Quick question about machine upgrades

[Morphius]

Hey all,

Absoutely love the forums :) Anyhow, my question is this...

Considering a upgrade to my Ripping machine. Would I gain any speed increase in DVD Ripping going from a single XP to a dual setup using WinXP Pro?

Thanks for your inputs

[tjh011]

Probably not. From what I understand having dual processors wont help you very much if you are running just one application. But, you will see an increase if you are running several applications where the processors can both be used on different programs. I could be wrong, but I think you best bet is to get a fast dvd drive and a fast hard drive and not dual processors.

[Morphius]

tjh011,

Thanks for the reply, I already have the fastest DVD and CDRW available... I guess it is a CPU upgrade that is in order now. Time for a XP2200+

[phamilton]

Actually dual processors can run a single application faster than a single processor system if the application has been written appropriately - i.e. with several threads rather than a single thread. TMPGenc is a good example - it runs almost twice as fast on my dual PIII system (under XP) as it does on a single cpu system with the same processor. The issue is multi-threading rather than multi-application, since it is the threads that are run in parallel if there are several processors.

[khp]

If you are using avisynth for frameserving into vdub/nandub, you will get a great speed boost. One processor will handle mpeg-2 decoding and resizeing, the other will do encoding. Some people have reported better than 60 fps using a dual athlon MP2000, encoding with GordianKnot.

[Skullworks]

I use Gknot out of the Zip - on a dual Piii system - most of the apps are not multi-threaded - and in XPpro I see CPU load @ 53%.

Let me explain that - Xp is having one CPU running one app @100% - all windows functions, and other stuff is then sent to the other CPU which is coasting around 3%

There has been much more work applied to P4 optimisations than to go back and move towards multithreading.

I had great hopes that a dual CPU setup would show a major improvement - didn't happen.

[khp]

Hmm strange

I haven't done any multi cpu encoding myself, but in this thread Acaila clearly states that he is getting much better cpu load , using avisynth->virtualdub, which is what GordianKnot does.