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:::Best processor for ripping Hi-Def:::

post #1 of 27
9/3/09 at 12:28pm
Thread Starter 
I know the debate will go on for the rest of human history; AMD vs. INTEL, so I am not looking for a biast answer... Are some processors better than others when it comes to ripping hi def. content? HiDef processing is a resource hog, and I know fastest gaming processor isnt in certain cases the fastest when it comes to HD, it is the architecture, how it handles certain data.. Putting 500Gb of memory wont help either.. Any thoughts?
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post #2 of 27
9/3/09 at 1:39pm
Doesn't matter.
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post #3 of 27
9/3/09 at 1:43pm
Are you just talking ripping it to your hard drive or actually re-encoding video.
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post #4 of 27
9/3/09 at 2:39pm
ripping, i don't think the cpu plays much of a role. the bottleneck should be the optical drive (dvd/bd). transcoding/re-encoding it matters.
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post #5 of 27
9/3/09 at 4:41pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bojangles139 View Post

ripping, i don't think the cpu plays much of a role. the bottleneck should be the optical drive (dvd/bd). transcoding/re-encoding it matters.

Yes for just ripping I'd say its not a big deal, your cpu should be plenty.
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post #6 of 27
9/4/09 at 5:08am
q 6600 .
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post #7 of 27
9/4/09 at 5:22am
Thread Starter 
I guess my question aimed at transcoding/decoding. Since it take few hours.. I guess this is when cpu REALLY SHINES!
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post #8 of 27
9/4/09 at 5:53am
Forget AMD. Intel has been faster clock-for-clock for a while now. And at this moment the Intel Core i7 is fastest at encoding using x264.

See: http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=149274

I use a QX9650, its fast enough for me. But at HQ settings it's take 1/2 day or so for a 1080p. So count on having to patient either way, whatever CPU.
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post #9 of 27
9/4/09 at 6:18am
At what price point?
http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/2....8.3,1382.html
MPEG2 > divx at very high quality - AMDx2 250 134 sec for $77 or i7-975 77 sec for $1000
Spend 15 times as much to go twice as fast.

BB
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post #10 of 27
9/4/09 at 6:44am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bigbird999 View Post

At what price point?
http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/2....8.3,1382.html
MPEG2 > divx at very high quality - AMDx2 250 134 sec for $77 or i7-975 77 sec for $1000
Spend 15 times as much to go twice as fast.

BB

Yes, but the comparison is kind of moot here isnt it ?

Compare a cheap ("entry level") AMD with a expensive ("Extreme level") Intel with each other. And furtermore, the AMD has 2 cores, the intel 4 cores; So the coparison isnt even honest. And thirdly; Who cares about DivX ? When you want to back-up High definition, you better use x264. And that's a very big deal slower, and heavier for your PC. But there is a real technical reason for this test not beeing correct;

I think it is likely that the 77 fps menitioned for the Intel, the proces was bottlenecked by the source. Cause when reencoding, your system has to decode the source and encode that "at the same time". So, when you use a decoder that's not really very fast, the encode wont be very fast either.

I say this, cause i can encode in SD quality on DivX or even X264 faster than that with a QX9650 (which, these days, can be had second hand for about 300 euro; So you can build a far-out system cheaper than you suggest, when you not olny look at new-prices).
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post #11 of 27
9/4/09 at 7:02am
I am not interested in an AMD vs Intel fanboi discussion, or where you can get them cheaper. OP asked which was the fastest cpu. I was only pointing out that the question is meaningless without a price point. CPU's cost anywhere from $75 to $1500. There are all kinds of benchmarks available for every cpu and that if you want the absolute fastest cpu it costs a lot more than something that is a bit slower.

Are these charts and benchmarks perfect, of course not, but it can't be denied that they give a pretty good indication of what performance you can expect from different cpus on a whole range of tasks.

BB
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post #12 of 27
9/4/09 at 7:35am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bigbird999 View Post

I am not interested in an AMD vs Intel fanboi discussion, or where you can get them cheaper. OP asked which was the fastest cpu. I was only pointing out that the question is meaningless without a price point. CPU's cost anywhere from $75 to $1500. There are all kinds of benchmarks available for every cpu and that if you want the absolute fastest cpu it costs a lot more than something that is a bit slower.

