The Official PC building thread -3rd Edition

NO, get a Quad Core! It's better for the Future!

 

Abuzar, not all people who use PCs are like you. I certainly have no significant need for a quad core, and I expect that will remain the case for at least another six months, possibly a year or longer. For others it's even less important. We've presented the facts of the matter, and he has elected the E8400. He obviously feels it will be eons before he uses anything that will require a quad core, so if that's the case his decision is justified.

Out of interest Mr. numbers, what do you mean by 'foreign language'?

 

Soph,

I am sure that is true when doing 2 passes but if doing 3 pases (like I do), my stock Q9450 was just a hair faster (only about 1 minute) than my E3110 was at 4.0ghz. the prepare and rebuild phases were faster with the E3110 at 4.0ghz but the encode times were faster with my stock Q9450.

I don't have a completed folder/ini file to compare to using my E3110 at 4.0ghz and 2 passes with CCE. all my completed folders using my E3110 at 4.0ghz were done with CCE at 3 passes.

my Q9450 at 3.4ghz is considerably faster than my E3110 at 4.0ghz with CCE SP and 3 passes.

 

the way I see it, a person can get into a higher clocked dual core now for less money and upgrade to a quad core down the road. as most of you know, that's exactly what I did.

 

If I was building a PC right now, unless I had a very high budget I'd probably still go with a dual core and swap it out for a quad later. I don't go lightweight with the games, but there's genuinely no reason to have a quad core. I'd like to see more than maybe one or two games actually use 100% of just two cores before I justify a quad for games.

 

I am using thermal paste w/ as5. And if intel will send me another cpu cuz the sensor's gone wrong, then I think it's worth it.
As for improperly seated heat sink, I think I'm done with hsf's....I've had bad luck with something that apparently has the quality of a TRUE (and I've re-installed that think like 10 times), and it just doesn't work for me. Does anybody know about this cooler?:

http://www.danamics.com/danamics-lm10.aspx

It's a liquid metal designed heatsink that uses a pump, and no fan. They say it's better than most water coolers. It's not out yet and it's probably gonna be really expensive....
If too much, I'm a go w/ either a swiftech or thermalright water cooler...i would get the cooler master but it's too expensive, and i read it doesn't cool that well anyway....

 

Then that suggests that your dual core was throttling or there is something different about your settings or something else interfered with CPU processes. If a quad core uses only two cores on a dual threaded application then it is only as fast as the two cores that it's using. If for some reason the dual core attempts to use four cores with a dual threaded application then that means that it is swapping the two threads between four cores which actually takes longer, because it is now oscillating data back and fourth.

 

sam,

for what I do (a lot of video encoding, not transcoding) a quad core is better because I always do 3 passes with CCE SP and I will now start using HC encoder by Hanks more, which does fully utilize all 4 cores, up to 100% and is faster than CCE SP at 3 passes. CCE at 2 passes is still the fastest but not by much.

now if I lower the quality level for HC from best to normal, I'm sure it would be faster than CCE at 2 passes now that I can utilize all 4 cores wit HC.

I have to compare apples to apples and so I consider CCE at 2 passes to be similiar to HC at normal quality level and I consider CCE at 3 passes to be similiar to HC at best quality level. using my quad core cpu, HC wins out in both situations and therefor I can justify upgrading to the quad core.

 

Soph,

I'm just going by my observations in my task manager but when I'm using CCE all 4 cores are being used to some degree. I'm going to fire up CCE right now just to verify this again to myself. I'll let ya know if I am providing inaccurate information.

 

Soph,

CCE is using a good part of 3 cores:



nothing like HC tho:

 

CCE is only a dual threaded appication, and cannot divide up a single thread into two and process separate parts of it. at the same time What is occurring is that a single thread is oscillating between two cores. I don't know how much that slows things down but it shouldn't speed things up.

Your version of CCE was discovered to have a flaw that causes it to misread the actual speed.

 

hmm, I've got a later vs but it's more of a pain to install. actually I forgot exactly how to install it. my vs is plenty fast now and I probably won't mess with upgrading it. the quality is still superb.

 

The speed issue is no big deal since it doesn't affect encode quality, but it does make a bit*h to make comparisons.

 

Hmm! Creaky I know the horse quite well, but I'm not quite sure of the point that you were making. Were you comparing the quality of CCE to HD encoder? If so I think HD encoder has progressed quite a bit but jdobbs still uses CCE.

Mort and I were discussing encode speeds on a two threaded application such as CCE which can't use RB's multicore functions so it is left with only two threads to take advantage of a multicore processor. Mort contends that his quad core processes faster than a higher clocked dual core. My point is that is not really possible since a two threaded application can only run just that two threads, If those two threads are divided across 4 cores then there will be a bit of a slow down since two threads can only run linear in one direction. If they are linear than for a single thread to be divided between two cores the two cores must swap back and forth between each other and in effect adds an extra operation to what should be the tasks of two single threads run on two cores. I hope the heck this makes sense because I'm in the middle of ripping a blu-ray movie.

creaky if I misunderstood you could you let me know?

 

LOL

Thanks for clearing that up because I am like you doing too many things at once. HC encoder does indeed benefit from a quad core processor. It's amazing how much it's progressed since it was first released. There seems to be so many pointless debates about if this encoder or that encoder is better. The best encoder in my view is the one that you're happiest with.

 

Well I've been doing some research and testing on the ASUS Striker Extreme and it seems that the problem that I'm having isn't an uncommon one. lol. Sammy and Russ you HUSH!!!!

Anyway I've done everything but take out the cpu to make sure it's NOT messed up or any of the "pins" on the mobo are/aren't bent...

Tried:

Singe RAM stick (even bought some DDR2 667 RAM rated at 1.9v...Mushkin btw.. )
changed CMOS battery
changed psu's
changed gpu's
cleared CMOS
checked all connections

Any other suggestions?? I'm removing the cpu and checking all that stuff to see what's what later tonight if time allows...

....gm

 

Whats the difference in a HX & TX PSU