Intel DP35DP - Upgrade CPU?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Justin
  • Start date Start date
J

Justin

I built my parents a PC about a year ago. Intel DP35DP board with an
E6850 running at 3Ghz.
WHen I'm there I sometimes digitize video and burn it to DVD.
I'm looking to speed up the transcode process. I use DVD Flick and it
works fine.
Should I go with a Core 2 quad?
Will cache make a difference? I'd like to keep it under $200, but I'm
looking for the best bang for the buck.
 
Justin said:
I built my parents a PC about a year ago. Intel DP35DP board with an
E6850 running at 3Ghz.
WHen I'm there I sometimes digitize video and burn it to DVD.
I'm looking to speed up the transcode process. I use DVD Flick and it
works fine.
Should I go with a Core 2 quad?
Will cache make a difference? I'd like to keep it under $200, but I'm
looking for the best bang for the buck.
Click to expand...

To start, you should open the Task Manager while DVD Flick is running,
and see whether it uses your current two cores or not. It could be,
that the core of DVD Flick is not multi-core capable. In which case,
buying a quad might not help. (On my machine, when one of the two cores
runs flat out, the CPU overall graph shows "50%" usage. The Task Scheduler
may bounce the task from core to core, which makes it hard to visualize whether
a single thread is running or not.)

It is quite possible, you could get some acceleration, by switching
to a different software application. One that does use more than one
core.

*******

The best (non-overclocked) solution might be a 9550 ($220), as it is cheaper
than the 9650 ($325). If overclocking, you could use one of the FSB1066
solutions (Q6600/Q6700 if you can find one). It all depends on whether
the Intel board supports overclocking by changing the input clock
(and bumping up Vcore), as to how practical that is.

http://processormatch.intel.com/CompDB/SearchResult.aspx?Boardname=DP35DP

I have a motherboard, that for various reasons, is not overclock friendly.
I installed a jumper wire, to the CPU socket, to switch from FSB800
(my normal processur bus speed) to FSB1066. That is a BSEL mod. I also
fitted a resistor that gives me control of Vcore boost (so I can add 0.1V
to Vcore when I want). That is an example of giving an overclock option
to a board that doesn't do it properly otherwise. My result wasn't perfectly
stable, and I didn't feel like pushing up Vcore until it was. Still, I did
manage to boot, at 3.465GHz and run a few tests. Normally, when you overclock,
you work in smaller clock increments, to get a better feeling for how well the
processor and motherboard can overclock. Taking giant leaps, usually
results in a black screen for your trouble.

I think I'd look at software solutions first, before considering a
processor change. There can even be differences in the way two programs
can encode video. So even if two programs are single threaded, one may
make better use of SIMD than the other.

Some day, you'll be able to use GPGPU acceleration, to do things like
you're attempting. But it might not be ready quite yet.

The core of DVD Flick, could be something like FFMPEG. This is an interview
that covers some of the developer's future options.

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=ffmpeg_05_interview&num=2

Paul
 
Justin said:
I built my parents a PC about a year ago. Intel DP35DP board with
an E6850 running at 3Ghz. When I'm there I sometimes digitize
video and burn it to DVD. I'm looking to speed up the transcode
process. I use DVD Flick and it works fine. Should I go with a
Core 2 quad? Will cache make a difference? I'd like to keep it
under $200, but I'm looking for the best bang for the buck.
Click to expand...

I just downloaded DVD Flick and tried it on my Q9550 at stock 2.83
GHz (trying to keep it cool in here at the moment). I created DVD
files from two 350 MB XVID encoded TV show sources with VBR
audio that were 624 x 352 at 23.97 FPS and about 43 minutes long.
It took 41:16 minutes to complete. CPU usage by ffmpeg.exe
(used by DVD Flick) was about 75% on one core and about 25%
for the other three. It didn't make much difference to have the
source files on another disk even though ffmpeg.exe reads
directly from the source and writes directly to the destination
folder (FileMon). The other intermediate operations I observed use
the same folder (or drive) for source and destination, use very little
CPU, and appear mostly single-threaded. A non-fragmented drive
might help a bit. At stock speed, the ffmpeg transcoded at 91 FPS.
I bumped the speed up to 8.5 x 354 = 3.0 GHz (highest CPU
multiplier, 2x memory multiplier) and it did 100 FPS. Memory
bandwidth seems to help.

What type of source files are you using? I tried some DV AVI and
it seems to be much slower at 40 FPS.
 