Are these charts and benchmarks perfect, of course not, but it can't be denied that they give a pretty good indication of what performance you can expect from different cpus on a whole range of tasks.

BB

Nope they dont give an indication at all, as long as you dont know the settings used.

Secondly, you started the AMD vs Intel, by suggesting a (virtual) huge pricedifference. Fanboy i am not, just one who wants to encode as fast as possible (like TS).

Thirly, if you had followed that link I gave, you would have read (from a post of one of the x264-co developers) that the i7 architacture is, in itself, faster than anything else atm.

So make another comparison, look for a AMD 4-core and compare it to the CPU AMD is targeted against (for a AMD vs. Intel comparison). For real benches, look for them on google (there are x264 speed charts floating around).
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post #13 of 27
9/4/09 at 9:47am
Quote:


Nope they dont give an indication at all, as long as you dont know the settings used.

They don't??? How so? You say the fastest cpus are the i7s. So do Tom's charts. In virtually every benchmark task the i7s are the fastest or produce the highest score. Irrespective of brand or technology, in my simplistic reasoning, if CPU#1 encodes the same file in half the time as CPU#2, it is approximately twice as fast, for that task. IMO, such simple benchmarks are a pretty good indication of the relative speeds of different cpus.

It can't be disputed that today's best/fastest CPUs are, in general, the most expensive, nor that today's fastest will be slower and far cheaper than tomorrow's fastest. Whether having today's fastest CPU is worth 10 times as many $ as yesterday's fastest CPU is up to the individual and is a "whole 'nuther question".

BB
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post #14 of 27
9/4/09 at 11:53am
Quote:
Originally Posted by G_M_C View Post

Secondly, you started the AMD vs Intel, by suggesting a (virtual) huge pricedifference. Fanboy i am not, just one who wants to encode as fast as possible (like TS).

  1. No he didn't, you did. You mentioned AMD vs Intel in post 8 before he even posted in the thread.
  2. He was not comparing AMD vs Intel at all but cost vs performance. He studied a chart that list "all" CPUs then picked both a) the cheapest and b) the fastest. He then compared the cost vs speed. If the cheapest had been an Intel, then his comparison would have had two Intel CPUs and it would still have been cost vs performance.

Now can we move on?

To the OP, What exactly are you trying to do? If you are transcoding to mkv/flac and using a single drive, this will probably bottleneck you more than the CPU.
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post #15 of 27
9/4/09 at 12:03pm
No matter what, make sure you spend as much money as possible. That way you have something to talk about while your waiting for the PC to finish the rip.

Or maybe you could do like I do. Put the disk in and set everything up, then go in another room and watch a movie while it's doing it's thing.

BT
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post #16 of 27
9/4/09 at 12:06pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bigbird999 View Post

They don't??? How so? You say the fastest cpus are the i7s. So do Tom's charts. In virtually every benchmark task the i7s are the fastest or produce the highest score. Irrespective of brand or technology, in my simplistic reasoning, if CPU#1 encodes the same file in half the time as CPU#2, it is approximately twice as fast, for that task. IMO, such simple benchmarks are a pretty good indication of the relative speeds of different cpus.

[...]

I also said " without the settings used".

When i encode on the x2 with --me tesa and on the i7 with --me dia, the difference will be huge. But that doesn't mean the test has been done correctly. Even if i use the same command-line for both encodes, but let the decoding on the X2 be done by CoreAVC, and use raw input (of the same file) for the i7 (or vice versa).

If the test is done equally for both, and they are done honestly, then the benchmark give a good idea. In this case the results seem right, the i7 is indeed approx 2x faster clock-for-clock.

But still; My argument still remains valid, cause i wanted simply to point out that benchmarks can be influenced very easily. Therefore always try to find out what the circumstances were in making them.

Quote:
Originally Posted by vladd View Post

  1. He was not comparing AMD vs Intel at all but cost vs performance. He studied a chart that list "all" CPUs then picked both a) the cheapest and b) the fastest. He then compared the cost vs speed. If the cheapest had been an Intel, then his comparison would have had two Intel CPUs and it would still have been cost vs performance.

