Dual Processor Performance using Avid DV Xpress 3.5

I am considering the purchase of either a single P4 3.06 Ghz Dell
Dimension 4550 system or dual Xeon's at 3.06 Ghz each in Dell's
Precision 650 Workstation. Obviously dual processors will give better
performance if an app supports them but I want to know just how much
Avid's Express DV 3.5 would actually benefit from these dual
processors. Based on the performance I may either decide that the
extra cost is really worth it or perhaps not if I have to pay a
premium just for a little extra speed. Specifically, I want to know
what the difference would be in rendering to MPEG-2 (for DVD burning).
But also, what other benefits are there for Xpress DV 3.5 since Avid
claims to support dual processors but they don't say anything else
about it? I mean, is there any real benefit for just regular editing
with a few streams of video on the timeline? I've seen laptops used
for this so would dual processors really be of benefit here or just
for the rendering? Or can you also do more real-time effects if you
have dual processors and just how much of a difference will this make?

I will be doing video editing using transitions among multiple video
streams (probably 3 or 4 at most with some graphic layers) and I will
need to render to MPEG-2 (DVD). I will be using Seagate Cheetah SCSI
drives for storage so disk access time will not be an issue regardless
of whether I get a single or dual processor. I also plan to have 1 GB
or perhaps even 2 GB of ECC RAM if this much would be of benefit. In
your answer please show articles or your experience running Avid with
dual and single processors. I am MOST interested in seeing comparison
speeds with the same speed of processor. For example, I am not really
interested in seeing a comparison of a 3.06 Ghz single processor and a
dual 2.0 Ghz processor. In this case I would rather see the same type
of comparison using two Xeon's at 3.06 Ghz (2.8 will suffice if no
test results can be found for the latest and greatest 3.06 Xeon's). In
other words, like for like. I would like to see a number of these
types of comparisons using the latest processors. Sorry, but reading
about dual Pentium III's at 833 Mhz doesn't cut it for me when I am
trying to put together a killer system. And again, please focus on how
this directly affects the performance of Avid's Express DV 3.5. At
some point I may also use Pinnacle's Commotion and Adobe After Effects
so any dual processor information with regards to these software
packages as well would be fantastic!

This information is important to me since there is quite a difference
in price between a dual 3.06 Dell Precision 650 and a Dell 4550 (why
not the 8250? I think I prefer the DDR RAM over the slighly faster but
vastly overpriced RDRAM). I referenced the Dell information from the
Canadian website since that is where I am from.

Just to help you a bit, I did searches (using Acrobat Reader) through
most of the Xpress DV 3.5 manuals on Avid's website and I searched for
"dual processor" or "dual" or "processor" but I really couldn't find
any reference to expected performance from dual processors...

Now if you're the right person for the job then have fun researching
this and impress me with what you find (even if it means that a dual
processor won't really be worth the extra cost)!

Thanks!

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Clarification of Question by bwb-ga on 08 Apr 2003 17:25 PDT

Note: Please give comparisons with P4 processors, not AMD.

Heres the test results:

Dell Precistion 650 Dual Xeon 3.06 1gig ram 
vs.
Same Machine with one processor disabled

The dual processor system was 70% faster(rendering 1:24:55 video in Avid)
Rendering times: Dual Processor 160 minutes 
                 Single Processor 278 Minutes

Thanks for the info! I'm just curious, I have heard that on average a
Pentium 4 at 3.06 Ghz can render MPEG-2 at about 30 frames per second
(this is typical of Canopus' Procoder software and a benchmark I heard
about from a PC magazine), but the results you gave would indicate
about 9 frames per second for the single processor and about 16 frames
per second for dual processors. Is this because you were mixing
multiple video streams? Or were you taking one file and converting it
to MPEG-2?

Thanks again.

My test data info:

Video was pulled in on a canopus ADVC100 from a BetaSP deck.  The
video was full motion with several timeline splits and custom video
effects.  The video was output @ 720x480 MPEG2 Sorensen Encoding.
Processor useage on the Dual was 80% on both processors and 85% on the
Single processor test.  I just ran another test same settings bue @
320x240 and the rendering time was 1/3 of the other tests.

In the first test the dual processor setup did managet to do it at
24fps.  1:24:55 video in 160 minutes.

I totally recommend the dual processor Xeon setup. 
rendering/editing/preview is all superfast.

Scott

Thanks Scott. I am just a little confused by your results unless I am
missing something... 1:24:55 = 1 hour, 24 minutes, 55 seconds = 84
minutes, 55 seconds = 5095 seconds x 29.97 frames per second =
152697.15 frames in total. 160 minutes to render = 9600 seconds.

Therefore, 152697.15 frames / 9600 seconds is approximately 15.91
frames per second rendering time for the dual processor.

Using the same math, the single processor would have yielded
approximately 9.15 frames per second.

Sorry for all of the calculations but I was just trying to see how you
figured out that rendering was about 24 fps. Perhaps Avid showed that
at one point but the average (based on the figures you gave) would
have to be 15.91 and 9.15 respectively unless I'm missing something.

Thanks again, this is very helpful.

Brendan.

Hi, 

Maybe you should consider the new HT (hyper-threading) chip from Intel.

regards
vinods-ga