Memory or the CPU?

Bushido Philosopher · Post by **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?

klinky · Post by **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.

~klinky

Bushido Philosopher · Post by **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?

the Black Monarch · Post by **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!"

dwchang · Post by **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.

Knowname · Post by **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...

dwchang · Post by **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.

Anime2Envy · Post by **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.

Bushido Philosopher · Post by **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.

the Black Monarch · Post by **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.