[...]

If you really did a cost vs. speed comparison, i think you would have come up with the i7 920 ( or maybe the 940). Those will give most bang-for the buck in x264 encoding i believe. Simply mentioning the most expensive CPU you can find vs. the cheapest is not the result of a study into the cost/speed.
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post #17 of 27
9/4/09 at 12:40pm
The debate is pointless. The SSE4 instruction set on the Intel i7 processors makes the i7 way faster than any AMD processor right now when it comes to video encoding. AMD's new processors have SSE4A which is a subset of the full SSE4, and does not contain all the video encoding stuff. On top of the SSE4 instructions, the i7 has 8 threads to its 4 cores. x264 will encode faster because it has more threads to encode with than an AMD or older intel CPU that only has 4 threads for their 4 cores.

If you cannot get a new i7 processor, then an AMD Phenom 2 is your next best bet. The Phenom 2 will perform better at encoding than an older generation Q6600 or some such processor from intel.


As mentioned above, I dont care if you are an Intel fanboy or AMD fanboy, an i7 920 CPU will beyond any argument provide the best performance to cost for video encoding. I built a computer for a friend of mine with one for video encoding only, and was able to achieve real time encoding from 480p standard def DVD format into a 480p x264 movie. Encoding a high def movie was about half real time.
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post #18 of 27
9/4/09 at 12:45pm
GPU based transcoding is the fastest, but there aren't many good software packages available that take advantage of it.
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post #19 of 27
9/4/09 at 1:24pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by ENiGmA1987 View Post

If you cannot get a new i7 processor, then an AMD Phenom 2 is your next best bet. The Phenom 2 will perform better at encoding than an older generation Q6600 or some such processor from intel.

Is this really true?? I love my q6600 but like the idea that I could build a cheap amd machine with equal or superior performance.
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post #20 of 27
9/4/09 at 1:48pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by G_M_C View Post

If you really did a cost vs. speed comparison, i think you would have come up with the i7 920 ( or maybe the 940). Those will give most bang-for the buck in x264 encoding i believe. Simply mentioning the most expensive CPU you can find vs. the cheapest is not the result of a study into the cost/speed.

Again, he did not pick the cheapest vs the most expensive. Using the benchmark chart, he compared cheapest vs. fastest, thereby running the entire gamut of options. His point was that the fastest CPU costs 15 times more than the cheapest (of those listed on the benchmark) and that for that cost, you only get a 50% increase in speed.

And again, this point is moot depending on the OP's goals. The bottleneck may still be the optical and hard drives, which makes the whole CPU thing a non-issue. He may only see an improvement of 2% even if he got the fastest CPU.

You can continue the AMD vs. Intel debate on your own if you like. I was merely pointing out that you completely misinterpreted BigBird999's post.
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post #21 of 27
9/4/09 at 2:39pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by whiteboy714 View Post

Is this really true?? I love my q6600 but like the idea that I could build a cheap amd machine with equal or superior performance.

Yes it is true. The Phenom 2 is quite a capable CPU that is on par with the q6600 in most tasks. And when you overclock the northbridge controller the speed increases drastically. Add to that the fact that you can easily hit 3.6GHz on just about every PH2 on air cooling and you have one fast CPU. Overclocking the northbridge speeds up the L3 cache latency significantly, and increases memory bandwidth as well as allowing even faster access to the RAM. IMO the biggest thing holding back Phenom 2 performance is the NB speed, Intels i7's have much faster NB. I believe it is called "Uncore" speed. Coming from a q6600 though, you wont really notice a big difference in speed. The only thing where you would notice a substantial speed increase is with an i7 920. But if you are coming from some older dual core either from Intel or AMD and cannot afford an i7, then a Phenom 2 is the way to go. However, an AMD quad core system is not that much cheaper than an Intel system. CPU prices are barely lower for the quads, RAM is just a tiny bit cheaper (cause you are buying 4GB packs instead of 6GB packs), the main price difference is when you get a motherboard. And AMD quad 955 system costs on average between $100-$150 less than an Intel i7 920 system. And that really is not a big price difference considering the 20-30% performance improvement you would have with an i7 in video encoding.


