Best Chip

[ddyszel]

I noticed that both VS 10 and 11 have specialized support of Intel Core 2 Duo chips. Does the VS 10 dual core download make any difference with the AMD dual core chips....or am I out of luck?

[2Dogs]

Hey ddyszel (diesel?)

I believe VS10 had a patch to improve performance (or rather to rectify under-performance) with Core 2 cpu's, and I would imagine that VS11 would have started out with Core 2 support. As far as I know, VS10 and up do support AMD dual core cpu's, but there would be no harm in you applying the latest patches to your version.

When you're rendering a file, run task manager and click on the performance tab to see how much each core is being utilised. Don't expect to see both at 100% - even if they're both at 50%, it's quite likely that the render is being performed faster than a similarly clocked single core cpu at 100%.

You shouldn't be drawn into cpu envy anyway - it's not how fast you render it, it's what it is that matters!

[ruggy1]

As anyone in the industry knows, Moore's law died 3 or more years ago. Things do not get faster these days. All we have are multiple 'cores' that individually do things slower than Intel's last, performing, and stable CPU, the P4 3.4GHz. Ulead, at the moment, cannot take advantage of multiple cores. They all sit idle whilst your video processing continues on a single, lower performing core CPU. We are all waiting on a new generation of CPUs from Intel or AMD. We can buy HP's Itanium and IBM's Power chips at frighteningly expensive prices, but even they are not that much faster than an Intel P4 3.4GHz. Hopefully, Intel or AMD will come up with the goods fairly soon. Video NEEDS faster CPUs

[2Dogs]

All we have are multiple 'cores' that individually do things slower than Intel's last, performing, and stable CPU, the P4 3.4GHz.

It's actually fairly straightforward for software writers to take advantage of multiple cores, and dual core and up cpu's show a very clear superiority in video encoding over the old Intel P4 chips. I think some dual core owners might step up and provide some rendering speed info.

Ulead, at the moment, cannot take advantage of multiple cores. They all sit idle whilst your video processing continues on a single, lower performing core CPU.

This could easily be disproved by some task manager performance tab screenshots - again, perhaps some dual core owner might assist.

We are all waiting on a new generation of CPUs from Intel or AMD. We can buy HP's Itanium and IBM's Power chips at frighteningly expensive prices, but even they are not that much faster than an Intel P4 3.4GHz. Hopefully, Intel or AMD will come up with the goods fairly soon. Video NEEDS faster CPUs

I'd certainly agree that, with the advent of HD video, people will want faster cpu's, especially when encoding to more highly compressed formats (and sometimes even having to encode the captured video to editable formats) I personally am not waiting for any particualr new cpu - but I might go for an overclocked Intel E4300 home built system to replace my venerable P4c 2.8. The P4 is still a usable pc, though it chugs a bit next to my Core 2 laptop when doing CAD stuff.

[ddyszel]

So, if I read this correctly, the patch that supposedly includes Intel Duo Core 2 support still doesn't make use of the dual core system and the same would apply to machines using the AMD chip.

I would also guess that the Windows XP 64 support still runs under a 32 bit scheme....again affording no extra speed.

[2Dogs]

So, if I read this correctly, the patch that supposedly includes Intel Duo Core 2 support still doesn't make use of the dual core system and the same would apply to machines using the AMD chip.

I don't think you are reading it correctly. Many users report the VS10 patch as being effective in getting better performance out of C2D cpu's. Check out this thread if you like:

http://phpbb.ulead.com.tw/EN/viewtopic. ... light=core

As for Windows XP 64 bit support - I'd challenge anyone to find common consumer pc video editing software that made use of 64 bit computing.

If you are really getting poor results with your X2, I wonder if it might relate to your use of XP MCE. Vista of course may be another can of worms.

[fredb]

As anyone in the industry knows, Moore's law died 3 or more years ago. Things do not get faster these days. All we have are multiple 'cores' that individually do things slower than Intel's last, performing, and stable CPU, the P4 3.4GHz. Ulead, at the moment, cannot take advantage of multiple cores. They all sit idle whilst your video processing continues on a single, lower performing core CPU. We are all waiting on a new generation of CPUs from Intel or AMD. We can buy HP's Itanium and IBM's Power chips at frighteningly expensive prices, but even they are not that much faster than an Intel P4 3.4GHz. Hopefully, Intel or AMD will come up with the goods fairly soon. Video NEEDS faster CPUs

Half of what you say is virtually untrue. Please check your sources before making false statements like these. Intel had reached the limits of their previous chip design (the P4) and created a brand new, much more efficient and powerful chip with the Core 2. Adding a second core to it added even more processing power, but the design of each core is not a P4!

The fact and the matter is buying a Core 2 Duo today is extremely beneficial and makes your PC fly. I've used Ulead applications for a long time on Athlon and P4 and VS11 really takes advantage of Core 2 Duo CPU. I cannot say how well AMD X2 perform since I have not tested them with Ulead apps, however I can tell you that my E6300 (slightly overclocked) processes MPEG compression very well and fast. Interactive work is also much improved, not just batch processing.

I would recommend it to anyone in a heart beat!

[fredb]

So, if I read this correctly, the patch that supposedly includes Intel Duo Core 2 support still doesn't make use of the dual core system and the same would apply to machines using the AMD chip.

I would also guess that the Windows XP 64 support still runs under a 32 bit scheme....again affording no extra speed.

See my other answer about performance gains under Core 2 Duo, it is worth an upgrade!
Usually 64 bit does not add speed per se, it allows your CPU to address a bigger memory space and may improve performance when you've maxed out the use of RAM (3.5 GB under XP 32 bit).

