Do I need a new video encoding program or a new CPU?

[Xenor]

Have been using AutoGK for quite a few years. On my dual core machines (E6600 & E8400) I saw maxed out CPU utilization in both cores when the VirtualDub Mod portion of the program was running.

On my new i7-720QM laptop, I only see 50% or less CPU utilization. I am pondering an upgrade to my HTPC machine which runs the encoding, and I'm wondering if quad core i5/i7 chip will benefit me greatly or not. Would a Q9550 chip produce similar results and save me the money on getting a new MB & RAM?

Does anyone know why AutoGK might not be taking full advantage of the i7-720QM (6GB of 1066 DDR3 RAM, 250M video?

Is Handbrake the faster solution for multi-core hyperthreaded machines or is there another freeware program which supersedes AutoGK for DVD to avi conversion?

All other things being equal, would a Q9550 provide decent performance increase, or do I have to jump into the new i5/i7 chipsets to see real gains?

Thanks.

 

[betasub]

Just a comment on the CPU utilization numbers you got: 50% on a quad, but 100% on dual-cores (E6600 & E8400) suggesting only 2 cores are used - with load balancing switching between the four available cores. It would interesting if you could try changing AGK affinity through task manager on the i7-720QM to find what sort of CPU load is reported when AGK is restricted to 3 cores.

Does the i7-720QM have turbo-modes? These may be limited on mobile CPUs - whereas a desktop i5-750 or i7-860 might automatically restrict AGK to 2 cores and turbo-boost the multiplier to enable higher performance.

 

[alyarb]

use handbrake or automkv

 

[Xenor]

On my laptop, I am able to disable multiple cores, but not hyperthreading.

I thought to try changing affinity, but am uncertain which will produce the desired results. Do you know which processors are the "true" and which are simply the hyperthreaded dummies? Should I disable CPU 4-7 or 1,3,5,7 or possibly 0-3? Its amazing how quickly the iterations add up on the quad core...

I will have to give handbrake another try. Last time I attempted to use it, I kept getting error messages about no titles found...

 

[Allio]

It's not so much the encoding program as the codec. x264 is beautifully multithreaded and scales near-perfectly as you add more cores. xvid, which I assume you're using because you're using AutoGK, tries its best but doesn't gain anywhere near as much from more cores.

I really suggest switching to Handbrake + x264 for your DVD rips. It's far simpler (with AnyDVD installed it's literally insert dvd, click button) and gives better results for the filesize than xvid would.

 

[heyheybooboo]

Try to output to a fast external drive instead of R/W to a single laptop hdd.

With AGK I run average 76% cpu-util at the '70' setting TP-1920x1080 to Xvid working off three drives ---- with an unlocked Phenom 550be x4 14.5x240.




--

 

[Xenor]

Try to output to a fast external drive instead of R/W to a single laptop hdd.

With AGK I run average 76% cpu-util at the '70' setting TP-1920x1080 to Xvid working off three drives ---- with an unlocked Phenom 550be x4 14.5x240.

--

So better to write to my SSD than to read from it, I assume?

I've been average about 80 fps on the second pass with AutoGK. Is that a decent rate?

I have started to play with handbrake, quite a bit different than AutoGK. I will have to practice a bit until I get the desired results. I need to make the move to MP4 at some point.

Good to know about the Codecs being the bottleneck. I guess I could try Divx on AutoGK as well. Ultimately, I was attempting to see was sort of improvement I could expect from an i7 over a C2D with encoding and was a bit disappointed. If I can get the i7-720QM to perform better, than I may upgrade the HTPC.

Thanks everyone for your feedback.

 

[soccerballtux]

So better to write to my SSD than to read from it, I assume?

I've been average about 80 fps on the second pass with AutoGK. Is that a decent rate?

I have started to play with handbrake, quite a bit different than AutoGK. I will have to practice a bit until I get the desired results. I need to make the move to MP4 at some point.

Good to know about the Codecs being the bottleneck. I guess I could try Divx on AutoGK as well. Ultimately, I was attempting to see was sort of improvement I could expect from an i7 over a C2D with encoding and was a bit disappointed. If I can get the i7-720QM to perform better, than I may upgrade the HTPC.

Thanks everyone for your feedback.

not going to matter, IO stream before hits disk, he doesn't usually know what he's talking about; further all CPUs far too slow to max out any drive, even my old 6GB drive that can only write at 20MB/s.

 

[0roo0roo]

depends on the settings, not all filters/settings or decoders are multithreaded or whatever is what i googled up when handbrake failed to max cpu's during encodes. esp on first pass it wont, second pass will max across 4 cores i've found though.

 

[Cogman]

I would really suggest dumping autogk and going to an encoder that uses x264 asap. In pretty much every way, x264 will outperform any MPEG-4 ASP codec. (heck, I argue that it outperforms pretty much all AVC codecs as well). Switch to makemkv and something like dvd decrypter, and you'll see some pretty good differences in file size and output quality.

The only thing you'll have to change is getting ffdshow-tryouts and the haalai (sp?) media splitter. Trust me though, the difference is amazing.

 

[elconejito]

+1 on a switch to h.264

If you want to continue using AutoGK (it really is SUPER easy), there is an xvid codec that is multi-threaded. You have to dig around for it as it's not shipped with AutoGK, I think because it caused some glitches under certain circumstances. I saw increased performance with my q9650 and a q6600 before that. But it wasn't earth shattering.

The other thing you're going to have to be careful of, is even if the Xvid codec is multi-threaded there may be other filters (maybe the resize, or de-interlace, or noise filter, etc) along the way that are single threaded which will kill your FPS. In AutoGK it's a little hard to diagnose because it's all "auto". You could try using Xvid in AutoMKV instead which gives you far more control over which filters are in use, but it's obviously a lot more complex.

For me, I like Handbrake. Just a few clicks and you're on your way. It uses all my cores beautifully. Older versions of Handbrake support Xvid if you really want to stay there, but the newer ones are X264 only.