Posted on 03/18/2010 11:15:56 AM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
In May of 2005, both AMD and Intel delivered the world's first desktop dual-core CPU's, and since then, the processor technology and increase in performance from generation to generation has accelerated to mind-boggling levels. I'm not sure if it's a sickness, but when I look back to the landscape just two years ago, I can't help but feel a bit underwhelmed, because the newer models are so much more attractive.
It's true though. The acceleration of technology is incredible, and it's actually a bit hard to believe that just five years ago, we were all sporting single-core processors in our desktops. The first dual-core's came in May of 2005 as mentioned, and a mere year-and-a-half later, Intel launched the first desktop quad-core offering, the QX6700.
So if it only took a year-and-a-half to make the shift from a dual-core to a quad-core, how on earth has it taken another 4.3 years to finally see the industry's first six-core offering? The reason isn't due to the fact that it couldn't be done (I remember Intel talking about Octal-Cores at IDF 2007, and we still don't see those on the desktop side), but rather because they haven't been needed.
Just over two years ago, we took Intel's Skulltrail platform for a spin. For those who may not recall, Skulltrail was Intel's ultra-high-end solution for those who wanted the best in multi-tasking and the best in overall raw horsepower.
(Excerpt) Read more at techgage.com ...
Pffffft. Who are you trying to impress??
Ripping a DVD does not take much CPU power. Try converting that video and you are in a different world.
Ok. Now you made me curious. I haven't tried ripping an HD 1080i/p qualtiy video. The DVD I ripped this past weekend was 720p.
Thats an interesting question about Pong. The _original_ pong (coin operated) that was produced and actually started all the rage, was a hardware implementation. No software. There is someone who has written a digital circuit simulator that runs Pong, but its super slow, about 1fps on the fastest PC’s available today.
I think this is raises an interesting point....
If one buys a high end sports car....does the buyer worry about :
Utilizing all of the power FULLY?
The conversion was to MPEG-2 which I believe to be less complex than the MPEG-4 conversion you did. I'm curious and am going to try this.
What if you can’t even see the little white spot move...ie it is just a blur.....
Now that could be interesting...if it can do multithreading....
IIRC, back in the 70’s when PONG came out, life was often a blur but for reasons other than technology. In one of my geek moments, I actually placed 4th ina city wide PONG tounament...but prizes only to top 3.
The DVD is 480x720 pixels. If you rip it, you are just bypassing copy protection and moving the MPEG2 code to another place.
When I record TV shows, it is 1080x1920 pixels in MPEG 2 format. Unfortunately, a TV show is something like 30+ gigabytes. By removing the commercials and converting to MPEG4, I can reduce that size to about a 1/10 the size that looks the same on the TV.
Unfortunately, MPEG4 compression is very CPU intensive. With a dual core pentium, it would take like 18 hours to convert a movie or ball game. I can now do it in nearly real time (a little more than an hour per hour of video) with and my chip and it is clocked about 1/2 the speed and has 1/3 less cores.
Something like this would make shuffling video much easier. I set the computer up to record shows I like in full HD, then I put them on a hard drive and watch them at my convenience. Like a TiVo but I don’t have to worry about running out of space.
Unfortunately, MPEG4 compression is very CPU intensive. With a dual core pentium, it would take like 18 hours to convert a movie or ball game. I can now do it in nearly real time (a little more than an hour per hour of video) with and my chip and it is clocked about 1/2 the speed and has 1/3 less cores.
Thanks. While I have a good 3D video card ( I had to upgrade the PSU to support it), I don't play video games, do hi-end 3D modeling, or do things with HD video. As such, My uni-CPU PC performs professional quality photo-editing, light CAD and document creation very well for me.
I'm going to try your scenario and see what happens.
I set my Core 2 Duo 2.4 GHz to encode some video and it’ll sit there for hours at 80-85% both cores. Just depends on how hard you push it.
I find it quite a shame when people buy fast cars and never push them anywhere close to their capabilities.
Do you mean "rip" as in pull it off the DVD or "rip" as in convert it to another format? Ripping is not CPU intensive. And I can believe you can convert a 65 minute DVD to another format in 15 minutes. They had achieved about 1:1 years ago with about 1.3 GHz processors.
However, that was old formats at DVD resolution that don't take much CPU power for encoding. MPEG4 H.264 is about the best CODEC out there today for quality at any bit rate, but it is also notoriously processor intensive compared to the old codecs. You need a pretty blazing multi-core (or multi-processor, or both) machine to get 1/4 time processing of DVD video with the encoding bells & whistles turned on. I'd love to see the computer that can do that with HD.
.BUP -> MPEG-2.
Yeah, that's pretty easy on the processor, especially since DVDs are MPEG-2 in the first place. Try H.264, serious difference in quality at bandwidth, but takes much longer to encode, and more CPU power to decode.
That was the first DVD I ever ripped. I didn't explicitly time the exercise but my recollection was start to finish took about 15 minutes.
I really want to see if I can find some way to try ripping and converting HD to H.264.
I'm still happy spending small money buying used business class desktop PC's and Xeon class workstations but it is nice to know what the system limits are lest I do something that will bring a system to its knees. BTW I have a Dell Optiplex GX280 with a 3.4GHz CPU and a Dell Precision 670 workstation with dual 3.6 GHz XEON CPU's. Spent less than $500 for both and have been very, very satisfied with their performance.
Handbrake rules. It'll rip it from the DVD and convert it at one shot. It has various encoding presets to make it easy. Or if you already have a DVD ripper, you can rip multiple DVDs to files on your hard drive and queue them up with Handbrake to convert overnight.
What’s the point? Game technology is limited to xBox/PS3 capabilities. My 3 yo run of the mill desktop plays the latest games well with all options maxed.
Does it play Crysis?
(inside joke for nerds)
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