Basic Q on upgrade of PC

I don't have much experience with trying x264 under different processors and systems, so I'll answer the stuff as best as I can... 1.) Larger cache: I don't know if this will help. I'd guess it would, but it'll really rely on 1.) if you are having a lot of cache misses already, and 2.) if those cache misses can be solved with a larger cache (it may be that x264 requires such a large working set of data, that even a moderately larger cache will still get many misses... somehow I doubt this). I'm sure someone else here will be able to give a definitive answer. I'd imagine clock speed is more important. 2.) More/faster RAM: I think faster RAM would probably give more benefit, but again, not confident of my answer. I don't think x264 takes up that much RAM to run (at least on my 1 gigabyte system, I never had a problem with running out of memory), so I doubt increasing the size will matter. 3.) Being a user vs. admin should have almost no effect on run-speed.

Thanks very much for your input. I hope others will chime in as well! Neko

Nope. Actual experience running a render of a 20 layer image in 3DMax on an AMD Phemom 9600 quad vs an AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4400+, both systems running Vista Ultimate. Render time was twenty minutes, as opposed to rendering similar 3D graphic images on a single core 1.8 MZ P4 which took almost 4 hours! That time is an estimate, but I was most surprised in the lack of advantage of the quad over the duo. I could run the test again tomorrow and get back to you if you don't believe me. BTW, both mobos are running in the same double high tower and have independent power supplies and cooling systems.

So a Q6600 would be preferred over a new dual 8200? Both are about the same price here. The new quads look interesting but still not available. From what I gather sofar, 2GB is fine, but DDR2 667 is too slow and should be upgraded to as high a speeds as affordable? Neko

q6600 is the CPU to buy. cheap and overclockable well beyond the higher priced CPUs stock frequencies.

ddr3 has extra latencies involved, so not sure how much faster 1333 is over good 1066, considering the price difference its probably not beneficial, especially considering you would be limited to 2gb instead of 4gb from your list. 2x2gb is usually preferred over 4x1gb, some motherboards may not like the use of 4x1gb 1066 sticks even if its a '1066 capable' motherboard. It also gives you the option if you can get another 2x2gb sticks to have 8gb of RAM! which most motherboards should be able to support. That would make Vista fly over XP in theory, as more programmes and data can be precached. I'm not saying go for 8gb, just saying that more memory is beneficial for vista over XP!

:thanks: If only there was an article that compared the first 2 from the list, especially at overclocked frequencies with looser timings, I think ddr3 would show a significant advantage both for encoding and gaming. The reason I included 4 x 1GB was that maybe it might give more parallelism - imagine each core using its own 1GB stick (maybe even with some replicated data on each stick to improve concurrency, but I don't know much about that stuff).

no. DDR3 may even be slower than DDR2 due to additional latency. also, with current CPUs cache sizes the memory bandwidth is no longer a big problem.

x264 has very good MT support. 4-Cores & 8-cores (2xQuad): Article (not english)

in the meanwhile so i'll correct my previous statement: c2d q6600 and phenom x4 9850 (B3 core) are the CPUs to buy.