Memory or the CPU?

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Memory or the CPU?

Postby Bushido Philosopher » Wed Jul 16, 2003 7:34 pm

Premiere and VirtualDub's preview playbacks have been lagging ever since I started using AVISynth to process everything. And of course, even if it lags just the slightest bit, the actual video will be off by that much. Unfortunately though it lags A LOT, so my timings are completely off. I thought I could tolerate it, but I can't anymore.

So do I need more memory (RAM) or a better CPU? Or perhaps something else?

A friend was saying that all I need is more memory so it doesn't bottleneck on me. But then, I'm convinced that my CPU is simply too slow to keep up with everything.

Can anyone help me?
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Postby klinky » Wed Jul 16, 2003 8:04 pm

It would be nice if you would include el speed of said CPU.

But just in general AVISynth is laggy by nature. That's why in the guides there is a MJPEG switch method, which is quite fast.


I have a 1.4Ghz CPU and Avisynth is quite slow. Add in IVTC, filtering, cropping and resizing. Woosh, you're looking at single digit frame rates.


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Postby Bushido Philosopher » Wed Jul 16, 2003 10:48 pm

My apologies. I have an 866 Mhz Pentium III. Not exactly the best.....not even a GHz.

Hm, but now that they have 3 GHz+ out there I should get a 2.x GHz CPU easy.

So I'm guessing by your response that it's the CPU that controls the main speeds?
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Postby the Black Monarch » Wed Jul 16, 2003 11:50 pm

Video decoding and filtering is an extremely math-intensive process, and the CPU is what does all the math.

And now dwchang is going to come in here and say "Don't buy a Pentium 4, buy an Athlon!"
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Postby dwchang » Thu Jul 17, 2003 2:53 pm

the Black Monarch wrote:And now dwchang is going to come in here and say "Don't buy a Pentium 4, buy an Athlon!"


Not if the have a PIII MB and wanna keep it.

Since you want to upgrade your current set-up, I believe you're fairly limited in how much you can do. I'm sure you can find a PIII that's faster for fairly cheap, but it's not gonna give you that much horsepower since those 2.X Ghz chips are P4. As for RAM, more RAM almost always helps, but at the same time, your CPU seems to be the bottleneck.

At the same time, your CPU isn't THAT slow. You should be able to make AMVs with it, but as you said..slowly. I'd suggest getting a new system if you want that much performance increase.
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Postby Knowname » Thu Jul 17, 2003 3:21 pm

P3 1.4ghzs are faster than p4 1.8ghzs in some tests though... don't get a Celeron though...
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Postby dwchang » Thu Jul 17, 2003 3:24 pm

Knowname wrote:P3 1.4ghzs are faster than p4 1.8ghzs in some tests though... don't get a Celeron though...


That's because the PIII architcture is more efficient then the P4.

Although they don't exist in theory:

PIII 1.4 Ghz != P4 1.4 Ghz
PIII 1.4 Ghz >>> P4 1.4 Ghz (and some fasters speed grades).

This goes down to sheer efficiency and the PIII having a better design. It's the same a reason a 2.0 Ghz AMD Athlon is comprable to a 2.4 Ghz P4.
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Postby Anime2Envy » Thu Jul 17, 2003 3:55 pm

I have a 1.26Ghz p3 running at about 1.4Ghz with 768 megs of RAM, and I still can't use AVIsynth and preview at full speed. If I were you i would save up for a new mobo/processor/RAM. That stuff is geting cheaper by the day.
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Postby Bushido Philosopher » Thu Jul 17, 2003 3:55 pm

dwchang wrote:
the Black Monarch wrote:At the same time, your CPU isn't THAT slow. You should be able to make AMVs with it, but as you said..slowly. I'd suggest getting a new system if you want that much performance increase.


Well, even my preview playbacks are lagged a little bit (the final video will be a couple hundredths of a second off from what I see in the preview), so I think even just a small upgrade would do me good. I'm working with Premiere 6.5, AVISynth, and uncompressed WAVs all at once so I guess it's not that big of a surprise that even the preview would lag a bit.
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Postby the Black Monarch » Thu Jul 17, 2003 4:03 pm

I have a 2.4 gig P4 and I still can't play AVS files in real time if they do Telecide.
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Postby Pwolf » Thu Jul 17, 2003 4:15 pm

with my 2.8ghz, on fresh restart i've been able to play an avisynth file with ivtc in realtime... then after about 5 min, it slows down.


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Postby dwchang » Thu Jul 17, 2003 4:21 pm

Pwolf wrote:with my 2.8ghz, on fresh restart i've been able to play an avisynth file with ivtc in realtime... then after about 5 min, it slows down.


Pwolf


I laugh at you single CPU folk. I have a dual 2.0 Ghz Athlon and it flies. I can even render my final outputs and go play war3 or something :-P. I love my computer :).

Ko Oh Yoku: I suggest getting a cheap PIII chip then. However, the money you spend seems a bit wasteful when you can get a faster computer for a few hundred dollars.
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Postby the Black Monarch » Thu Jul 17, 2003 4:41 pm

dwchang wrote:I laugh at you single CPU folk.


I laught at you folk who can't do video editing while riding the bus, waiting in line at Burger King, etc. :)

Laptops are da bomb :)
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Postby the Black Monarch » Thu Jul 17, 2003 4:44 pm

You know, one of these days, dw and I are going to have an actual argument over something factual instead of having a mere difference of opinion...
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Postby dwchang » Thu Jul 17, 2003 4:44 pm

the Black Monarch wrote:You know, one of these days, dw and I are going to have an actual argument over something factual instead of having a mere difference of opinion...


We are? News to me :-D
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