I would not epxect you to need that much memory to run VideoStudio, so essentially there is no benefit in using a 64 bit platform for this type of application.

[2Dogs]

Thanks for chipping in with some actual practical experience on this one, fredb.

As for RAM - I did my own rendering speed tests with my (now ancient P4c!) a few years ago, to see how rendering speed was affected by RAM. Apart from Smart rendering, which is in effect just copying files, I found no benefit whatsoever when increasing RAM from 256Mb up to 1536Mb. That's not to say that there wouldn't be other benefits to having more RAM installed, but for simple encoding tasks, you don't need much. I suspect the situation is similar for later cpu's, such as C2D's and X2's.

My P4c 2.8 takes about 90 minutes to render one hour of DV avi to MPEG2. I've heard of figures of around 30 minutes to do the same task with a C2D.

I suspect that there isn't too much difference between C2D's and X2's at stock speeds - the real benefit of C2D's is in their huge overclocking headroom. I'm glad to hear that you can take advantage of some overclocking in your setup. With my "tier one" HP pc, the bios precluded hardware overclocking, so I dabbled with software overclocks. Although I could get a 20% improvement in render speed, the software overclocked pc could not be used for capture, so VS didn't like it in some way.

Apologies if I'm drifitng off topic, possibly veering towards a favourite rant!

[ddyszel]

Wow,
I seemed to have opened a can of worms. The reason I brought this up is my disappointment in creating DVDs with VS10+ on a new AMD X2 machine with 3 gb of ram. It takes 50% longer than my old 1.4mb Celeron Compaq with only 356 mb ram using the old DVD Xmaker program. I had expected a speed up rather than a slow down. VS 10+ on this machine also is slower rendering MiniDV files than my Media Studio Pro 6 on the same machine. I had suspected that the program was optimized for Intel at the expense of AMD.

The comments do raise some interesting questions and I thank you all for them as I plan my "vidio only" machine later this year.

[buercky]

All we have are multiple 'cores' that individually do things slower than Intel's last, performing, and stable CPU, the P4 3.4GHz.

It's actually fairly straightforward for software writers to take advantage of multiple cores, and dual core and up cpu's show a very clear superiority in video encoding over the old Intel P4 chips. I think some dual core owners might step up and provide some rendering speed info.

Ulead, at the moment, cannot take advantage of multiple cores. They all sit idle whilst your video processing continues on a single, lower performing core CPU.

This could easily be disproved by some task manager performance tab screenshots - again, perhaps some dual core owner might assist.

We are all waiting on a new generation of CPUs from Intel or AMD. We can buy HP's Itanium and IBM's Power chips at frighteningly expensive prices, but even they are not that much faster than an Intel P4 3.4GHz. Hopefully, Intel or AMD will come up with the goods fairly soon. Video NEEDS faster CPUs

I'd certainly agree that, with the advent of HD video, people will want faster cpu's, especially when encoding to more highly compressed formats (and sometimes even having to encode the captured video to editable formats) I personally am not waiting for any particualr new cpu - but I might go for an overclocked Intel E4300 home built system to replace my venerable P4c 2.8. The P4 is still a usable pc, though it chugs a bit next to my Core 2 laptop when doing CAD stuff.

well i have just the test done my 3.2 p4 with hyperthread out performed my dual core 2.0 rendered the same video 1hr in length and the 3.2 finished 5 min faster than the dual.

[joosuna]

I saw a vast improvement on creating DVD's using my dual core Pentium 945 at 3.4 Ghz versus my sole core Pentium 2.5 Ghz. My sole core 2.5 GHz took 1.5 hrs to do a half hour program, but my dual core Pentium 945 does the same program in half hour. That is where I think dual core CPU's have the advantage on my UVS10plus. Task Master shows each dual core at 90% utilization when making DVD's, but only at 5 to 20% when doing rendering of video projects from timelines.
regards
Joe O

[ruggy1]

Thanks guys, but what we need are quantifiable benchmarks. Looking at the SPECint benchmarks, Core2 shows no appreciable CPU speed over high end P4, and in rendering, it is CPU speed that you need. As I understand it, ULEAD cannot yet split the rendering across multiple CPUs, but I would be happy to learn that it is now possible. I would just like to hear from someone who has the luxury of 2 computers - one with high-end P4 and one with Core2, using the same file for rendering. Any lucky guy out there want to contribute?
Thanks

[DLA]

I will try to get back with real numbers on rendering time difference but I recently upgraded my CPU from a Athlon 3800+ to a Athlon X2 3800+ and I don't regret it. With the single core, rendering with VS11+ would take 100% of the CPU and the PC is sluggish if I use another application at the same time. With the X2, both cores are running at average 50%. When I use the DeNoise filter, one of the core goes to 90%. But what is more important is that the PC is not frozen. I am able to run other applications no problem while rendering like starting PhotoImpact and retouching my pictures.

[DLA]

Here are some results.

I rendered 2 projects in VS11+ with my Athlon X2 3800+ 2.0GHz.

Project 1 : 12m05s
Project 2 : 10m50s

In both cases, task manager is showing both cores averaging 50% usage.


I shutdown my PC and swapped my X2 for my "old" single core Athlon 3800+ 2.4GHz.

Interesting finding.

Project 1 : 9m24s
Project 2 : 9m15s

In both cases, task manager is showing the CPU usage at 100% always.

So in summary, Project 1 is 22% and project 2 is 15% faster on the single core Athlon than it is on the dual core. This increased performance is about the increase in CPU clock speed, 2.4GHz versus 2.0GHz

VS11+ is not taking advantage of the dual core Athlon. But as I said in my previous post, 50% of my PC is available for me to do other things while rendering.