Upgrading System Board, CPU, Memory

[davephan]

My main newest computer is about four years old. I would like to upgrade the system board, CPU, and memory. I plan to keep using Windows XP Pro, my Antec case, and my three IDE hard drives.

My Atholon XP 2800+ CPU runs at about 100 percent while transcoding AVI files on my MVP. I would like to upgrade to a much faster CPU that is dual-core. I plan on using faster memory, either 1 or 2 gigs. I do not buy the fastest CPU on the market, since the cost is much less with a slightly slower CPU.

Does anyone have any suggestions to upgrade my system?


Dave

[rickgillyon]

Lower-end Core2Duo is a no-brainer at the moment, for value, heat and power consumption. AMD will be playing catch-up for a while...

[flavius]

I've ordered an E4300 together with the Asus P5B-E board.

[rickgillyon]

I think this ASUS is the third board I've had in my server, and the first I've been happy with...

E4300 is an amazing chip if you overclock. Reports show it completely stable with standard voltage and fan at 3.2GHz (from 1.8). Wow. YMMV!

[Wheemer]

what's the difference between the e6300 and the e4300?

[rickgillyon]

Smaller buffer, 2MB vs 8MB IIRC.

[flavius]

IIRC, the E4300 just has a higher multiplier (9 vs.7), otherwise it's the same chip, which makes overclocking really easy, in theory. I haven't gotten my stuff yet, but others have been seeing very good results, like running their system stable at 2.9 Ghz or higher.

[davephan]

Originally Posted by rickgillyon

I think this ASUS is the third board I've had in my server, and the first I've been happy with...

E4300 is an amazing chip if you overclock. Reports show it completely stable with standard voltage and fan at 3.2GHz (from 1.8). Wow. YMMV!

Rickgillyon,

I've been checking out your system board and CPU combo. The price of the QX6700 quad core could still be about $700 after a 40% price drop, if it occurs on April 22nd, whereas the E6600 would cost about $200.

Does the system board support IDE drives? I would like to re-use 3 or 4 IDE drives from my current system.

The photo of the system board shows 4 memory slots, 2 - black and 2 - gold. Can only certain types of memory be used in those slots, so that only two of the slots could be used?

What operating system are you using?

Have you tried transcoding AVI files with your MVP units? If so, what is the CPU load? My high quality Xvid AVI to Mpeg2 transcoding process consumes near or at 100% CPU with only one MVP unit playing back the video.

What is your memory speed? Have you tried running with only 1 gig memory? I am using 1 gig memory now and 500 - 700 megs memory is frequently consumed. Perhaps increasing up to 2 gigs would make a big difference in performance.


Dave

[thomaszoo]

Don't get too hung up on the IDE drive controllers. You can always use one of these:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822998001

Wayne

[flavius]

The Asus board I mentioned has one port, enough for CDROM/DVD and one hard drive.

[rickgillyon]

Originally Posted by davephan

Does the system board support IDE drives? I would like to re-use 3 or 4 IDE drives from my current system.

1 cable so 2 drives only. I only have the one now, my DVD Writer, the HDDs are all SATA2.

Originally Posted by davephan

The photo of the system board shows 4 memory slots, 2 - black and 2 - gold. Can only certain types of memory be used in those slots, so that only two of the slots could be used?

No, the colours show which are paired - so if putting in 2 sticks make sure they are in the same colour.

Originally Posted by davephan

What operating system are you using?

XP Pro.

Originally Posted by davephan

Have you tried transcoding AVI files with your MVP units? If so, what is the CPU load?

I've not really checked it out. It works fine and I don't get issues with the server, but no idea what the load is. I suppose being dual-core the one transcode would take a max of 50% though.

Originally Posted by davephan

What is your memory speed? Have you tried running with only 1 gig memory? I am using 1 gig memory now and 500 - 700 megs memory is frequently consumed. Perhaps increasing up to 2 gigs would make a big difference in performance.

Speed PC2-5300, never tried with 1GB. Probably enough, but always best to over-specify a little bit!

[coryking]

I know this is an old thread...

"My Atholon XP 2800+ CPU runs at about 100 percent while transcoding AVI files on my MVP"

So what? It should be 100% while it is transcoding no matter how fast your processor is. All this obsession I see with "CPU throttling" (showanalizer) and "OMG, SageTV uses 100%!!!!" is silly. Stop worrying about what you see in task manager people!

The program is always going to be "100%" because, well, the CPU is acutally busy working 100% of the time - you did buy it to do real work, didn't you? Most of time your CPU sits idle waiting for you to click a mouse, or some bit of data to come back from a hard drive or something. Now you are worried because you are actually putting it to good use?

