Dual Processors...Why?

O

otari_99

Active member
Hello,

I've had my HVX since March and have been doing documentary work. I realize my editing suite is antiquated by today's standards. It is basically a single 3 GHz P4, 800MHz FSB, with dual hard drives, ATI video etc, etc. I have used Grass Valley Edius Broadcast with no issues processing 720/24pn time based material.

I have no issue with upgrading my editing suite. However, my question is this:

Why should I upgrade to a dual processor system? Various tech reps say I need to do this, but they can't tell me why.

Thanks.
 
I think you have your answer -- you don't need to for what you are doing.

Sure, a faster processor would speed up rendering, but for the editing you are doing, you don't really need a new system. Edius has a well-deserved reputation for being able to edit material in realtime that other NLEs choke on.
 
Faster, bigger is always better in video land. You can never have a system too powerful. As long as your system does what you need it to you're fine, don't listen to what other people tell you, they just want to sell you new stuff. But to answer your question, dual-processors give a boost in rendering times as well as aid in multitasking where you use more than one program at a time. They just make things "snappier." They are indeed welcomed but not neccessarily needed. Many people edit on single processor systems.

The new trend seems to be in dual and multicore processors. Where you essentially have 2 processors in one. Apple has dual-core chips accross their entire line now...I think. Their high end MacPros all have 2 dual-core processors for essentially Quad-Processor performance.

I'd say stick with your current system untill you NEED to upgrade. Things will only get better with time. I still say the average lifespan of a computer is 4 years.
 
If your system works adequately, why upgrade? There'll be quad-core processors soon enough, so as long as you're content with what you have, I'd say put off upgrading as long as you can...
 
The Core 2 Quadro QX6700 (Kentsfield) processors have been out for awhile, and they kick butt.

Procoder Express (the rendering component of Edius) can take advantage of at least four processors (physical or logical), so doing the render of a video project to H.264 or MPEG2 or whatever can potentially speed up dramatically. But if you are already getting realtime editing performance from your system and you do your renders overnight or by getting a cup of coffee, I'd save my money.
 
I've always kept my use of filters and effects to a minimum, so this is probably one reason I'm getting away with it. And certainly, the Edius Broadcast package is a welcome solution. Indeed, the transcode process does take a lot of time, which I think gives some justification for upgrading.

I will hold off purchase for the moment. Next up on my list is the FS-100.

Thanks much for your insights. I really appreciate it.
 
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definitely wait to upgrade until the 16 core 100ghz 100TB hock-a-loogey 2000's come out. i swear, i bought the baddest computer not 2 years ago, and its already practically outdated.
 
for sure... I want to figure out how to make a rendering farm with different processors... being able to hook up your "last" computer your "current" one and to the "next" would e the way to go... then when you get the "next-next" you throw the "last" in the trash cause it is practically as powerfull as your new Treo 1250
 
jake stutheit said:
definitely wait to upgrade until the 16 core 100ghz 100TB hock-a-loogey 2000's come out. i swear, i bought the baddest computer not 2 years ago, and its already practically outdated.
Click to expand...

I know the feeling; I consider it good if I get 3 years of use out of a computer before it's worthless.
 
I agree that you can stick with your machine when you are happy with the performance...Edius is a beast of program, i am using this in my new machine with the SP card...!

But you could need more if: your projects start to grow: i dont know the size of your projects, its fine if its just some dozen minutes, but i heard from different people on the canopus forum that trouble really started when they did big projects...so be aware of this...!

i am doing a lot of longer documentary things, so i will report back on this..!
 
Maybe they suggest it as protection for the future. Dual Core CPU's and systems will be getting pretty cheap soon here with the introduction of octo-core systems in 07. Even if its not currently needed dearly, for the future and the slight performance bump, it could be worth it.

- Kyle
 
From a technical point of view, a single core computer can only do one thing at a time. Processes and threads actually take turns processing (although its so fast it doesn't seem like it.) A multi core computer can run one process or thread per CPU, but there is a bit of overhead used up in coordinating this. This is why 8 CPUs is a practical limit with x86 technologies. Anything above 8 uses fancy switching backplane technologies to get around this.

As far as software is concerned, it must be written as a multi-threaded application to really take advantage of multiple CPUs. The base process must 'fork off' multiple threads of work and then semaphore them back together. Avid Express Pro (which I use) does not do this, but is sounds like your software does. But consider, if I have 48 processes running they must all cycle through to get back to the work queued up in Avid. It will go through much faster if I have a second CPU there to handel the other processes. In fact if the majority of the other processes are dorment my single threaded app may monopolize a single CPU while the other handels all the other work (including Avid generated requests to the OS for disk or network I/O).

Clear as mud?

Bob
 
Same with Adobe PremierePro 2.0, which improved a lot when moved to a dual core machine; I haven't noted a huge increase with my xeon-based (4 processor) system however. Correct me if I'm wrong- even multithreaded applications have a limit on how many processors they can hand things off to.

Dermfellow
 
Yes, the application has to be aware of how many processors there are, and the algorithm must lend itself to parallelization.

I'm a software engineer and write multi-threaded code every day. The applications I write -- when appropriate -- check the number of processors at startup and will manage a pool of worker threads with one thread for each processor. I've done profiling of those applications, and they scale in a virtually linear fashion from one to eight processors (the most I've tested).
 
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