On another note, AMD's new 12-core CPUs coming out early next year are AMAZING. I have seen some benchmarks and screenshots of a 24-core computer being tested and it is smashing all kinds of records. With 24 real cores, it will be an encoding monster too. Default engineering sample CPU speed is 1.7GHz per core, but It has been running at 3GHz on all cores, with as much as 3.2GHz on just the first core.
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post #22 of 27
9/11/09 at 4:21pm
Thread Starter 
Wow I created a monster!! Thanks for so much information. A quick question which I already placed on another forum. Anyone knows of a utility or resource where Windows XP can be slimmed down as much as possible, So most of the resources focus on ripping/and re-encoding HD contents? Turning off processes is a start, I am sure there is a Bible or program that will shut off, or uninstall all that crap.
Thanx
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post #23 of 27
9/11/09 at 9:49pm
Ripping is easy, trying to compress or put in a different format requires a little cpu muscle.
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post #24 of 27
9/11/09 at 9:52pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by ENiGmA1987 View Post

Yes it is true. The Phenom 2 is quite a capable CPU that is on par with the q6600 in most tasks. And when you overclock the northbridge controller the speed increases drastically. Add to that the fact that you can easily hit 3.6GHz on just about every PH2 on air cooling and you have one fast CPU. Overclocking the northbridge speeds up the L3 cache latency significantly, and increases memory bandwidth as well as allowing even faster access to the RAM. IMO the biggest thing holding back Phenom 2 performance is the NB speed, Intels i7's have much faster NB. I believe it is called "Uncore" speed. Coming from a q6600 though, you wont really notice a big difference in speed. The only thing where you would notice a substantial speed increase is with an i7 920. But if you are coming from some older dual core either from Intel or AMD and cannot afford an i7, then a Phenom 2 is the way to go. However, an AMD quad core system is not that much cheaper than an Intel system. CPU prices are barely lower for the quads, RAM is just a tiny bit cheaper (cause you are buying 4GB packs instead of 6GB packs), the main price difference is when you get a motherboard. And AMD quad 955 system costs on average between $100-$150 less than an Intel i7 920 system. And that really is not a big price difference considering the 20-30% performance improvement you would have with an i7 in video encoding.


On another note, AMD's new 12-core CPUs coming out early next year are AMAZING. I have seen some benchmarks and screenshots of a 24-core computer being tested and it is smashing all kinds of records. With 24 real cores, it will be an encoding monster too. Default engineering sample CPU speed is 1.7GHz per core, but It has been running at 3GHz on all cores, with as much as 3.2GHz on just the first core.

Good god, what would be the TDP like 500 watts or something?
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post #25 of 27
9/11/09 at 11:32pm
no, TDP is 125w on those 12-cores. They will also have EE versions of 95w, and those are first gen. 2nd revision will be better.


Yes there is a program rlubocki, it is called nLite. I use it all the time. I made an uber small version of WinXP that has a size on disk of only 192MB. But that is REALLY stripped down made for my gaming machine, it cant do a lot of the more advanced functions. A "fully functional" Windows XP that can do internet, email, office, games, and other "regular windows tasks" is an average of 260MB of size.
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post #26 of 27
9/12/09 at 9:44am
Thread Starter 
Yes, I did my homework and everything points to nlite, Thank you for great advise!
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post #27 of 27
9/12/09 at 10:31am
Quote:
Originally Posted by ENiGmA1987 View Post

no, TDP is 125w on those 12-cores. They will also have EE versions of 95w, and those are first gen. 2nd revision will be better.


Yes there is a program rlubocki, it is called nLite. I use it all the time. I made an uber small version of WinXP that has a size on disk of only 192MB. But that is REALLY stripped down made for my gaming machine, it cant do a lot of the more advanced functions. A "fully functional" Windows XP that can do internet, email, office, games, and other "regular windows tasks" is an average of 260MB of size.

I don't get how they can run that many more transistors without upping the watts. I was going to build my Dad a new pc, I wonder if he needs a 12 core cpu for online banking.
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