Second CPU ?

[philwright]

I use the following scanners and would like to know what I could do to enhance performance:
MicroTek ScanMaker 9800 XL scanner on Firewire 400
Epson Perfection V700 Photo scanner on non-shared USB 2.0

Other specs:
Dell Precision 690 with:
XP Pro SP3
4 GB of DDR2 PC2-5300, DDR2 (ECC)
XEON 3.2 GHz

2 ATA WDC WD1600ADFD-7
1 ATA HDS72505OKLA360
1 ATA WDCWD3200AAJS-2

I understand with the 32-bit system, I am limited to Windows seeing only 3.2 GB of my RAM. I also know that there is another socket for the additional XEON on my Dell 690.

I am asking these questions here, because I could not get much help from Dell. Would I see a significant difference in performance with a second XEON? When I say performance, I am probably also talking about after the scanner scans, there is file conversions on the 9800 going from the TIFF file to PDF and some munching done with the 700. It’s not that this creeps along, but I always am interested in things going faster.

Back to the scanners; would an additional CPU make THAT MUCH difference, assuming I don’t have other programs running?

If one of your solutions is more and faster RAM, would someone tell me or give me a good link to finding what motherboard would take the place of the Dell Motherboard that would be 64-bit and be able to:

Carry my hard drives
Support for 12 or more GB RAM
Carry a Intrl Core i7

All advice would be appreciated. Purpose is the Edit Video and Scan mo better!!

 

[pepe2907]

I don't think adding a second Xeon will improve your scanner's performance. Actually I don't think changing your PC may significantly increase it at all. Unless you have a problem with the speed of transfering the data from your scanner to your PC, which I don't believe may be the case with your xeon@3.2 system /whatever xeon it actualy is/, your PC don't limit the speed of your scanners. You may check if your scanners have FW800 and USB3 ports respectively, and if they do but your PC system don't, then maybe you may improve your performance by connecting them to a system with faster ports.

 

[13thmonkey]

download CPU-Z that will tell you and us a lot about your machine, watch your memory usage, and see if that is starting to use all available memory, i.e. 3.2

As to whether an additional cpu would help, the question is what software are you using and is it multithreaded? If it is then i'd suggest that win XP Pro is not so multithreaded and so a 2nd cpu would not help. If it isn't multithreaded then time to change software and OS.

Upgrade to win 7 64Bit, will help to solve the first problem above.

I'd also look to the write speeds of the drives you are writing to, how big are the tiffs? if they are >100MB in size then this may be significant, get a sata III card and a sata III ssd for short term storage. and then batch transfer them to longer term storage. Sata III ssd's can be up to 500MB/s write speed, compared to perhaps 50MB/s for the drives you are using.

Sorry but you gotta spend some cash. I'd also suggest that a 2nd Xenon would cost similar to a good portion of a new setup.

 

[shanky887614]

nothing you will do will increase the speed of that scanner

scanners usually run at topspeed or very close to it

it would be a better idea to buy a faster scanner if you wanted a quicker one

 

[13thmonkey]

I am asking these questions here, because I could not get much help from Dell. Would I see a significant difference in performance with a second XEON? When I say performance, I am probably also talking about after the scanner scans, there is file conversions on the 9800 going from the TIFF file to PDF and some munching done with the 700. It’s not that this creeps along, but I always am interested in things going faster.

Its post processing he wants to improve.

 

[pepe2907]

Conversion from a TIFF to a PDF even of a picture, taken from a ~40 MP camera /the same I believe applies to scanned ones/ is going in seconds, not in ages . And the scan itself may take much longer. But a faster system with more RAM may significantly increase the speed of retouching, adding effects and similar operations. But then - what Xeons we are talking about? And again, as much as I know, usualy the data transfer speed is what actually defines the speed of a high-q scanner and the scanner itself is designed to keep in the limits of that transfer speed - you don't need a scanner, able to generate 1GB in one second if you can't transfer this data to a storage, so check what option for improving the data transfer speed do you have - for example - can you change the communication card of your scanner with a new one, supporting USB3 or another faster connection /some high-q machines have such option/ and what improvement it will gain for you...