Questions on building a new computer, focused on improving encoding time

[Michelle Cox]

I’m looking to get a new computer built for me and am trying to decide what all to put in it. Although this will be my main home computer, the only thing I do that really taxes a computer’s abilities is video editing, so I’m gearing it towards making that go as fast as possible. Hence my asking for help here.

1. AMD (XP 2000) or Intel (P4 2.2)? I’ve looked at some of the posts here and am hesitant to ask because it always ends up in a flame war. None of the posts I’ve seen have been enough to help me decide, though. I’m sure I’ve missed plenty because it’s a hard thing to search for (probably because of all the system specs making false hits), so if there’s a post that addresses this, please let me know.

Anyway, this question is very specific. I’m not looking at how they do in games and whatnot. I want to know which is better for three particular programs: VirtualDub, TMPGEnc, and Windows Media Encoder. Those are the ones I use that take the absolute most processing time on my poor P3-600, so if either of them can be optimized for a particular chip, I’d like to know. Personally, I lean towards Intel, but it’s more comfort in a familiar name than any technical reason. If there’s a good reason (besides price) to switch to AMD, I’ll certainly consider it.

2. Sound card? I’ve never paid any attention to what sound card I get. Not even sure what I have now, other than it’s some sort of Sound Blaster. Does the choice of sound card matter a lot in video editing? Is there a particular one I should be looking at? Otherwise I’ll probably just get whatever the latest SB is.

3. Memory? I haven’t been able to figure out, yet, if the P4 2.2 works with DDR or just Rambus. Anyone know? I’ve seen 2Ghz with DDR, but not the 2.2. Anyway, if I do have a choice, is it worth it to pay more for the faster Rambus? Will it make a significant difference in encoding time?

4. Motherboard? I’ll admit to being completely clueless here. I don’t know the first thing about what makes a good one. Does the choice matter as far as video editing goes?

5. Video card is easy. I’m just going to transfer my Matrox G450 E-TV from this computer.

Anything else I should consider to make encoding go as fast as possible? I tend to use my computer like a VCR, recording lots of shows that I may want to watch again some day. Doing this for 6-7 shows a week means my poor computer is encoding almost all the time. I’d like to speed that process up as fast as possible.

Thanks,

Michelle

[Sciascia]

The biggest decision to make as you noted was which CPU to go with, AMD or Intel. The biggest advantage of intel P4 CPu's is their long pipeline, larger bandwidth and SSE2 instruction set. AMD's advantages are they are as fast if not faster than P4s, are a lot cheaper and have the SSE instruction set that most SW is written for. Of course as new titles come out they will take advantage of the new P$ SSE2 and that is where the real speed increase is supposed to come in. The other thing about AMD chips is that they get hot and I mean alot hotter than Intel chips. Cooling is going to be an issue with them, not really hard to do, but you have to plan ahead. Either way yo can't really go wrong, as long as you get a MB with a good chipset. as for RAM I would opt for DDR since the advavntage of Rambus is not that much compared to the price.

For a soundcard I would get anything that is not made by Creative Labs. Best bet will be the Turtle Beach Santa Cruz. If you are looking for something that is not going to cause problems or slow down your system then stay away from C-Labs.

The MB is gong to be the hardest choice and I reccomend just staying clear of the VIA chipsets, Atleast the older ones. I have an AMD 1.4G on a VIA KT133a and it seems to work fine, but I have to admit that I think that it could perform a little better. It is fast, but since you are looking at the Athlon XP go with the KT266 or check into another chipset makers MB. I really am not an expert on the newer chipsets. I am sure that someone else can give you some better guidance here.

I really like Intel, but I am overall very pleased with my Athlon. It is very fast and I do not have but a few apps that don't like it and most of those are repaired with newer versions of the app. Some of the newer MBs also have built in RAID controllers. This maybe something that you would want to look into. It really makes all the difference in the world for capturing low/uncompressed video. Of course you need 2 HDs to make this work.

Good Luck.

[Hulk]

You really can't go wrong either way. I recently go a P4 system over the Athlon for the following reasons:

1. In my main application, MS Pro 6.5, clock for clock the P4 is about as fast as the Athlon. As you know, the P4 has a 500+ MHz lead over the fastest Athlon.

