dedicated encoding computer

[pkiley]

building a dedicated computer for encoding movies. Now I know a bit more than the average person as far as computers go, but Im kinda lost on figuring out how to build the best dedicated encoding computer for the money. Speed is pretty important, but video playback isn't since I will be watching it elseware. I'm thinking I want about 1.9GHZ Athlon but where do I go from there? Im not sure how the parts work with eachother for instance athlon have a few different models on chips like the barton that runs at 333MHZ, and how that work the all the buses in computer like front side bus or whatever. Also how much is L1 and L2 cache affect things. And ram runs at differnt speeds too. I guess my main question is how can I tell what parts to get and make sure they are all optimized to work with eachother perfectly. No point in buying expensive ram if it cant be utilized fully cause my mother board sucks. OK here is where im starting from.

I'm on a tight budget so I want to leave all the extra unimportant things out. Whant to spend around $100-$150. The OS and hardrives is all i got for now.

1. Amd Atholon XP 1.9GHZ $47
2. 2 80GHZ Segate drives Raid Striped for speed (already got this)
3. Linux (redhat 9 or mandrake 9.1)or windows??? For best
performance(I have a large variety of OS)
4. Ram???? How big of a deal is this? 2100MHZ to 3200MHZ. does it
matter. At what speed does it start to become a rip off?
5. Motherboard???? Dont need a bunch of things

[hakko504]

Is OK
Don't raid them! you'll be moving large chunks of data back and forth, and it's better to move them from one physical disc to another than back and forth on different parts of one disc. And a 30GB system disc is also quite useful.
WinXP seems to be the best choise. Not enough useful apps for Linux, and XP is slightly better than 2k, when it has been configured correctly.
RAM speed should match the procesor, i.e. in your case PC2700. Get as much as you can afford, but choose two matched modules of smaller size rather than one large. (i.e get 2x512MB rather than 1x1GB)
Try to get one with both onboard video and 5.1 audio. If possible also one with 4 IDE channels.
If you already have a graphics card and audio card, just look for a MB with 4 IDE channels.
A DVD-burner should be included on your list if you can afford it... The NEC ND-1300 or Pioneer A06 are cheap and good solutions

[DDogg]

I built this machine for the same purposes you mentioned. Cost was under 400 bucks (I caught some rebate specials on Ram and HDs)and with the XP1700 running as a XP 3000 if does encoding very well indeed.

A few months ago I was able to get the special Xp1700 tbred core for 48 bucks delivered. They are getting a little harder to find now. Alternatively, the xp2500 at 85.00 can be easily OC'ed to a XP3200 equivalent. The Biostar M7NCDPro is a very good board and excellent and inexpensive, but only get the Pro version. There is one called the M7NCD that sorta sucks. Spend your money on good ram. Especially if using Nvidia dual channel. Plan on buying one grade better than you will be using it at. That's why I bought PC 3500 - Note the CAS2 and latency settings on a 400 bus.

Probably the best bang for the buck is a this biostar mobo or the Soltek NV400-L64, some Kingston PC 2700 Value Ram and a XP 1700 - 1800. That gets close to your budget. If you buy an AMD XP CPU try to make sure you get a tbred core or barton core, and not a palomino if at all possible.

Biostar M7NCDPro Nforce 2-400| XP1700 (AXDA1700DUT3C - JIUHB 0312VPMW) @2.22 Ghz (11*200) VCore 1.80 volts - SiSoft PR 3212 (Estimated)| GForce 2 MX400 | 2 Maxtor 40g ata 133 | Zalman flower with 120 m fan @ 2000 rpm| Enermax 330 watt w/r82 tweak | (2) 256 meg PC3500 HYP_X (7-2-2-2) running as dual channel (VDim 2.8 volts)| 2 fans, 1 side, 1 back | Enermax -CS 307 Case | OS - XP Pro

[midi]

P4 has always smoked Athlon when it comes to video encoding. You can use google to dig up some reviews/benchmarks. The long pipeline and high cost of branch misprediction is probably less of an issue allowing the higher clock to shine.

The Divx PC the creators of Divx auctioned off was actually dual processor. I think they mentioned using one to decode and one to encode so they could rip DVDs in real time or better.

[Zarxrax]

For your CPU, I would definately go with P4 as midi said already. If you can afford it go for dual processor, but if you can't just get the fastest single processor you can afford.
For your OS, I would definately choose windows, because most video software is written for it. If you go to linux, theres the possibility that you might not be able to use some program that you might need.

I think you should get the fastest ram you can afford, as I've heard ram is often the bottleneck when it comes to stuff like filtering in avisynth. You shouldn't need a lot of ram, 512mb should be plenty I would think.

[wmansir]

For the money the XP will smoke the P4, especially on the low end. Heck you can't even get a new P4 for under $100, where as the XP 1900+ can be found for less than $50.

And there are plenty of cheap XP MB with onboard video, sound and lan. The Biostar M7NCDPro doesn't have onboard video, but it's very cheap (several places have it for <$60 shipped). If you need the video (and Firewire), take a look at the slightly older M7NCG 400. You can get it from Newegg.com for $74 shipped (plus free a hat).

[Neo Neko]

P4 gets you relatively little when price difference is compared to performance difference. Especially when codecs like Divx etc are thrown in the equation. Codecs that require pure CPU power more than CPU speed. :P Cycle per cycle it has been shown in many cases that for several applications Athlon beats the Pentium. Even multiprocessor systems are somewhat overrated in this application. Codecs like MPEG where past and even future frames depend on the current frame get questionable if any benefit at all from multiprocessor systems. At best you could run filtering on one CPU and compression on the other. The saving grace in this respect for passed MPEG codecs is the closed GOP. With Divx etc with a rather dynamic GOP symetric multiprocessing is almost useless. In short if you have a big wad and want to blow it spectacularly get the fastest everything you can. Which would include a P4 processor. If you are OTOH on a budget don't feel obligated to buy Intel. The only area where Athlon and Pentium price to performance ratios converge is at the top of the line processors. For mid or low end processors AMD beats Intel pretty much any given day.

And even if you get a monster CPU it will be for naught if you scrimp on the rest of the system. RAM etc play an important role. Buy within your means. When I went to build this system I was wanting to build an Intel system. Nothing top of the line. Just a nice system at a reasonable price that would serve me well. My last intel system had been two systems ago. I never had a problem with AMD. Just wanted to go intel for some reason this time. I went out and compared benchmarks for the tasks I would be doing most often. The moment I went out to start pricing hardware and purchase it the first thing that I noticed is that the Athlon that roughly equaled the performance of the Intel I was looking at was less than half the price of the intel!!! :eek: Not only that the MOBO to support the Athlon was considderably less than that of the Intel.!!! :eek: For the money I would save on the processor and MOBO I could buy more newer and faster RAM or many other things. It just made sense. No offense to the Intel espousers. :P

[Fredledingue]

About the OS W98se is faster than XP.

[Neo Neko]

That can really depend on the hardware and it's support fred.

[b0b0b0b]

If you are into overclocking and the nitty gritty associated with that, I think mushkin is a good place for ram.

[hakko504]

Originally posted by Fredledingue
About the OS W98se is faster than XP. Unfortunatley Win9x/ME does not support NTFS whih is required if you want to have complete DVD ISOs laying around on the HD.