upgrading advice

[xxsk8er101xx]

I want to buy the pentium 4 3ghz with hyperthreading. Right now i'm running a 2ghz pentium 4 and it's so slow when encoding or rendering 3d objects (12 second 3d animated video takes all night or about 3 hours to encode) and when video editing it is pretty slow also.

Now this was my plan. I wanted to buy a 3ghz cpu, and take the 2ghz and save it. Later on i was going to buy faster RAM (pc3200, i have pc2700 now) and save my old RAM. Around september i planned on getting one of those shuttle mini computers. Pop in the old cpu and old RAM and my Old ATI AIW radeon. Use that as my "user" machine. Then take my current system and use that as my workstation/gaming machine. So when i am encoding a large 3d animation video (if 12 seconds takes 3 hours, then 12 minutes would take 3 days to encode) i'll have a computer i can still use to watch TV, browse the, web etc etc. Buying a laptop would cost more so thats out of the question.

Here's the problem. I have a digital flatpanel. My motherboard has no PS2 ports. I would need a USB,DVI-D KVM switch! Those things are soo expensive it's rediculous. So thats the problem. I do have a 17inch monitor but i would prefere to use my 19inch flatpanel for obvious reasons.

The flatpanel has a VGA connector and a DVI connector. Could i hook up the workstation using the DVI connection and then hook up the mini computer using the VGA connection and then switch between digital and analog? Digital would represent my workstation/gaming rig, and anaolg would represent my user computer. Or backup computer when my other computer is encoding video or something.

Life is irrelivent and irrational.

<A HREF="http://www.anandtech.com/mysystemrig.html?id=9933" target="_new"> My Rig </A>

 

[elzt]

Some digital flatpanels allow you to switch between digital and analog connection by a press of button on it. Check if yours has this manual switch. BTW, I think you won't see a BIG difference in encoding time between a P4 3GHz and P4 2GHz.

 

[xxsk8er101xx]

umm according to tomshardware the difference is:

Video-Encoding MPEG-2: Main Concept 1.3
pentium 4 3ghz - 292,6 - top intel
pentium 4 2ghz - 533,3
AMD athlon 2800+ - 332,8 - top AMD
less is better.

pcmark 2002 - cpu
pentium 4 3ghz - 7571 - top rated intel
pentium 4 2ghz - 4974
AMD athlon 2800+ - 6794 - top rated amd
<A HREF="http://www6.tomshardware.com/cpu/20030217/cpu_charts-26.html" target="_new">http://www6.tomshardware.com/cpu/20030217/cpu_charts-26.html</A>

double sounds pretty good to me. If i can cut my time in half thats all good. Given it depends on the application. It would be even more for maya 4.0 because it supports multiple processor processings. more 50% to 90% that's noticable.

but your right on one point i tihnk you implied on should i wait for the 800mhz fsb p4's with dual channel ddr. To be honest i don't know if i want to do that again. It's a pain to setup the motherboard and all that crap. Not to mention that would be an easy 1000 dollar upgrade.

these new boards are going to be 200 dollars a peice ya know? the chip is gonna be 650 easy. RAM is gonna be about 150. Or i can just spend maybe around 400 when intel cuts prices again and i'll double the video performance. roughly double not exactly.

I'm not going intel [lol whoops, i meant AMD] cos that would be a downgrade lol. actually just not worth it to me.

i don't know - what would you do? given i'm not doing any professional video editing right now. but what would you do just to get it to a point where it runs smooth. lol!programs like pinnical studio, adobe premiere, sonic my dvd, and maya 4.0? thats what i use. I tried the trial version of adobe premiere and it just ran soo choppy and crashed all the time. I don't know if it's because it's crappy software or my cpu is too slow.

sorry for the essay haha! laterz!

Life is irrelivent and irrational.

<A HREF="http://www.anandtech.com/mysystemrig.html?id=9933" target="_new"> My Rig </A><P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by xxsk8er101xx on 04/11/03 00:46 AM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[elzt]

What I meant was even today's fastest PC CPU is still not good enough for software video encoding. If you're serious about video editing, then it's not wise to invest on a P4 3GHz especially when its price is still too high at the moment. Anyway, that's just my own opinion, it might not be completely true.

I'm using a P4 2.26GHz and 2x7200RPM HDDs set up in RAID0 and have no problem running Premiere 6.5. I don't know why yours crashed. Maybe it's the characteristic of trial version software or maybe you were running too many programs at the same time. Premiere does require lots of system memory and CPU resources.

 

[Pettytheft]

If time is that important then go for it. Alot of video editor's use dual proc machines anyway. If it makes you happy and you got the cash go for the 3Ghz Northwood.

Beauty is in the eye of the beer holder.

 

[xxsk8er101xx]

well i wasn't going to buy the p4 3ghz until it got in the 300 dollar range anyway. Maybe i should get more RAM instead, another hard drive, and a 2.53ghz cpu.

I bet the problem is i'm still on the 100mhz fsb isntead of the 133 which would make a difference.

also the reason i want the 3ghz though is the hyperthreading tech. it would improve maya and seti as both of those would use the virtual dual cpu system.

i would need another harddrive just so i can back up everythng on my hard drive before putting it in RAID0 again. I should do that.

oh the price for the 3ghz is going down rapidly. It's at 490 now and i'm sure intel will slash prices again soon.

would losing the virtual memory help in performance you think when video encoding?

Life is irrelivent and irrational.

<A HREF="http://www.anandtech.com/mysystemrig.html?id=9933" target="_new"> My Rig </A>

 

[icy_oblivion]

Just so you know I would do exactly the same thing you are doing if I was in your situation. I do 3d rendering, no video editing, and would love to have a fast computer for it along with a secondary computer to use while I am rendering something. It looks like you have thought through everything pretty well and you just need to decide if you want to spend the money.

If you have the money go for it next time the prices drop. It is quite a cheap way to go for the performance increase you will be getting in the applications you will be using.

<b>Just because I like AMD or Intel more at a time because of one product compared to another, does not make me a fan boy, it makes me a person who is able to make a descision for myself.</b>