2. I am wary of non-intel chipsets. I know many people use them with great stability, but I have also head quite a few bad cases. I am using an Intel chipset in my new system and it has not had a single lock up or crash in the 6 weeks I've been using it. BTW, you can get P4 DDR motherboards and they support 2.2+GHz P4's

3. I believe the P4 is going to scale to very high clock speeds in the near future.

4. P4's run cooler than Athlons. I like my system quiet, cools systems = quiet.

Well, those are my reasons in order of importance. Like I said you can't go wrong in either case. I just thought I'd tell you what made me go Intel.

Good luck!

[Indiana]

Although I'm normally suggesting the Athlon ('cause it's faster in average), the Windows Media Encoder is one of the very few applications that is quite a bit faster on the P4. So if you spend your time on mostly on this, you should choose the P4. The AthlonXP is faster for some other things, though (e.g. DivX'ing).
In general I'd say that you can't really go wrong either way, the difference is not THAT big and both solutions should give a nice speed-boost over your current setup.

As for the RAM, this is easy: RDRAM (Rambus) for the P4 and DDR for the Athlon - high mem-bandwidth is absolutely necessary for vid-capturing / editing. You could also go DDR for the P4, but the price difference is not that big anymore and the only capble DDR solutions performance-wise are VIA and SIS (the i845 seems a bit slow), and those tend to be not as stable than Intel chipsets. In any case DON'T take a SDR board for the P4 as it will drastically hurt performance.
As mainboard-chipset I'd take the i850 (if you go Intel) or the KT266A (for the AthlonXP). I don't know what brand mainboards to suggest for the P4, but for the Athlon both the EPoX 8KHA+ and the Asus A7V266-E seem to be good choices.

And stay away from Creative soundcards, their drivers suck and are even more bloated than WindowsXP.
If you're only video-editing, it's not that important, but when you want to capture as well, it's crucial to not have a Creative soundcard that hogs the bus and causes lots of dropped frames.
Take the SantaCruz or maybe the Terratec DMX 6Fire 24/96 (gives you the nice front-module with nearly every input / output connectivity you can imagine). Both also have better sound-quality than the SBLive.

[Graham Meredith]

If encoding time and rendering are important especially if you use TMPGEnc, consider a dual Athlon processor with a Tyan Tiger MP S2460 motherboard. This is what I will be building over the next few weeks!!

http://forums.murc.ws/showthread.php?s=&threadid=28666&highlight=dual+processor

Graham

[Michelle Cox]

Just want to say quick that I read your responses and I appreciate the help. I have more to say, but no time to do it until after work tomorrow.

Michelle

[zeb7]

You don't say if you're going to keep that P3 , the benefits of two or more computers networked together, well you may wonder how you managed before.
Rendering/Encoding will always take too long so a change of tactics is needed , even adding a 1Ghz PC networked to you're P3-600 would increase you work
though port.
the ability to encode on 1 PC ,capture on the 2nd and maybe read you're Email on the 3rd ?
it may workout a better option than buying the bigist,fastist monster PC available today,
and you would only need 1 mouse/keybord/monitor if you buy a switchbox.

zeb,

[Damascus]

Originally posted by Indiana
Although I'm normally suggesting the Athlon ('cause it's faster in average), the Windows Media Encoder is one of the very few applications that is quite a bit faster on the P4.

Heh is that because of the bug that Microsoft hasn't patched yet? (If (CPU == GenuineIntel) SSE.Enable

[Jerry Jones]

Jerrold Jones

If MPEG encoding speed is important, then be sure to check out the news from Ulead.

They'll be offering a new "MPEG.Now" codec that will allow for real time Firewire-to-MPEG-2 capture.

In essence, this means real time MPEG-2 encoding.

http://www.creativepro.com/story/news/15475.html

[Nethermancer]

Don't buy a VIA board like I did recently. Not rocksteady like my old BX board. Get the latest ABIT i845DDR board. You will see no benefit with higher RDRAM throughput other than synthetic benchmarks. A friend of mine has a P4 2GHz Northwood and runs it at 3.2GHz with a good HSF. They will go as high a 3.8GHz (liquid nitrogen cooling though). The i845 chipset will never crash with XP. You can use your old machine for capture (if you don't drop any frames with it) and transfer your files to your networked new machine to process while you capture more stuff. A KMV switch will save you money but remember not to use it while capturing (you will drop lots of frames or worse).

[Michelle Cox]

Ok, I’m finally getting a chance to respond to all of you. Sorry I took so long.

Sciascia – I’ve decided to go with Intel and take your advice on the sound card and the RAID.

Hulk – You named the biggest reasons I had for going with Intel, besides my initial gut reaction of wanting to stay with the familiar.

