[OT] Who has a DUAL machine?

[DarkAvenger]

Hi,

I am wondering who (beside MaTTeR) has a dual processor machine? I am thinking of parallizing some stuff in HeadAC3he and some of it libs, but it is of no use, if no one has such an machine. Of course I need some testers, as well, as I only have a (rather slow) single CPU unit. Please contact me, if you have a dualie.

D A

[m3thos]

I have one: dual athlonXP@1.33Ghz in one TigerMP MB.

what more do you wanna know? :)

[MaTTeR]

m3thos,

Download the SMP SSRC dll and bench mark please. The dll is located on D A's web site.

[m3thos]

ok, allready having it converting one 303.104Kbs ac3 to ogg..
but.. how am i supposed to benchmark it? start some cronograph at the same time I press the button? :)

(never used headach3 b4, it warnned me about some missing dll, one i didn't found at dark avenger site)
here's the things i downloaded, and installed:
ssrc.dll smp mod version for p3 and athlonXP
headach3 proggie 0.22b
ogg.dll ICL compile (mod smp version)
azid.dll


and.. for what it seems.. the programs is using 1cpu, only rarely it uses more than 50% of cpu resources. Acordingly to windows task manager. and when it does its 52, 56%.. something like this.
67.308K of memory usage

maybe trapped in some non preemptive loop?

[m3thos]

input file: Blade Audio File.AC3 303.104KB
output file: Blade Audio File.ogg 71.996KB
predicted size by proggie: 76 MB (2030MB)

time: 0:16:05 (h:mm:ss)
Throughoutput: 0.77MB/sec

Ogg quality: 3.00 VBR
2-pass mode

System:
Dual AthlonXP 1.33Ghz
Tyan TigerMP MB
256MB ddr2100 of cheap memory
Seagate Barracuda IV ata100: 40GB, 7200rpm, 2MB cache
OS: Windows XP professional

I think that if the algorithm is parallel capable, it can take something like 9/10 minutes.. instead of 16.

[MaTTeR]

m3thos,

Only the SSRC downsampling is SMP cpable. That's the part to benchmark.

0.77MB/sec?!?! Now that's a wicked fast machine you have. I'm jealous:)

[DarkAvenger]

@m3thos
Currently only I/O and CPU are done parallel in HeadAC3he, but I will probably make something. ;)
SSRC is really SMP now (though in a primitive way, need to test more whether I did it correctly)
Vorbis is somewhat threaded by the devs, so it should make use of the second CPU sometimes.
AZID is unfortunately serial.

Have you checked downsampling for your test? When doing SSRc CPU should go up to 100%.

@Matter
Could you send m3thos the old SSRC, so he could test? I am to tired now for searching it..

[MaTTeR]

@m3thos

I can't find a link for the older non-SMP SSRC. PM me your email and I'll send it.

[m3thos]

so.. the resampling would be the smp code is for know is that it?
so.. i'll resample from 48khz to 41khz

and.. should I use the boost option? if so.. what value? between 100 and 999 there's a lot to choose from.

and.. i'm now having some trouble.. that is stoping headac3he from working: the following dll is missing.. and i cant find it anywhere:
libmmd.dll

where do i get it, and.. if i'm wrong about the test to see if smp is working, tell me the what I should do..and remember I'm a newbie at this stuph.. i don't even know exacly what downsampling is. (but i'll guess thats converting some High-something sample to some Low-something sample.. whats the something? =)

[MaTTeR]

Yes, the only time you will see both CPUs @ 100% is when downsampling is taking place. 44kHz downsampling is what alot of people use, nothing lower than 44kHz.

I personally dont use the Boost option but it works gerat if you need it.

If you give me your email address via Private Message then I'll send you the files you need.

[canadian_fbi]

Originally posted by MaTTeR
0.77MB/sec?!?! Now that's a wicked fast machine you have. I'm jealous:)
with my athlon xp 1700 i've been getting stuff near that high with the new vorbis.dll. i know you like your dual PIIIs, but you should consider AMD :)

[MaTTeR]

I've been contemplating the dual ASUS AMD box for well over 2 months now. The board is $200 USD and 2 XP1600's will set me back another $275 *sigh*

Just sold my SGI Octane so the hope is that I can go for the dual AMD's:D I'm not all that fond of the dual PIII's, in fact I had to solder hack them to make the BIOS work with different steppings, it has been solid though so no complaints.

[canadian_fbi]

wow, i can't even imagine the kind of speed boost you're going to get from that setup over what you have now. you'll probably be able to rip a movie, encode its audio and video, mux it and burn it to a cd in less than the time it takes to watch it. well, maybe not that much, but it should be damn fast :)

what sort of fps encoding speed do you get with your current setup? i know it depends a lot on your settings and the bitrate and whatnot, but just on an average movie, what do you get?

