Dual core

kliker · Post by **kliker** » Sat Jan 28, 2006 5:24 am

I am considering a rebuild for my computer and am wondering if VS9 can be run in a Dual Core system.
Will rendering be quicker, what if any other benefits may apply?

Present system
Asus motherboard : P4C800-E Deluxe
PCU: Pentium 4 3Ghz Prescott
Hyper-threading enabled
1 Ghz Ram

Post by **Ken Berry** » Sat Jan 28, 2006 6:57 am

Do a search for dual core -- there has been quite a lot of discussion of this a couple of weeks ago...

kliker · Post by **kliker** » Sat Jan 28, 2006 10:39 am

Ken,

Dont be so hasty.

I did do a search under the heading " duel core"

The postings that came up, and I read all of them, did not answer the questions I raised .

Even though I have been chastised I still would like answers to my questions before I dash out and spend big bucks.

Any help and reccomendations will be appreciated

Doug

GuyL · Post by **GuyL** » Sat Jan 28, 2006 2:35 pm

There are actual answers to the question you pose so Ken was right in suggesting this but you must not have come across the correct post.

I recently updated to a dual core system and did test before and after rendering the same video file. At the time, I saw a slight benefit but nothing to write home about. This was also true for regular computing. I went from an AMD 64 3000+ to an AMD 64 X2 3800+ and the increase I saw was no more than what I would expect in the increased clock speed.

However, I have now made some additional changes that have made a night and day difference. I have no way to go back and test the encoding like I orgininally did short of pulling my processor and I am not going there.

I originally had 1 GB of PC2700 RAM in my system which I kept when I went to my X2. I then swapped my RAM to 2 GB of PC3200 (DDR 400) and the system screams!

So match your RAM to your processor - especially AMD. AMD has been beating intel in many benchmarks on the dual cores and I think the reason is the integrated memory controller. BUT, do yourself a favor and match it up to get maximum performance. I also recommend 2 GB of RAM to truly take advantage of the dual core. The real advantage of the dual core is multi-tasking. When multi-tasking hard you will need RAM. If the system is constantly going to the swap file then the extra processing power will get lost to hard drive access times.

Personally, I think buying a non dual core system right now is not a good idea unless you see yourself upgrading again in the next year. The code writing to take advantage of this extra horsepower has already begun.

PS - A side note is that Ulead claims that they optimized for hyperthreading and dual core but I don't believe it. When rendering, my CPU usage hovers around 50%. So I believe they could optimize it some more.

Post by **Ken Berry** » Sat Jan 28, 2006 9:28 pm

And just to get another word in: I am sorry you took my suggestion as a chastisement. It was meant as nothing more than a friendly suggestion. I don't have a dual core system, and had simply recalled that there had been quite an exchange on it recently and that you could turn this up using Search. I just did so and immediately found this thread, which is the one I had been thinking of: http://phpbb.ulead.com.tw/EN/viewtopic. ... =dual+core

And I really think it did answer your questions. But thanks to Guy for intervening with further detail.

THoff · Post by **THoff** » Sun Jan 29, 2006 2:09 am

GuyL wrote:There are actual answers to the question you pose so Ken was right in suggesting this but you must not have come across the correct post.

I recently updated to a dual core system and did test before and after rendering the same video file. At the time, I saw a slight benefit but nothing to write home about. This was also true for regular computing. I went from an AMD 64 3000+ to an AMD 64 X2 3800+ and the increase I saw was no more than what I would expect in the increased clock speed.

However, I have now made some additional changes that have made a night and day difference. I have no way to go back and test the encoding like I orgininally did short of pulling my processor and I am not going there.

It is quite easy to compare the performance of your system with a single or vs. a dual core through an edit of the BOOT.INI file.

All you need to do is add the /OneCPU switch to the line describing the operating system, and that will cause the ACPI HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer) to see only a single processor. That works with multi-processor systems, Hyperthreaded systems, and dual-core systems.

My BOOT.INI contains two otherwise identical lines that allow me to choose a configuration at bootup:

Code: Select all

[boot loader]
timeout=3
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptOut
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional (One CPU)" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptOut /OneCPU

Don't copy my BOOT.INI line verbatim, instead duplicate the line in your BOOT.INI that describes the operating system, and add the /OneCPU switch to the end of the line. You can then easily compare performance between a single core and two cores, with everything else in the system being identical.

THoff · Post by **THoff** » Sun Jan 29, 2006 2:13 am

kliker wrote:I did do a search under the heading " duel core"

That might have been your problem right there -- search for "dual core" instead. Otherwise you'll only see the threads where people have made the same grammatical mistake...

GuyL · Post by **GuyL** » Sun Jan 29, 2006 2:03 pm

THoff wrote:All you need to do is add the /OneCPU switch to the line describing the operating system, and that will cause the ACPI HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer) to see only a single processor. That works with multi-processor systems, Hyperthreaded systems, and dual-core systems.