Indiana – I don’t spend most of my time on WME, but enough that making it go faster would really be nice. I’m already sold on Intel, anyway. I’m not so sure about the RDRAM, though. Yes, it’s faster, but it’s also more expensive. I’d only be able to get 512MB of that VS 1GB of DDR. Plus, there’s supposed to be new chipsets for DDR coming out in April and RDRAM seems to be stagnating. I’m not dead-set against RDRAM, but I haven’t seen any really good arguments for going with it. Would I really see that much difference in capturing/encoding in 512MB of RDRAM Vs 1GB of DDR? As for sound card, I’m looking at the Turtle Beach one at Sciascia’s suggestion.

Graham – Thanks for the input, but I’ve decided I really want Intel.

Zeb7 – Not sure what I’m going to do with the P3, yet. It was going to my husband, but he’s thinking of getting a new system, too. I’ll keep it on the network, but it isn’t any use for either capping or encoding, so I won’t use it for that.

Jerrold – I don’t use firewire for anything, and prefer to cap to Huffy and then encode so I can use filters and such. But thanks for the info.

Nethermancer – I’ve heard enough about VIA to stay away from that. I spent last Saturday reading mobo/chipset reviews and decided to wait until April when bigger and better things are supposed to be coming out. I’ll take another look at the reviews then and decide on the mobo. I’m pretty iffy on the RDRAM. I’m leaning towards DDR. That seems to be the way things are going. My current computer isn’t any good for capping. It’s a P3-600 and can only cap at ¼ rez and then loses 2 frames per minute. I’ll be doing all capping and encoding on the new computer. What is a KMV switch?

Thanks for all the advice. I'll probably make another post in April for some fine tuning once I’ve decided exactly what I want to buy.

Michelle

[Rob100]

Nethermancer: I have an Adderview Gem KVM and I am always using it when capturing and have never dropped a frame, crashed or anything like that as a result.

Michelle: KVM = Keyboard Video Mouse. This is where I got mine from - http://www.netshop.co.uk/catmenu2.fw...p=KVM+Switches

Rob.

[Indiana]

Originally posted by Michelle Cox
I’m not so sure about the RDRAM, though. Yes, it’s faster, but it’s also more expensive. I’d only be able to get 512MB of that VS 1GB of DDR. Plus, there’s supposed to be new chipsets for DDR coming out in April and RDRAM seems to be stagnating. I’m not dead-set against RDRAM, but I haven’t seen any really good arguments for going with it. Would I really see that much difference in capturing/encoding in 512MB of RDRAM Vs 1GB of DDR?

RDRAM in itself is NOT faster than DDR. Personally, I hate Rambus' policy, so I'd NEVER get any RDRAM for myself.
But given the facts that (1.) the Intel DDR solution is not exactly smokin' fast (the fast PentiumIV DDR boards are equipped with VIA or SIS chipsets which all tend to have some flaws), (2.) the i850 has DualDDR channels doubling RDRams bandwidth and (3.) nowadays the price difference between RDRAM and DDR is not really big anymore (at least here), I have to suggest RDRam for everyone (who has an open mind about Rambus, which I don't) when he wants a PentiumIV system that needs both, maximum performance AND stability.

As for the soundcard, I guess anything that's not from Creative could be fine...

BTW, I do have one of those terribly flawed VIA systems and don't have real problems with it, many people with so-called VIA problems are just too stupid to set up a system properly, and then it's the most convenient to simply put the blame on VIA (not that they never had problems, but so does AMD, SIS, and even Intel)

[Sciascia]

I agree that my VIA chipset is pretty solid now since I went back to Win98SE. It wasn't so much them, but a lack of good drivers for my other cards for newer OS's. I also agree that if you are going to take the plunge into a PIV (I'm just too cheap right now) it would really be a lot better with RDRAM. I have read some reviews of PIVs with DDR and they have been far from good. The difference in price is definitley worth the performance when you look at the ratio. We just got a new AVID with the RDRAM and it smokes. Even with only 256M that 400Mhz just kills our older ones with 512M SDRAM. Of course they are Xeon processors so there may be a difference between that and the PIV, but there is a definite difference.

I have thought about a KVM switch a lot since we use a Cybex for our Radio automation system and it rocks. I just don't want to have more than one PC in a room at a time. If I did more editing and encoding it would definitely be worth it. It woudl be nice to have one for editing/encoding and one for browsing or gaming while I am waiting.