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power of a dual core?

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i was just wondering how they perform.

would it be possible to burn a dvd (this usually makes it imposiible to do anything else at the same time) and say play a good game, or would i need to seperate cpus?
 
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using normal single core cpus you can burn a dvd and play a game but they won't both run at full speed, however using dual core cpus it pushes the dvd onto one core and the game onto another so they both run at full speed. in short dual core is good for multitasking.

daven
 
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thats weird i cant do anything on my comptuter while burning a dvd or encoding, when i bring up windows task manager it says my cpu is at 100%. this is an amd 3200, should this not be happening?
 
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well encoding and burning a dvd are two very different operations

just burning a straight dvd (actually writing the data to the dvd) shouldn't use much cpu, however producing the image beforehand most probably would

obviously encoding anything will max out your processor as it's processing it - whether anything else will happily run along side it would depend on the priority each thread has been given by the programmers
 
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yeah, encoding is the killer, i have a 1900+ athlon XP (dies of embaracement) and if i try to encode a full DVD i start it on the friday, go for s dirty wekend somewhere with somone and come back monday to find it half way thru the encoding. then by the following friday it takes 3 minutes and 30 seconds to actualy burn the image -__-'

does anyone know if nero 6 supports muitithreaded encoding so that BOTH cores encode the VOB image file at the same time? cause that would be sweet, and also unlikly under windows.

and does having a 64-bit setup (64-bit CPU, OS and drivers) help speed up encoding?
 
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Solouko said:
does anyone know if nero 6 supports muitithreaded encoding so that BOTH cores encode the VOB image file at the same time? cause that would be sweet, and also unlikly under windows.

and does having a 64-bit setup (64-bit CPU, OS and drivers) help speed up encoding?

If it's Nero Recode you're talking about then I think it is multi-threaded (version 7 is IIRC). A 64-bit setup will only benefit if the application is compiled as a x64 binary. Otherwise it'll pass through the 32-bit application layer and work the same as an app on WinXP.
 
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I had that initial idea at 1st but dual cores good, but I have an X2-4400 and if I burn a 4.3gig DVD off and try and surf I notice the strain and performance drop.

Opening up multiple IE windows and programs seems ok, but if burning or using cd/dvdrom will make it feel like a single core !

Dual cores good but I wouldnt say ive noticed a hughe performance increase or benifit over a single core, but then im not encoding/pushing the system to its limits.

I think just like all things dual cores limited to cd/hdd activity....
 
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HighlandeR said:
I had that initial idea at 1st but dual cores good, but I have an X2-4400 and if I burn a 4.3gig DVD off and try and surf I notice the strain and performance drop.

Opening up multiple IE windows and programs seems ok, but if burning or using cd/dvdrom will make it feel like a single core !

Dual cores good but I wouldnt say ive noticed a hughe performance increase or benifit over a single core, but then im not encoding/pushing the system to its limits.

I think just like all things dual cores limited to cd/hdd activity....
I think that is only because of priority. If I encode using Nero Recode, then I do get slow down, but only because the priority is set to Normal or Above Normal. You can drop it to low, or even keep it at normal and after about a minutes usage, the CPU starts responding as normal again with WinXP giving you back some resources.

TBH, I think it's mainly XP that slows things down.
 
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The other night I was encoding a video using windows media 9 encoder browsing several websites watching a video (different screen) downloading 6 different things on bit torrent and chatting on MSN I had no slow down what so ever. I did run out of RAM at one point though but at the moment I only have 1GB so I think having 2gb would make a difference.
 
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smids said:
I think that is only because of priority. If I encode using Nero Recode, then I do get slow down, but only because the priority is set to Normal or Above Normal. You can drop it to low, or even keep it at normal and after about a minutes usage, the CPU starts responding as normal again with WinXP giving you back some resources.

TBH, I think it's mainly XP that slows things down.


I get this slow down but with normal burning, burning 4.3gig of data to disc with normal priority.

Its quite possible quiet and cool is slowing down my rigg cos its pretty much on 1ghz-1.7ghz and always adjusting like. But yeah again it feels like XP just isnt up to the job of making use of dual core.
 
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HighlandeR said:
Dual cores good but I wouldnt say ive noticed a hughe performance increase or benifit over a single core, but then im not encoding/pushing the system to its limits.

I think just like all things dual cores limited to cd/hdd activity....

i'll second that, you're always going to have a bottleneck somewhere and it's useualy the HDD as they're pretty archaic... i mean, they still use moving parts! and its a HDDs instability that causes half the problems in windows anyway, and why the xbox fudges up so much.
 
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thefullcollapse said:
thats weird i cant do anything on my comptuter while burning a dvd or encoding, when i bring up windows task manager it says my cpu is at 100%. this is an amd 3200, should this not be happening?
probably need to change some settings in device manager, goto the ide controllers right click it properties then goto advanced i think, then check they're all on a multi something instead of PIO
 
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Yeah, all drives should be in DMA mode, and use no more than 2-5% of the processor during read or write operations. If windows has downgraded any hard disks, or dvd drives to PIO mode, it will use 50-100% of the cpu to push the data to and from the drive.

Its also essential to have the motherboards chipset drivers installed correctly, to enable the highest DMA transfer speeds, and to correctly enable agp and/or PCI Express slots at maximum speed.
 
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HighlandeR said:
I get this slow down but with normal burning, burning 4.3gig of data to disc with normal priority.

Its quite possible quiet and cool is slowing down my rigg cos its pretty much on 1ghz-1.7ghz and always adjusting like. But yeah again it feels like XP just isnt up to the job of making use of dual core.

What it could be is the fact that the application is multi-threaded and hence it's using *both* cores at the same time, eating up cpu time on both cores. Although this means that multi-tasking is better than a single-core and the program is working faster, that one program is putting load on both cores. WinXP does a fairly good job at proc scheduling (x64 even more so) so if you're finding it a bit sluggish then you can set the affinity to one core, in which case the other core will be free for Windows tasks and other programs etc. or as other's have suggested is to drop the priority level.
 
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