Yes, that is true. I could also set the affinity in the task manager for video studio to run on a single cpu. What I wanted to compare was against my AMD 64 3000+ on the exact same project. I'm not going to swap out the chip again and replace my RAM with the old just to do that exercise. Besides, the project is long over now.

I don't need to prove it to myself anymore. I can see the difference in general system performance by, in my opinion, installing the right RAM configuration to go along with the Processor.

2Dogs · Post by **2Dogs** » Sun Jan 29, 2006 11:55 pm

GuyL wrote:I can see the difference in general system performance by, in my opinion, installing the right RAM configuration to go along with the Processor.

The right RAM configuration specifically comprises PC3200 RAM as you say - but too many posters glibly suggest the use of 2Gb of RAM. That may be fine, and show very significant speed increases when loading game levels or multi-tasking, but for video encoding, it gives you no benefit, except when smart rendering. In fact if video rendering performance is your goal, it's better to go for less but tighter timed RAM rather than just the average value RAM that pc's are usually shipped with.

There is also a problem with many AMD motherboards that slows RAM down if you fill all the available DIMM slots - so it's best to go with just two DIMMs. Until recently, that would have restricted you to a total of 1Gb, since the better timings were not available in 1Gb sticks. That has changed very recently, however, so you can use two fast 1Gb modules. If you are an AMD user, don't have 2 x 512Mb and think that you can later add another 2 x 512 - for most AMD motherboards, it will result in worse RAM timings.

Anybody buying a new pc today should only consider a dual core solution, even if software writers have yet to fully exploit dual core cpu's, and I would probably also wait for the upcoming launch of AMD's new socket M2 architecture, which supports DDR2 RAM.

Having said all that, however, you now have a nice system with your 3800+, and you could post some performance figures for it some time.

GuyL · Post by **GuyL** » Mon Jan 30, 2006 2:40 am

My configuration is 2 x 1GB of RAM. As you say, in many cases if you try and install 4 x 512 DDR 400 it will be reduced to 333 in order to function. I knew of this problem and avoided it.

I may or may not have any improvements in video encoding and RAM over 1 GB doesn't improve it, in my opinion. It did improve system performance overall though because I multitask heavily. This PC is also my work PC. A typical workday involves me having Outlook open which I have the Business Contact Manager add-in for which uses an MSDE database server instance. I also use MS Virtual PC and have 1 or 2 of those open to run multiple versions of the same application for support purposes. Plus, I will have 1 or 2 other applications open at the same time. With my current configuration, I honestly do not notice any slow down. I am a very happy guy.

PS - Although AMD is coming with a new socket, I still believe that 939 has plenty of life in it yet. AMD just released the FX60 with is a dual core version of the famous gaming chip. If you look at Socket 754 there is still plenty of support for it. So I don't think investing in 939 is a bad move. There is still plenty of growth to be had in that line and DDR2 will only bring minimal enhancements.

THoff · Post by **THoff** » Mon Jan 30, 2006 3:03 am

Changing the CPU Affinity Mask is not quite the same thing, because the scheduler is still free to utilize the second processor for things like I/O, running background processes, other system code executed on behalf of Videostudio, etc. Also, the latest video drivers from ATI and NVIDIA have dual-processor optimizations.

2Dogs · Post by **2Dogs** » Mon Jan 30, 2006 3:30 am

GuyL wrote:There is still plenty of growth to be had in that line and DDR2 will only bring minimal enhancements.

Although that's true, the sad fact is that DDR2 RAM is cheaper than DDR. Seems unfair, doesn't it? There certainly is plenty of life in socket 939, (I'm still on 478!) and I hope to see prices drop with the introduction of M2.

In your case, however, your system seems like a good choice, especially since you use it as you describe.

kliker · Post by **kliker** » Mon Jan 30, 2006 5:39 am

As the originator of this thread I have sat on the side and let it flow, I thank all the posters as I have got some useful hints from them.

Perhaps I should take spelling lessons, to learn the difference between dual and duel, my apologies for a simple error, but I have benefitted from this thread.
I have decided to build a dual core computer with the following components

Motherboard: asus A8N32-SLI Deluxe
CPU AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200 Skt 939 (on special now)
Ram: 1 02 2 Gb DDR400 PC 3200 ( Single stick)
Graphics: GeForce3 6600Gt 256Mb ( 1or 2)

Have I got it right? Still willing to learn
Comments invited

Doug

kliker · Post by **kliker** » Mon Jan 30, 2006 5:57 am

A further Question.
I will be building this system into an ANTEC 1080 AMG Full Tower case, will I need additional cooling for the CPU? I have read that these CPU's run HOT.
What minimum power supply? Have 430 Watt now

Some of the videos that I have made have taken over 1 hour 45 minutes to render with my present system
Doug

GuyL · Post by **GuyL** » Mon Jan 30, 2006 1:21 pm

Adequate cooling is always necessary but the dual core AMDs run much cooler than their Intel counterparts. My system is air cooled with a fan in the front of the case and one at the rear. It doesn't go above any specifications as far as heat and my CPU is is 23C at idle and gets up to 39C at full load when playing games.