I'm struggling now with some problem, which apparently can be resolved only by upgrading, preferably to dualcore. However dualcore is out of the question now - I prefer to direct money elsewhere.
The cheapest high performance option available to me now is P4 3GHz from someone (Prescott, 1MB L2, S478). New Sempron or cheapest Athlon64 is second, perhaps close enough to consider one of them instead P4 (and they have big plus of giving much bigger future options...)
However...I'm not entirelly sure such singlecore CPUs are enough. Even when CPU utilisation is around 50% on AthlonXP 1700+, it still can't do what I want - watching TV/Xvid/Divx/DVD completelly fluently while, at the same time, capturing in background video stream. Perhaps both of these tasks are just too "realtime" to handle switching between them efficiently, I don't know. But...I wonder whether singlecore CPUs with more advanced architecture, as is the case with P4 and K8, can handle this.
So I request help in determing that from those of you that have those CPUs. Yes, whole "benchmark" is easy/quick to set up and perform, details below. No, I don't have acces to such CPUs, except to said P4...but the whole computer/OS is generally to misconfigured/fubared to give an answer (suffice to say...it failed the test; but I wouldn't say it can do standard things which it should be able to do without problem)
Getting required software
For capture I'm using VirtualDub, probably the most efficient and lightweight app for something like this. I "compress" captured video using Huffyuv. Basically everything at standard settings.
When both things are installed, run VirtualDub, select File -> capture AVI, and in new window you should see preview from your webcam (if not, I guess menu "device" can help). In "video" menu set resolution to 640x480 or similar (I believe it's in video -> format, but can't check it here). From video -> compression choose huffyuv. And in video menu choose "no display", it's not needed, since VirtualDub will run in background. Also in audio menu choose some reasonable mp3 option/etc. After that choose menu Capture -> capture video, and VirtualDub should start capturing.
And now, the true test. Run some decent quality Xvid/Divx movie (personally I use ffdshow to watch them, preferably with postprocessing and warpsharp, but that's not much of a difference, I guess). Is it, in your opinion, exactly as fluent as when you're watching it without anything in the background?
Thanks in advance.
The cheapest high performance option available to me now is P4 3GHz from someone (Prescott, 1MB L2, S478). New Sempron or cheapest Athlon64 is second, perhaps close enough to consider one of them instead P4 (and they have big plus of giving much bigger future options...)
However...I'm not entirelly sure such singlecore CPUs are enough. Even when CPU utilisation is around 50% on AthlonXP 1700+, it still can't do what I want - watching TV/Xvid/Divx/DVD completelly fluently while, at the same time, capturing in background video stream. Perhaps both of these tasks are just too "realtime" to handle switching between them efficiently, I don't know. But...I wonder whether singlecore CPUs with more advanced architecture, as is the case with P4 and K8, can handle this.
So I request help in determing that from those of you that have those CPUs. Yes, whole "benchmark" is easy/quick to set up and perform, details below. No, I don't have acces to such CPUs, except to said P4...but the whole computer/OS is generally to misconfigured/fubared to give an answer (suffice to say...it failed the test; but I wouldn't say it can do standard things which it should be able to do without problem)
Getting required software
For capture I'm using VirtualDub, probably the most efficient and lightweight app for something like this. I "compress" captured video using Huffyuv. Basically everything at standard settings.
When both things are installed, run VirtualDub, select File -> capture AVI, and in new window you should see preview from your webcam (if not, I guess menu "device" can help). In "video" menu set resolution to 640x480 or similar (I believe it's in video -> format, but can't check it here). From video -> compression choose huffyuv. And in video menu choose "no display", it's not needed, since VirtualDub will run in background. Also in audio menu choose some reasonable mp3 option/etc. After that choose menu Capture -> capture video, and VirtualDub should start capturing.
And now, the true test. Run some decent quality Xvid/Divx movie (personally I use ffdshow to watch them, preferably with postprocessing and warpsharp, but that's not much of a difference, I guess). Is it, in your opinion, exactly as fluent as when you're watching it without anything in the background?
Thanks in advance.
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