Prototype standardized MSP 6.5 test file

[wkulecz]

Athelon Tbird 1.4G with PC133 SDRAM

Before I went to Budapest last week I'd inherited an ASUS A7V133 motherboard, 1.4GHz Tbird, and 1.5GB of PC133 SDRAM from doing an upgrade deal.

Managed to get the system together while rendering yesterday's DVD+RW/DVD-R tests using the Install/Restore method I'd mentioned a while back in a thread I started about moving W2k to a bigger drive and/or new motherboard. Significant time savings over re-installing all apps and so far no problems.

Comparing these times with Jerry's times might help you decide if DDR is worth its ~2-3X cost over SDRAM which is dirt cheap right now.

Preview: 9min 58sec Jerry had 8:38
MPEG2: 10min 36sec Jerry had 4:22

Either DDR makes a major difference for MPEG2 encoding or the MSP6.5 installer was modal and left out code that makes a big difference when installed on 700MHz Slot-A Athelon and restored to 1.4GHz Tbird for MPEG2 encoding. I'll do a "repair" and repeat the test later.

I'm losing intrest in mpeg2 encoding given that the Pioneer A03 DVD-R and HP DVD100i DVD+RW disks do not seem to have enough compatability with existing stand-alone players to be useful to me.

--wally.

[wkulecz]

Followup after MSP6.5 "repair"

It replaced some read only files and made me reboot.

No significant difference, if anything perhaps a bit slower:
Preview 10:20
MPEG2 11:10

Unless others with PC133 SDRAM report times much closer to Jerry's, I'm willing to believe DDR makes a significant difference for mpeg2 encoding.

--wally.


[edit]
Jerry, what was your motion estimation setting? Its not clear that the encoder keeps seperate values for mpeg2, mpeg1, and the various VCD, SVCD, and DVD templates.

I've noticed mine was set at 20 when I pressed the "Advance" button. Since I choose quality over speed, this is what I want but for comparrison it may be inflating the effect of DDR vs. SDRAM on mpeg2 encoding.

Tell me what your motion estimation was and I'll repeat my test with that setting.

[Sciascia]

I would have to disagree about the DDR. Not to be a difficult individual, but the DDR advantage is only about 25% more bandwidth. That cannot account for that much difference. I really think that your first idea of quality settings is more in line with the results.

On another note I just read your post about the conspiracy. That one I can believe! Hope that DVD burner works out for you.

[wkulecz]

Comparison of SDRAM vs. RDRAM showed major advantage for RDRAM in Premiere:

http://www.byte.com/documents/s=1468/byt20011015s0002/1015_patrizio.html

So perhaps DDR is also a big win over SDRAM for mpeg2 encoding. I'll set my motion estimation to 15 (is this the installation default?) and see how much my encoding time changes vs what it was when ME might have been set at 20.

Will have to wait until tomorrow as we plan to party for Halloween!

--wally.