Tag Archives: DVD encoding

June 16, 2012

Acidrip performance on AMD 8 core computer system

Robert Campbell's AMD 8 Core system running Ubuntu 12.04 64bit

Robert Campbell’s AMD 8 Core system running Ubuntu 12.04 64bit

Thanks to Robert Campbell, one of the volunteer technicians at The Working Centre’s Computer Recycling Project, I am very pleased to report some further DVD ripping and encoding results on an AMD-based 8 core system. In the Linux Labs section of Full Circle Magazine Issue #61 I reported the DVD ripping and encoding results for 4 systems: a single core AMD system, a dual core Intel system, and on almost identically configured quad core AMD and Intel systems. The winner of this show down was the AMD Quad core which ripped and encoded in a time of 37 minutes and 14 seconds.

For this test I used the same DVD and the exact same settings I used for the 4 systems I tested for Full Circle Magazine (see Issue #61). My favourite Linux DVD ripping software, Acidrip, is a front end to mencoder which does the DVD rips and encodes the DVD data. To time the experiments both for Full Circle Magazine and Robert’s system I used stopwatch, a nifty Tcl/Tk stopwatch program.

Thanks to Robert we have a new winner, his 8 core system, which took a total time of 25 minutes and 51 seconds. I believe ripping and encoding could have been at least a few minutes faster with some configuration and hardware (or software) changes. Unfortunately right now AMD/ATI does not use VDPAU (Nvidia is the driver for this API, but S3 also has support) which means we couldn’t offload the encoding processing on to his ATI Radeon HD 6970 video card. Robert also has a 64GB Solid State Drive but it was set up so that most of the drive was swap (29GB, which was unnecessary since Robert has 16GB of RAM).

Robert’s LG HL-DT-ST BD-RE GGW-H10N Blueray/HD DVD combo writer had respectable ripping speed of 6 minutes and 7 seconds, less than our amazing Benq DVD writers on the dual core systems which ripped the DVD in 4 minutes and 52 seconds, but still good.

Robert’s motherboard is an Asus Crosshair V Formula motherboard, his CPU a 8x AMD FX(tm)-8120 Eight-Core Processor, with 4 sticks of 4GB (16GB total) Kingston Hyper DDR3 RAM, a Crucial M4-CT064M4SSD2 solid state drive, and a 1.5TB Western Digital WDC WD15EARS-00M hard drive. I already mentioned Robert’s ATI Radeon HD 6970 video card but I’ll mention it again here for completeness.

My belief is that if we switched out the Blueray for the Benq DVD and the ATI video card for a VDPAU-supported Nvidia card we could probably get this time to around 15 minutes, or perhaps less if we ran entirely off the solid state hard drive. Thanks to Robert for bringing in his system, letting me run a few tests, and for allowing us to post pictures of his system and himself.

So is it worth spending extra money on a loaded 8 core system? Performance even without an optimal setup is still 11-12 minutes better than our fastest system, the AMD quad core. If you’re doing a dozen DVDs save your money. But if you have lots of cash burning a hold in your pocket and are ripping and encoding hundreds of DVDs it will save you significant time.

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September 22, 2011

Quick observation of Biostar GeForce6100-M9 and DVD encoding

I haven’t sat down and methodically documented the DVD ripping and encoding process on my Biostar Geforce 6100-M9 Athlon64-based motherboard. I have started ripping and encoding a few of my DVDs so I can put them away in storage (they take up an entire 6 foot bookcase 2 layers deep). What I noticed is that the setup on this Athlon64 doesn’t seem to be that much slower than my wife’s quad-core AMD system.

I mentioned before that I plan on sitting down and doing a more scientific comparison of DVD encoding, but in the meantime I’ve been just trying to plow through my DVD collection on both systems. I expected the Athlon64 to be significantly slower, but this doesn’t appear to be the case. The results are really surprising considering the difference in technology. The Athlon64 is as follows:

  • Biostar GeForce 6100-M9 motherboard
  • AMD Athlon 64 3500+ CPU
  • 1GB DDR 400 RAM (2 x 512MB in dual channel mode)
  • 80GB 7200 RPM 300MB/s SATA hard drive
  • 256MB Nvidia 7900 PCI-E video card

My wife’s quad core Athlon is significantly better:

  • Asus motherboard (don’t remember the model)
  • Quad Core AMD CPU with all 4 cores set to 2.5GHz
  • 4GB DDR 667 RAM (this may actually be a bottleneck since the motherboard is really made for 1066MHz RAM)
  • 2TB 7200RPM SATA Hard Drive
  • 512MB video card (don’t remember the model) (writing this at lunch)

This actually tells me it might not be a good idea buying a new quad or 6 core system for encoding purposes. That said, the software also might not be optimized to use all cores. I’m using Acidrip to rip CDs. At the back end Acidrip uses mencoder to encode video. I’m pretty confident mencoder could take advantage of other cores, but there may be some work required to do so.

Now I’m particularly interested to see if switching to a 64 bit OS on both will speed up the encoding process. Current results are based on the 32-bit version of Ubuntu 11.04. I’ve also been thinking about regressing to Ubuntu 10.04-LTS for both tests because 11.04 seems less reliable.

I’m hoping to be able to complete the experiment this weekend.

What makes all of this really cool is that I bought the Biostar motherboard a few years ago and it never worked. When I bought the board I also bought RAM and a boxed CPU + Heat sink combination. The system unit would turn on, but when I started anything graphical, whether it was Windows or Linux the unit would totally lock up and “zebra stripe.”

I saw a lot of suggestions what the problem might be, including the usual laundry list of suspects (all of which I changed with no luck): power supply, RAM, grounding in case. Lots of people reported it as a fault in the motherboard itself. It appears the real problem was the new boxed AMD Athlon64 3800+ CPU. It must have been faulty because other than the motherboard it’s the only component I didn’t change (until now).

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