4 replies to this topic

[CaptainKaboom]

To all,

I have just built what I thought would be a rocket ship of a machine.  The key components are as follows:

Asus P5W-DH
Intel E6700 Processor
OCZ )CZ2P10002GK 2GB Kit DDR2-1000 PC2-8000 Enhanced Latency Platinum XTC Edition Dual Channel Memory Retail
OCZ OCZ700GXSSLI GameXStream 700W Power Supply
Sapphire Radeon X1900XT PCI Express 512MB
Seagate 750GB SATA Drive

Now, I have a reference machine, where I am doing timing tests.  The reference machine is a Dell 8100, and its a Pentium 4 running at 3Ghz.

No matter how I try to tune the new machine (Overclocking, Underclocking etc) it just doesn't scream thru the encoding process when I start the burn.  If anything, its SLOWER than the reference machine I mention above.  That tells me that something is horribly wrong somwhere, so I want to post this here to get a better understanding of what the problem might be.  

Of note, the Processor isn't even breaking a sweat, but I see the hard drive doing a lot of work.  From what I read, the Seagate should be a very fast drive (and its a SATA Drive running at 3MB), so I really don't know where to look to correct this problem.

[grandpabruce]

CaptainKaboom, on Sep 5 2006, 09:15 PM, said:

To all,

I have just built what I thought would be a rocket ship of a machine.  The key components are as follows:

Asus P5W-DH
Intel E6700 Processor
OCZ )CZ2P10002GK 2GB Kit DDR2-1000 PC2-8000 Enhanced Latency Platinum XTC Edition Dual Channel Memory Retail
OCZ OCZ700GXSSLI GameXStream 700W Power Supply
Sapphire Radeon X1900XT PCI Express 512MB
Seagate 750GB SATA Drive

Now, I have a reference machine, where I am doing timing tests.  The reference machine is a Dell 8100, and its a Pentium 4 running at 3Ghz.

No matter how I try to tune the new machine (Overclocking, Underclocking etc) it just doesn't scream thru the encoding process when I start the burn.  If anything, its SLOWER than the reference machine I mention above.  That tells me that something is horribly wrong somwhere, so I want to post this here to get a better understanding of what the problem might be.  

Of note, the Processor isn't even breaking a sweat, but I see the hard drive doing a lot of work.  From what I read, the Seagate should be a very fast drive (and its a SATA Drive running at 3MB), so I really don't know where to look to correct this problem.

Encoding is CPU intensive, and no matter what you have, it isn't going to real fast.  But, you have not mentioned WHAT you are encoding and WHAT you consider slow.

You might want to do that, because there are enough folks who frequent these forums, who could somewhat "benchmark" your times.

Edited by grandpabruce, 05 September 2006 - 06:20 PM.

[lehill]

CaptainKaboom, on Sep 5 2006, 07:15 PM, said:

<snip>
Of note, the Processor isn't even breaking a sweat, but I see the hard drive doing a lot of work.  From what I read, the Seagate should be a very fast drive (and its a SATA Drive running at 3MB), so I really don't know where to look to correct this problem.

This part of your post stuck out at me. Your processor should be going full bore and the hard disk should be cruising along feeding bytes to the processor - but the disk shouldn't be breaking a sweat at all.

What software is doing the rendering? Where does the file(s) come from? How has it been edited? Defragging the disk might help, but that's not the root cause of the problem.

Can you confirm that the hard disk is really giving something like half it's rated speed? You can probably find some SATA hard disk speed measuring utilities for free somewhere on the net (eg, try HD Tach). Alternately, try sticking in a second hard drive (even a UDMA 5 or 6 IDE), move a copy of your project there and see if that drive does any better.

If the drive is working OK, then there's some other bottleneck that's preventing the processor from getting the bytes it's asking for. Perhaps benchmark or stress test software will help narrow the problem down.

Lance
*****
PS1: SATA II is rated at 3Gbits/sec. In real world applications you may actually see 200-300 MBytes/sec tops. I get 267 MBytes/sec from my RAIDed SATA II's at work.
PS2: Even the fastest hard drive in the world is still a snail compared to processor thruput (that's why RAM was invented).

[fectsen]

dont sweat it man, your clone machine is far, far superior to your 'reference' machine.  first!.... u got to use the saem ecoding test... meaning the source, the new format container, and codec all have got to be the same.  it does no good if youre working with different things and trying to compare speeds.  plus what youre doing might already have a 'ceiling' at 3 ghz.  3 ghz is fast already.

also, cpu speed is mostly used for mathematical algorithms, so if u really want to test that bad boy you got to use applications what use that the most.  since 3 ghz is already high the only thing i can think of are maybe chess applications.  go get a copy of fritz and let the computers play each other.  your clone machine will probably win every game.  and speaking of games, im sure your clone machine gets more fps in 3d intensive games.  in fact that im positive of lol.  have fun with it.

[cdanteek]

CaptainKaboom, on Sep 5 2006, 09:15 PM, said:

To all,

I have just built what I thought would be a rocket ship of a machine.  The key components are as follows:

Asus P5W-DH
Intel E6700 Processor
OCZ )CZ2P10002GK 2GB Kit DDR2-1000 PC2-8000 Enhanced Latency Platinum XTC Edition Dual Channel Memory Retail
OCZ OCZ700GXSSLI GameXStream 700W Power Supply
Sapphire Radeon X1900XT PCI Express 512MB
Seagate 750GB SATA Drive

Now, I have a reference machine, where I am doing timing tests.  The reference machine is a Dell 8100, and its a Pentium 4 running at 3Ghz.

No matter how I try to tune the new machine (Overclocking, Underclocking etc) it just doesn't scream thru the encoding process when I start the burn.  If anything, its SLOWER than the reference machine I mention above.  That tells me that something is horribly wrong somwhere, so I want to post this here to get a better understanding of what the problem might be.  

Of note, the Processor isn't even breaking a sweat, but I see the hard drive doing a lot of work.  From what I read, the Seagate should be a very fast drive (and its a SATA Drive running at 3MB), so I really don't know where to look to correct this problem.

You defiantly have a problem if it's slower than your reference machine!
To get the most out of your SATA 2 for video you need a raid stripe array.

The first Asus P5W-DH shipped you had to mount a P4 on the board, and do a bios update to get the
Conroe chip to post. Boards shipping now have the new bios.
Since you said you built the system I assume your a advanced user.
That new machine running correct should smoke the P4 at video encoding.
You have a major problem!

Go look at these cpu benchmarks at Tom's Hardware. You can compare your processor to
others, even your reference machine.
http://www23.tomshar...d...6&chart=194

cdanteek