New CPU or video card?

[mike_tee_vee]

I'd like to improve my speeds in BD25 back-ups. I'm averaging about 3.5MB/s in normal quality, and 1.0 MB/s in high quality.

My specs are:
Windows XP Pro
Core 2 Quad Q6600 (2.4ghz)
nVidia 8500GT

I have about $400 to spend this year. Performance wise, would this be better spent on a new video card, or towards a new CPU?

[btufail]

For that money, try both?

[W&B]

For that money, try both?

Not sure that cpu would be an upgrade considering it's a dual core and the op has a quad but newegg has a i7 920 quad for $280 (give or take last time I checked).

EDIT: forgot to mention, if the op does upgrade the cpu they should make sure it's compatible with the motherboard they have.

[mike_tee_vee]

Not sure that cpu would be an upgrade considering it's a dual core and the op has a quad but newegg has a i7 920 quad for $280 (give or take last time I checked).

EDIT: forgot to mention, if the op does upgrade the cpu they should make sure it's compatible with the motherboard they have.

So in this case, pound for pound, would a GTX 460 deliver greater performance gains over a Core i7 processor?

[W&B]

I'll let someone more comfortable making hardware comparisons answer that, I just wanted to point out that your cpu is most likely faster than the one linked to newegg. Someone with more experience will jump in here and answer better than I can.

[W&B]

I did upgrade from a dual core wolfsdale 3.16ghz and a GTS 250 to what's in my sig and my new rig smokes the old dual core one but that doesn't exactly help answer your question lol.

[srb01]

I think you need to take several items into consideration before making this purchase. Reading/following the posts, it seems that more and more people, myself included are having/had problems with Coreavc and Cuda, and DVX with audio sunc, and video glitches and other problems. The programers are telling us to switch all codecs to software, killing any chance of GPU off-loading. This isn't new, it's been going on now for months. Only the programmers can tell us when this problem is going to be rectified, IF EVER.
So to get any speed in your BluRay processing, for the interum I'd buy the biggest, baddest 6 or/more core CPU I could get, and forget about any GPU off-loading. Just get the re-processing done with CPU power. It's too bad, we are now back to having paid for a program that's no faster or better for processing, than one we can get for free. (The ripping portion, of course is a different matter). No disrespect, just stating the obvious.

[maineman]

Hi Mike,

Although you may be doing this already, it's not evident from your post.

Please do not compress at all on the initial rip from the BD disc.
This will take an inordinate amount of time and will cause unnecessary wear and tear on your BD drive.

Just to give you a point of comparison...
I'm running a pretty average core i7 build (I built it Oct '09) with:
Intel Core i7-920 Bloomfield 2.66GHz 4 x 256KB L2 Cache 8MB L3 Cache LGA 1366 130W Quad-Core
EVGA 896-P3-1257-AR GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 Superclocked Edition 896MB 448-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 .

Nothing fancy mind you, but seeing typical times of 12-15 MB/s
I'm ripping Inception (R1) as I type
and looking at 14 MB/s with these settings:

[btufail]

Not sure that cpu would be an upgrade considering it's a dual core and the op has a quad but newegg has a i7 920 quad for $280 (give or take last time I checked).

EDIT: forgot to mention, if the op does upgrade the cpu they should make sure it's compatible with the motherboard they have.

Yeah I considered that. But for the money he had I figured it was the only logical choice. Almost all of the i-7 processors were around $350-400 alone. & from what I heard some of the i-5's are pretty fast. But it was just a suggestion.

[W&B]

I understand and for all I know it may be faster. Actually I looked on newegg and they don't even offer the i7 920s anymore, simply not listed there anywhere. The 950 is the lowest i7 available for $294.

[DharmaBummed69]

You may also want to consider that if you upgrade to a new CPU of the LGA 1156 or 1366 variety you will be looking at buying a new motherboard or your going to be pretty disappointed when you try to drop a LGA 1156 or 1366 into a LGA 775 motherboard. Also possibly RAM also if you don't already have DDR3. You may think about overclocking your current CPU. I have my Q9300 overclocked to 3.30GHz and get 3-6 MBps on normal and around 2MBps on High Quality. Depends on the codec used on the movie.

[sjm992]

Please do not compress at all on the initial rip from the BD disc.

Do you rip to ISO on your initial rip to the HD or some other?
Stuart

[maineman]

Do you rip to ISO on your initial rip to the HD or some other?
Stuart

Well, I usually don't rip to .ISO, but
yup, my initial rip is
BD disc ---> uncompressed ---> hdd (BD50) (Main Movie, Full Disc or the soon-to-be-released, Customize)

Generally, I archive to hdds and watch my flicks via my media player.

In any case, my next rip is to a hdd or can be burned to a disc

Already ripped hdd files (BD50) ---> compress to ----> BD25, BD9, BD5 (I never use BD5) or convert to standard dvd9 (BD to DVD).

[mike_tee_vee]

Well, I usually don't rip to .ISO, but
yup, my initial rip is
BD disc ---> uncompressed ---> hdd (BD50) (Main Movie, Full Disc or the soon-to-be-released, Customize)

Generally, I archive to hdds and watch my flicks via my media player.

In any case, my next rip is to a hdd or can be burned to a disc

Already ripped hdd files (BD50) ---> compress to ----> BD25, BD9, BD5 (I never use BD5) or convert to standard dvd9 (BD to DVD).

maineman,

What media player do you use to watch your rips? Are the menus functional? I'm assuming it connects to your TV?

[Racem22]

Well, I know maineman uses an Argosy player model # HV335T and I'm guessing it can play menus and such, but he will have to give you more details. I know it's definitely a good player, if you're looking to get one.