DVD-RB and HyperThreading (core i7)

[dvd_]

I recently purchashed a new i7 920 rig and tried encoding (DVD-RB 1.28 + CCE SP v2.7) with HT on and off and there was no significant improvement in encode time.

I'd be happy if other i7 owners can share their experience encoding using DVD-RB and CCE with HT on/off, and did it improve their encode time.

since I'm not using BD-RB yet and no other "heavy" encoding/editing software I thought that if enabling HT doesnt produce any gain in encode time I might as well disable it and lower my cpu tempertures.

Any thoughts?

[ibanez]

I recently purchashed a new i7 920 rig and tried encoding (DVD-RB 1.28 + CCE SP v2.7) with HT on and off and there was no significant improvement in encode time.

I'd be happy if other i7 owners can share their experience encoding using DVD-RB and CCE with HT on/off, and did it improve their encode time.

since I'm not using BD-RB yet and no other "heavy" encoding/editing software I thought that if enabling HT doesnt produce any gain in encode time I might as well disable it and lower my cpu tempertures.

Any thoughts?

I don't think HT has improved my encode time, and looking at task manager, only 3 of the 8 threads on my i7 920 seem to have any decent activity. However I was still surprised that the encode on a shrink to dvd-5 is now around only 20 minutes. So you could probably turn it off.

However when you start using BD-RB for Blu-rays, I would leave it on. From the tests on the Internet, HT improves x264 performance by around 15%, and I notice all 8 threads go to 100% utilisation on the second pass.

I must say the i7 920 is a great CPU. Mine is overclocked to around 3.5 Ghz on stock voltage and it's completely stable with both DVD-RB and BD-RB.

[dvd_]

Wow, 20 minutes. Are you using CCE? How many passes?
My i7 is overclocked @ 3.2ghz and it does a DVD9->DVD5 with CCE 10 passes at around 160min.
(Yes, I know 10 passes is considered over the top in this forum, but I wanted to utilize the power of my new i7)

[drmih]

The issue is CCE that only seems to be able to utilise a certain amount of the cores (I think I was getting 2 and a bit). I raised this some time ago when I came across the same thing. If you use the free encoder (HQ? - sorry I'm not at the pc with it on) it will launch 8 simultaneous operations handling different sections - this works fine with the only drawback if one of the parts is much bigger than the rest that the seven finish and you have to wait for the final one - still very fast though and in most cases the parts take a similar time.

[steptoe]

And it hogs your entire CPU time, so unless you want it to take over your entire system for the encode time, which I don't as I do other things while encoding, use NOSMP (I think) that stops HCEnc taking over your CPU by running one process only, but even so I can an average of about 120-180FPS on one process depending what I'm doing ... thats without any filters, that can easily drop to 20FPS if its a heavy filter process like the very complex and slow motion compensation denoisers


Or use the option in DVD-RB to specify how many cores to use

[jdobbs]

And it hogs your entire CPU time, so unless you want it to take over your entire system for the encode time, which I don't as I do other things while encoding, use NOSMP (I think) that stops HCEnc taking over your CPU by running one process only, but even so I can an average of about 120-180FPS on one process depending what I'm doing ... thats without any filters, that can easily drop to 20FPS if its a heavy filter process like the very complex and slow motion compensation denoisers


Or use the option in DVD-RB to specify how many cores to use If you set DVD-RB or BD-RB to "Idle" priority, it will only use the left-over time of your computer. If you aren't doing anything that could still be 100% -- but if you are doing something else, the other task will take priority and the encode will only use what's left. I pretty much always keep mine at "Idle".

[jdobbs]

I don't think HT has improved my encode time, and looking at task manager, only 3 of the 8 threads on my i7 920 seem to have any decent activity. However I was still surprised that the encode on a shrink to dvd-5 is now around only 20 minutes. So you could probably turn it off.

However when you start using BD-RB for Blu-rays, I would leave it on. From the tests on the Internet, HT improves x264 performance by around 15%, and I notice all 8 threads go to 100% utilisation on the second pass.

I must say the i7 920 is a great CPU. Mine is overclocked to around 3.5 Ghz on stock voltage and it's completely stable with both DVD-RB and BD-RB. Ibanez... that's what George Benson plays, you know. Are you a guitar player or is this your moniker?