recommended? XP or Vista? And i know most of you will ask me what encoder i use. Well currently i'm using Procoder because but i would like to go with HC Encoder as it looks very promising. Keep up the good job Hank315!! I would be using HC right now but Im currently using AMD Athlon XP 2500+ and that doesn't support SSE 3.

I know there was a lot of questions, etc. But i would like to put together that can give me a pretty fast Rebuild.

[steptoe]

Intel apparently is faster for video work, but I believe this refers to video processing not what you are trying to do as there is really no actual video editing involved

Intel have faster CPU's than AMD as I have the AMD 6000+ and there isn't much faster than that without paying really silly money for not much faster



HC encoder and DVD-RB Pro support multiple processors, so if you have the cash go quad core, plus you can also use the MT filter in AviSynth to get a lot of the seriously slow filters and functions psuedo multi core, so you'll get a speed up there as well

Also, HC is very small as its designed for one task, where other software like ProCoder have to be able to satisfy the market otherwise it wouldn't sell, making functions that you are never likely to use, and HC is still free !!

I use HC now, going back to CCE if I'm having problems with filters I'm testing to see whats going on, then switching back to HC when I know everything is working fine



Go for the fastest memory, but your motherboard will have to support that or its just a waste of your money as it will only run as fast as the motherboard allows



The idea of 3 hard drives is a much better idea, one for the OS and your software, one for DVD-RB to use as its work and one for DVD-RB to use as the destination for all the work, in that case you only need a small HD for the work as thats just the temporary files, 20GB will be plenty, maybe a fast Western Digital Raptor running at 10000rpm to squeeze the best of out the conversion. I've just checked up there is a 10000rpm 36GB Raptor with 16MB cache SATA, so thats going to help squeeze even more out of the system, time wise

I use something similiar and there was a speed-up in conversion as suggested on the forums



If you are using this system for nothing but DVD-RB, then try Vista but it still has a lot of 'issues' with software and getting some software to work with it is still causing a lot of problems, so if you want everything to work 'out of the box' stick with WinXP. I use XP Pro with no problems at all

[Dark Shikari]

I know with x264 at least better memory timings and/or faster memory have nearly no impact on encoder performance; I would guess that video encoding on a whole is very very processor-limited more than anything else. The best thing you can do is get a fast quad-core Core 2.

[salehin]

Yes, go with xp professional- don't go near vista- it requires a huge amount of memory for smooth running, which is incentive enough for not choosing vista. Apart from a nice graphical appearance/outlook it doesn't provide you anything special.

[wmansir]

I wouldn't recommend Vista either, but not for memory reasons. With memory prices the way they are now there's no reason not get at least 2GB, which is plenty for either XP or Vista.

In my experience 3 HDDs many not be worth it, but then the 3rd drive in my case was an older drive and I found moving the input and working files to a single faster drive was faster overall. If you have 2+ drives I would recommend at least moving the output DIR to a second drive, that way you are not reading/writing to the same drive during the rebuild phase. I output to my "OS" drive temporarily and then create an ISO image back to the "Data" drive.

For a proc I would go Intel. After 6 years of building with AMD I went Intel last year since Intel started to compete on price around the same time AMD stopped trying to undercut them.

As for memory, if you have to cut corners to afford a better processor I would do it here. Plus, this is the single easiest upgrade you can do at a later date.