[MaTTeR]

I hear ya man. I'm expecting to almost double my current speed *wiping drool*

Right now with 768MB tweaked RAM, agressive BIOS settings and my little ol dual 850's I'm getting somewhere between 28-31FPS. This is using Xvid (3-27) and motion search 6 with no filters @ 608 resolution. Gknot/Vdub/AVisynth is used of course;)

[DarkAvenger]

@m3thos

Sorry, I forgot to upload that dll. I'll do it immediately. I had the feeling I forgot something...

[Sven Bent]

This i my dual machine
i call her Cyborg :D

Dual AMD AthlonXP 1900+
Tyan tiger MP (Bios v1.02)
2x 512megs ram PC2100 cas2.5
Creative Geforce3 ti500 (DVI & TV-out) 266/590mhz

SoundBlaster Audigy Platinum (black bay)
3com 905 PCI 10/100 NIC
Promise Supertrak100 sx6000 (128mb 6ns cache)

Toshiba 16x DVD-drev (Black front)
Lite-on 32x 10x 40x
6x 80 GB Seagate in raid 0

20.1" Dell TFT monitor
2x Boston Acoustics MediaTheater Speaker set
Logitech cordless optical 2001
Logitech Dual Optical mouseman

Windows XP pro


EDIT 21/04/2002
This machine has been upgradet by now

[MaTTeR]

Impressive setup Sven Bent.

Have you benchmarked the SMP SSRC in HeadAC3he? I'd be interested to know what performance gains you get with a system like that:)

[canadian_fbi]

with that setup you can achieve world domination in 0.21 seconds; SSRC is trivial :)

[m3thos]

hey, i can't imagine any better desktop computer setup..
That thing only laks some wings! heheheh

[m3thos]

here are the settings:
input file:
blade-rip-1 AC3 T01 3_2ch 448kbps DELAY 0ms.ac3 52.769KB
Stream info:
AC3: 48khz 5.1 ch 448kbps
Machine:
dual athlonXP 1500+
Tyan tiger mp
256mb ddr pc2100 ram(cheap ram)
Seagate Barracuda IV 7200rpm 2mb cache, 40GB
Windows XP

NOTES:
AC3 decoding cycle is UP(Uni Processor)
vorbis encoding cycle is UP
SSRC downsampling cycle is SMP
Gaining cycles.. didn't get it.. I can't see any cpu usage

It would be nice to do something like this: two(2) SSRC downsampling cycles(one after another...since they're smp), and then two(2) parallel vorbis encoding cycles.. (one thread for each one, each taking care of one "downsample").
This would make it just fine for smp computers.

--- ouput to vorbis ---
There must happened a bug, the ogg file was 43 megs, quality 3.10 gave me 3??kbps.. instead of 116kbps, things didn't look "normal"..
I just noticied this after, it was done.. it took 9minutes and some secs.. the thoughoutput was really bad.. (0.37MB/s.. or 0.17MB/s)

but.. after a apparently normal run:
output file:
blade-rip-1 AC3 T01 3_2ch 448kbps DELAY 0ms.ogg 12.946KB

vorbis format: default settings, 2pass..blabla
Resample to 44khz. NO BOOST

Time needed: 00:03:34 (hh:mm:ss)
Throughoutput: 0.60MB/s (is this good?)

-- now, ouput to wav --
output file:
blade-rip-1 AC3 T01 3_2ch 448kbps DELAY 0ms.wav 498.644KB

wav format: default settings, 2pass, float, 16bit.
Resample to 44khz. NO BOOST

Time needed: 00:05:22 (hh:mm:ss) (copy paste from log window)
Troughouput: 3.34 MB/sec (I guess this is good?)
-- finished --

what the hell is boost?

[poopity poop]

does anyone know if CCE or TMPEG take advantage of a dual processor system?

[h00z]

I've got dual Athlon MP 2000+(s) with 1gb of PC2100 DDR. Boots off of a WD 300BB and I use a WD 1200JB for storage. Geforce3, etc, etc.

I also have a dual 2.4ghz Xeon machine with 512mb of PC2100 DDR. It's got a WD 100JB, but I'm only using the onboard video. Since the Xeons use the new "Prestonia" core with hyper-threading, I get FOUR CPU graphs in task manager :D

I also have a dual PIII-S 1.13ghz machine with 10k SCSI, but it's a server for my LAN so it's not too impressive ;)

BTW - TMPGEnc is very multi-threaded and it will eat as many CPUs as you can throw at it. My dual Xeon box regularly sees 80% usage (of the four CPUs).

I wish more people would multi-thread their stuff. Encoding the way I do, with the filters I use (anime mostly) I only get about 10fps... Even on my fastest machine :(

[poopity poop]

sweet...but I almsot don't believe you when you say you have the dual Xeon 2.4's, with DDR RAM, they only have a 400 Mhz FSB. Not 266Mhz. Also each of those processors run around 800 bucks a peice..so unless you are REALLY REALLY rich and got intel to make you a special processor, I don;t beleive you.
But.... I'm very glad TMPEGenc will eat as many processors you can throw at it, that just sealed my fate as to how many processors I'll be running in my next machine: 2!