Fishface said:
I just downloaded DVD Flick and tried it on my Q9550 at stock 2.83
GHz (trying to keep it cool in here at the moment). I created DVD
files from two 350 MB XVID encoded TV show sources with VBR
audio that were 624 x 352 at 23.97 FPS and about 43 minutes long.
It took 41:16 minutes to complete. CPU usage by ffmpeg.exe
(used by DVD Flick) was about 75% on one core and about 25%
for the other three. It didn't make much difference to have the
source files on another disk even though ffmpeg.exe reads
directly from the source and writes directly to the destination
folder (FileMon). The other intermediate operations I observed use
the same folder (or drive) for source and destination, use very little
CPU, and appear mostly single-threaded. A non-fragmented drive
might help a bit. At stock speed, the ffmpeg transcoded at 91 FPS.
I bumped the speed up to 8.5 x 354 = 3.0 GHz (highest CPU
multiplier, 2x memory multiplier) and it did 100 FPS. Memory
bandwidth seems to help.

What type of source files are you using? I tried some DV AVI and
it seems to be much slower at 40 FPS.
Click to expand...


My source files are usually xvid.

I don't overclock.
 
Paul said:
To start, you should open the Task Manager while DVD Flick is running,
and see whether it uses your current two cores or not. It could be,
that the core of DVD Flick is not multi-core capable. In which case,
buying a quad might not help. (On my machine, when one of the two cores
runs flat out, the CPU overall graph shows "50%" usage. The Task Scheduler
may bounce the task from core to core, which makes it hard to visualize
whether
a single thread is running or not.)

It is quite possible, you could get some acceleration, by switching
to a different software application. One that does use more than one
core.

*******

The best (non-overclocked) solution might be a 9550 ($220), as it is
cheaper
than the 9650 ($325). If overclocking, you could use one of the FSB1066
solutions (Q6600/Q6700 if you can find one). It all depends on whether
the Intel board supports overclocking by changing the input clock
(and bumping up Vcore), as to how practical that is.

http://processormatch.intel.com/CompDB/SearchResult.aspx?Boardname=DP35DP

I have a motherboard, that for various reasons, is not overclock friendly.
I installed a jumper wire, to the CPU socket, to switch from FSB800
(my normal processur bus speed) to FSB1066. That is a BSEL mod. I also
fitted a resistor that gives me control of Vcore boost (so I can add 0.1V
to Vcore when I want). That is an example of giving an overclock option
to a board that doesn't do it properly otherwise. My result wasn't
perfectly
stable, and I didn't feel like pushing up Vcore until it was. Still, I did
manage to boot, at 3.465GHz and run a few tests. Normally, when you
overclock,
you work in smaller clock increments, to get a better feeling for how
well the
processor and motherboard can overclock. Taking giant leaps, usually
results in a black screen for your trouble.

I think I'd look at software solutions first, before considering a
processor change. There can even be differences in the way two programs
can encode video. So even if two programs are single threaded, one may
make better use of SIMD than the other.

Some day, you'll be able to use GPGPU acceleration, to do things like
you're attempting. But it might not be ready quite yet.

The core of DVD Flick, could be something like FFMPEG. This is an interview
that covers some of the developer's future options.

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=ffmpeg_05_interview&num=2


Paul
Click to expand...


DVD Flick apparently does take advantage of multiple cores from what I
researched.
But I might also have to do video rendering on the machine as well.
 
DVD Flick apparently does take advantage of multiple cores from
what I researched. But I might also have to do video rendering
on the machine as well.
Click to expand...

I have the same system, motherboard and CPU. The Intel Core 2 Quad
Q9550 looks like a good upgrade, before a Core i7 system. A small
step down in clock speed is probably dwarfed by twice the cores
and four times the cache. That is if you cannot wait.

Then again, here, using speech recognition and hearing that the i7
systems have much greater system memory speed is very enticing. I
think that memory speed is everything for SR.

Good luck and have fun.
 
Justin said:
My source files are usually xvid.

I don't overclock.
Click to expand...

I bumped it up to 3 GHz so that you might better compare the times to
your (parents') rig. I imagine they're very similar.
 
John said:
I have the same system, motherboard and CPU. The Intel Core 2 Quad
Q9550 looks like a good upgrade, before a Core i7 system. A small
step down in clock speed is probably dwarfed by twice the cores
and four times the cache. That is if you cannot wait.

Then again, here, using speech recognition and hearing that the i7
systems have much greater system memory speed is very enticing. I
think that memory speed is everything for SR.

