Not using 100% of CPU during DivX encodeing?

keyvan · 10 Jul 2006 at 09:54

Hello all,

Just finished doing a small upgrade to my system for the sake of encoding times with Divx. Went from an AMD64 3500 to an AMD64 4400 dual core.

System runs great however when encoding both cores only seem to be running at at 60% to 70% according to the task manager cpu chart. I would have expected them to be both pegged at 100%.

Locically I would say that there is a bottle neck somewhere in the system and its not the CPU.

I have 2 gigs of Corsair XMS3200 CAS 2 Ram and a pair of stripped 250GB seagate drives.

Any suggestions?

Regards,

Keyvan

FreeStream · 10 Jul 2006 at 10:03

Its possible that its not fully dual core optimised, using the latest version of DivX and reinstalled windows after the DC chip was installed?

keyvan · 10 Jul 2006 at 10:05

Yes Windows was reinstalled after CPU and i am using a registered copy Divx 6.2 Pro.

Silver_&_Gold · 10 Jul 2006 at 12:32

The program is most likely not very well multi-threaded.

If you want both cores maxed out at 100% then an old but still very good encoding program that I use with DivX 5.02 Pro is Vidomi. Vidomi is mult-threaded very well and will max out both cores at 100%.

Berserker · 10 Jul 2006 at 13:06

All versions of DivX except DivX Pro 6 are not multi-threaded at all, so will only ever max out one core. DivX Pro 6.x supports dual core properly and will take advantage, if you're prepared to pay for it.

Since you've said you do have DivX Pro 6.2, it should work. Video encoding should be able to easily max out a dual core system. First thing I'd look at would be the encoder configuration. I'm not sure if there are restrictions on when DivX can take advantage of multi-core.

Silver_&_Gold · 10 Jul 2006 at 17:29

Berserker said:
All versions of DivX except DivX Pro 6 are not multi-threaded at all, so will only ever max out one core.

I agree that the actual divx codec itself is not multi-threaded up until Pro 6 but the part about only ever maxing out one core is not true as programs like Vidomi can take non multi-threaded codecs like DivX 5.02 and old Xvids and max out 100% both cores/cpus by opening 2 instances of it and encoding different segments at the same time and then joining them up! This surprisingly is actually a very efficient way of maxing out both cores and getting the best speed from DUAL CPU/Core systems.
DVD Rebuilder and CCE work like this as well.

this_is_gav · 11 Jul 2006 at 19:07

If it's an uncompressed source, the hard drives (despite being striped) are most likely the reason. Only if it's uncompressed though.

keyvan · 12 Jul 2006 at 00:18

It's already compressed in WMV format.
I ruled out the drives being the bottle neck as I can copy all 220 MB in about 10 seconds from my stripped drives to an external usb drive. While it takes about 45 minutes for the converstion to take place.

I'm thinking it's a memory bandwidth issue. I have 4 x Corsair 512MB DDR XMS3200C2PT TwinX CAS2 dimms. While converting they get really hot to the point that I can't touch them (is that normal?) I have not messed with memory timming I am just using the 'TOP PERFORMACE' setting in the gigabyte BIOS as opposed to the 'OPTIMIZED' or 'DEFAULT' settings.

Is 4 dimms better or worse than 2 dimms with the same total capacity, putting aside the obvious increase in power consumption and heat disapation in the system?

I do have DivX Pro 6.2 which is registered, maybe you have to enable the dual core ability?

The Mad One · 12 Jul 2006 at 09:42

Consider using XviD its better, free and the lastest version is multi threaded.