On a fast CPU, transcoding becomes IO bound. Your CPU is so fast that it finishes working on a chunk of data quicker than the hard drive and memory can feed it a new chunk. You should be more concerned if your transcoder is not 100%!. Less than 100% means the CPU is basically being wasted while it sits around waiting for some other, slower part of the system to feed it new work. Worse, on multi-core systems (aka, all the new Intel/AMD chips) if it is just about 50%, it means the transcoding software isn't taking advantage of both processors.

The question really is:

1) Does it make the rest of your system lag?
2) More important - Does it take forever to transcode something?

If your system is lagging, it is probably IO related--slow hard drive, slow system bus, old video card, etc. Get a faster system bus, faster ram, faster video card, and more/faster hard drives. Of course, once you want all that, you are gonna wind up with a new CPU anyway. But for christ sakes, who cares if task manager says "100% CPU"!

[davephan]

Originally Posted by coryking

I know this is an old thread...

"My Atholon XP 2800+ CPU runs at about 100 percent while transcoding AVI files on my MVP"

So what? It should be 100% while it is transcoding no matter how fast your processor is. All this obsession I see with "CPU throttling" (showanalizer) and "OMG, SageTV uses 100%!!!!" is silly. Stop worrying about what you see in task manager people!

The program is always going to be "100%" because, well, the CPU is acutally busy working 100% of the time - you did buy it to do real work, didn't you? Most of time your CPU sits idle waiting for you to click a mouse, or some bit of data to come back from a hard drive or something. Now you are worried because you are actually putting it to good use?

On a fast CPU, transcoding becomes IO bound. Your CPU is so fast that it finishes working on a chunk of data quicker than the hard drive and memory can feed it a new chunk. You should be more concerned if your transcoder is not 100%!. Less than 100% means the CPU is basically being wasted while it sits around waiting for some other, slower part of the system to feed it new work. Worse, on multi-core systems (aka, all the new Intel/AMD chips) if it is just about 50%, it means the transcoding software isn't taking advantage of both processors.

The question really is:

1) Does it make the rest of your system lag?
2) More important - Does it take forever to transcode something?

If your system is lagging, it is probably IO related--slow hard drive, slow system bus, old video card, etc. Get a faster system bus, faster ram, faster video card, and more/faster hard drives. Of course, once you want all that, you are gonna wind up with a new CPU anyway. But for christ sakes, who cares if task manager says "100% CPU"!

A computer system that uses the Windows operating system cannot run at 100 percent sustained CPU without slowing everything down. I have heard that once a Windows system has over about 38 percent sustained CPU, the system performance is seriously degraded. It is possible that the number may not be exactly 38 percent, but it is far lower than 100 percent CPU consumption that causes Windows based system to become unresponsive.

A faster CPU or multicore CPU system would help increase the capacity of the system to do other tasks, besided transcoding videos. When a system is transcoding videos, other routine housekeeping tasks still continue. If the other tasks are unable to be completed, the system completely bogs down and becomes unusable.

Windows systems simply cannot operate effectively if there isn't sufficient CPU and memory headroom. When transcoding videos that were compressed with Xvid AVI files back into mpeg2 files with the MVP, the CPU is sustained at 100 percent CPU for extended time periods. When the CPU becomes 100 percent sustained for a long enough time period, the system performance breaks down, the videos stream then breaks up with pauses. The Athlon XP 2800+ CPU simply does not have enough processing capacity to keep up with the data flow necessary for transcoding Xvids to mpeg2.

I have solved the mpeg2 to Xvid transcoding problem with 100 percent sustained CPU by setting all the transcoding processes to low priority, and offloading the mpeg2 to Xvid transcoding tasks to dedicated video transcoding systems. Mpeg2 to Xvid transcoding can take much longer than the actual running time of a program. However, when transcoding from Xvid to mpeg2 for playback, the transcoding must never take longer than the running time of the program, otherwise the video will break up and stutter.

One solution would be to forget transcoding Mpeg2 files into Xvid, even though Mpeg2 files are five times larger, consuming five times as much disk space. It would take about five TB of disk for the Xvid video I have stored now.

Another solution is to increase the performance of the CPU, with a faster CPU so that the Xvid to mpeg2 transcoding does not run too close to 100 percent CPU consumption, and has enough capacity so the playback never stutters.

I haven't upgraded my SageTV system yet. My current main system runs SageTV and is used for other tasks. I plan to build a dedicated SageTV dual or quad core system. Offloading non-SageTV tasks and increasing the CPU capacity should allow me to watch stutter-free Xvid recordings on my MVP.

Dave

[flavius]

Originally Posted by coryking

Now you are worried because you are actually putting it to good use?

That's actually kind of true for the big iron.

[davephan]

Intel is dropping prices again on July 22nd, according to many postings on the web. The QX6700 quad-core was about $1160 a few months ago, dropped to about $970 a month ago. On July 22nd the QX6700 is supposed to drop down to $530.

So, I'm holding off for the QX6700 quad-core after the July 22nd price drop.

Dave