ripping and fastest encoding/transcoding wanted

Stay with what you got for now and in the late summer upgrade after AM2 is out for a while. Seriously, you are not going to see a huge improvement in coding time unless you get something over 350 bucks. Look up the coding times for your processor and compare to the newer ones. If you feel the itch you can start now, buying the stuff that rarely changes in price like memory, case, PSU and such.

Edit -> thats 350+ just for the processor

that's exactly what i was afraid of... any advantage in getting a matching 120 gig drive and do some sort of magic raid'ing? any advantage in doing the encoding in linux compared to xp?

I use a Abit KN8 and an A64 3700(San Diego), 2 1gig sticks of corsair XMS and a new 16 meg cache maxtor 250 gig hard drive (plus Lite on burner, etc.). It picked up maybe 15-20% over my skt A 2600, 1 gig, with 8 meg 120 gig hitachi hard drive. I do quite a few of the same operations you quoted, and the difference in the A64 was astounding. Hope this helps some.

Here are some time examples for Clone DVD (close to what you are doing):

XP 3200+ Barton Core 12:07 Minutes

64 3200 Venice Core 11:48
64 3800 Newcastle 10:04
64 FX-57 San Diego 8:43

Now, is it worth spending upwards of 2,000 to save 3 minutes in coding time? My bet is that if you do a fresh install of XP you’ll likely see a 10-15% speed increase if its an old install – and that’s free  

With ripping the slow poing it ususally your DVD drive. A better read time will increase ripping speed. Fast encoding requires a fast processor. If your encoding software supports it, a dual core processor can almost half the time it takes to encode. You should also read your file of of one hard drive and write to another so that you do not spend lots of money on a processor just to wait on a slow hard drive. Read from the fastest drive which should be your system dive and write to the other.

You've actually got a decent setup there man so its a hard call to make. I do have an AMD XP3200 Athlon machine setup alongside this one. This one of course eats it alive especially with encoding because I have it OC'd for one and it utilizes HT.

perhaps i should make a diy watercooling setup for the current rig and do some o/c... it just seems hard to find success stories on a 333 fsb 3000+ xp... and i actually have 2 partitions on my 120 gig.. i save a few seconds by using win2k3 120-day eval trial.. i've done fresh installs, but haven't seen braggable differences.. i tend to only install what i need (aim/yahoo, outlook express, mcafee 8.0i [free through university], firefox, ie 6).... i gave up pc gaming long ago.. so perhaps i should try to pump out the athlon xp a lil..... and from what i read, watercooling might be the way to go.. i have a a-top xblade case with 120mm in's and out's and a 80mm window fan and a 92mm slim side fan on opposite side..

this would be a low budget diy watercooled setup i might consider..

on a side note, what do you guys think of the celeron 351? 3.2 ghz o/c'able to 3.5 with "okay" cooling.. now that's tempting and is what i have been pondering.. i tend to try to get the best bank for the buck..

-p

yeah, you can certainly OC that chip considering you've got the board to do it with. I would just OC it a little and watch the temps. If they really start climbing, then time to invest in a decent cooling system.

As far as the celeron goes, you would need to basically change the system. If your gonna do that, might as well get something more worthwhile.

All the things you want to do with video takes a long time, you can make it faster but even then it will take a lot of time. I do capturing and burning vdeo, which is why when I get the money my next system will be dual core. That way I should be able to do other things while encoding, burning etc.

sounds like i definitely should hold out...... sounds like i should tear up the athlon xp.. overclock it since i won't get much improvement.. heck, i have a good burner going in.. the liteon 167t is taking a crap and seems like the new movies don't like that dvd drive.......

-p