[markrb]

I was reading that some of you had dual XP machines and I questioned that as I thought the XP CPU's were not capable of going dual.
Well I did some research and found out that they are not supposed to be used in a dual system and in fact motherboards are suppose to detect if they are XP's and disable SMP, but apparently some motherboard companies didn't listen to AMD and didn't impliment this feature much to the glee of computer users. However AMD has a new stradegy and now without modding your CPU you can no longer dual XP cpu's and you cannot use the newer MPx chipset boards with XP's. Here is a qoute from a very respected member of a computer forum I frequent:

HOWEVER, XP chips that were manufacturered in the past 4-6 weeks have an L5 bridge cut that disables SMP operation unless you reconnect it. I don't know if the 2462 disables SMP operation but the newer MPx chipset boards do.

It's all the bottom line I guess. MP's get a premium over XP's.

@poopity poop don't forget if you are serving the video the frame server must also support dual CPU's to see much improvement. As far as I know Avisynth does not. If you plan on using DVD2SVCD you will not see much improvement and your setup will mostly be a waste.

Mark

[maven]

sorry, slightly late:
dark avenger, if you still need someone to test, i've got
dual athlon 1800+ (xp) w/ 512mb ram, gf4, ...

and amd only recently (xp 2200) started laserlocking their XPs so you won't be able to use them as MPs. other than that XP and MP are identical (except maybe that XPs weren't tested for correct multi-processor functionality).

[DarkAvenger]

Well, if you have time, you could test if SSRC works correctly and fast. ;)

[MaTTeR]

Originally posted by markrb

@poopity poop don't forget if you are serving the video the frame server must also support dual CPU's to see much improvement. As far as I know Avisynth does not. If you plan on using DVD2SVCD you will not see much improvement and your setup will mostly be a waste.


I've always been curious how Avery Lee has managed to support SMP in Vdub. Myself and ChristianHJW (Don't know many others here with dual CPUs)have enjoyed multi processor performance using Vdub and Avisynth. I always assumed Avisynth was indeed the reason why Vdub used both CPUs, recently I tested Nic's latest DVD2AVI application though. Using D2A with Avisynth only used 1 CPU though:confused: So now I have to assume that Vdub is SMP capable as long as your using Avisynth, AFAIK VFAPI will only use 1 CPU with Vdub.

ChristianHJW has a theory that Vdub uses Avisynth to resize on one CPU and encode on another:)

[h00z]

I don't really care if you believe me or not, but I thought I'd post a few pictures for you...

http://www.hooz.org/misc.images/suprise.jpg

http://www.hooz.org/misc.images/hardware.pics/xeons/quads.gif

And if you kept-up with computer hardware at all, you would know that this board (http://www.tyan.com/products/html/thunderi7500.html) (which is the one I have) supports 12gb of DDR memory... With Xeons.

[Nic]

It could well be that VDub reads from avisynth in one thread & encodes in another thread...I don't know much about multithreaded programming on dual systems...

Ill go find out :)

-Nic

[h00z]

Originally posted by poopity poop
sweet...but I almsot don't believe you when you say you have the dual Xeon 2.4's, with DDR RAM, they only have a 400 Mhz FSB. Not 266Mhz. Also each of those processors run around 800 bucks a peice..so unless you are REALLY REALLY rich and got intel to make you a special processor, I don;t beleive you.
But.... I'm very glad TMPEGenc will eat as many processors you can throw at it, that just sealed my fate as to how many processors I'll be running in my next machine: 2! Just in case you're still skeptical, I grabbed another screenshot just for you...

http://www.hooz.org/misc.images/hardware.pics/xeons/speed.gif

Just remember this... Just because you can't buy them yet does not mean they aren't out there. Also, if you're interested in finding out some more about dual processor systems, feel free to check out my other site (http://www.2cpu.com). Plenty of good info over there :D

[MaTTeR]

@h00z

2cpu.com is yours? Most excellent! My favorite dualie board, I send everybody over to the site;)

Now I know why you have CPUs that are unreleased:D

EDIT- I should thank you for an excellent site. It's a wealth of information as I'm sure you'll find this site to be as well.

[ChristianHJW]

SMP forever .... but i still havent tested DA's SMP build ....

[h00z]

Just out of curiousity, why would you want to downsample the audio anyway? Unless you were ripping to (S)VCD I guess.

[ChristianHJW]

Originally posted by h00z
[B]Just out of curiousity, why would you want to downsample the audio anyway? Unless you were ripping to (S)VCD I guess. ... :D

[falcor]

i have recently started NOT to use downsampling to save gobs of time during an encode, and i do ONLY svcds. Proggies like nero have a problem with it being noncompliant, but cdrwin, fireburner vcdeasy and others do not. i have had no probs playing them on my standalone apex600a and like i said, saves stacks of time (actually i said gobs, but i thought once a thread is enough for that word) [8D]