Good luck and have fun.
Click to expand...


Gotcha, I'll have to look around for a decent price - Newegg.
I remember when I went from a 3.xGhz single core to my Core 2 Duo video
rendering in WMM went from 45 minutes to 10.
That was two or three years ago though.
 
Justin said:
Gotcha, I'll have to look around for a decent price - Newegg.
I remember when I went from a 3.xGhz single core to my
Core 2 Duo video rendering in WMM went from 45 minutes
to 10. That was two or three years ago though.
Click to expand...

Just don't expect too much improvement from the quad core
when running DVD Flick. It is *mostly* single threaded, and
you already have a fast dual core.
 
Fishface said:
Just don't expect too much improvement from the quad core
when running DVD Flick. It is *mostly* single threaded, and
you already have a fast dual core.
Click to expand...

To experiment with single threaded versus multi threaded,
you can play with the Affinity setting for the program in
Task Manager when it is running. (You can also use a launcher,
such as RunFirst or equivalent, which can set affinity when
a program starts.)

If the performance is unaffected, after forcing it to stay
on one core, then chances are it is single threaded.

If a program is actually multi-threaded, then forcing affinity
to one core, should slow it down and cause the rendering
runtime to be longer.

The Task Manager performance graphs can be deceiving, because
a single threaded process can bounce from core to core, many
times a second. That causes the graph to be hard to analyze.

Paul
 
Paul said:
To experiment with single threaded versus multi threaded,
you can play with the Affinity setting for the program in
Task Manager when it is running. (You can also use a launcher,
such as RunFirst or equivalent, which can set affinity when
a program starts.)
Click to expand...

So what happens when the program spawns other processes
like ffmpeg.exe and dvdauthor.exe, among others? Would they
inherit the same preset affinity?
If the performance is unaffected, after forcing it to stay
on one core, then chances are it is single threaded.
Click to expand...

Since he currently runs on an E6850, perhaps setting it to run
on two cores vs. four would be a better comparison.
If a program is actually multi-threaded, then forcing affinity
to one core, should slow it down and cause the rendering
runtime to be longer.

The Task Manager performance graphs can be deceiving,
because a single threaded process can bounce from core
to core, many times a second. That causes the graph to be
hard to analyze.
Click to expand...

Or perhaps some disk I/O or prefetch action by the operating
system is happening in another thread. And that could even
vary by particular operating system.
 
Fishface said:
So what happens when the program spawns other processes
like ffmpeg.exe and dvdauthor.exe, among others? Would they
inherit the same preset affinity?


Since he currently runs on an E6850, perhaps setting it to run
on two cores vs. four would be a better comparison.


Or perhaps some disk I/O or prefetch action by the operating
system is happening in another thread. And that could even
vary by particular operating system.
Click to expand...

What would likely happen, is you'd start the render running.
Then, open the Task Manager. You'd see "ffmpeg" running
as a separate entry. You'd select properties on it in
Task Manager, and set the affinity to one core (of the
two available). If the render time remains the same, then
ffmpeg is single threaded. If the render time doubles after
setting the affinity to one core, then the program is
multithreaded. Forcing it to one core, means the threads
inside "ffmpeg", take turns on the same core.

If ffmpeg is single threaded, then buying a quad won't help
with its running time. For a single thread, all you can do is
crank up the clock rate. That is why, the creation
of an ffmpeg_mt version of the program is so important,
for getting more performance. If at some future point,
they get multithreading working, then buying a quad
makes more sense.

Not all software can be multithreaded. There are plenty of
algorithms which are serialized, and cannot be split
into multiple execution streams. And this is why, in
some ways, the buying of a quad is "betting on the future".
The quad doesn't necessarily pay for itself, the first
day you get it.

Yes, things like prefetch, or disk I/O, can be running
on a second core. But disk I/O doesn't need a lot of CPU,
due to the DMA transfer of data into memory. That helps
reduce the work the CPU has to do. So the second core
does have some activities on it, but not a whole lot.
If the rendering task creates 5MB/sec of data, it doesn't
take a lot of CPU to pump that out to disk.

Paul
 
Paul said:
For a single thread, all you can do is crank up the clock rate.
Click to expand...

That would be true if there were no other processes. More cores
means all processes have more CPU to work with. That helps
everything when running many processes.

Another possibility is to play with process priorities.

As Paul suggested... Definitely use Performance Monitor, it is
always running here. Watching CPU usage is useful. Most useful
overall has been watching bytes downloaded/uploaded.
 
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