Processing power for DVD burning & upgrade options

[Charles]

I am looking into DVD burning movies. What's the current lowest processing power possible in Ghz for DVD burning nowadays?

I currently have a desktop with:

Asus TUSL2
1.2 Celeron 133 FSB
512MB memory 100Mhz
120Gig Maxtor 7200RPM
Viper 770 32MB Video Card
Plextor 12/10/32A
Lite-On 16x DVD-ROM
Enermax 350W P4 ready
I am running WinXP Professional

Also have a Dell Inspiron 8600 with:

P4 1.6 400 FSB
512MB memory 333Mhz
60Gig 7200 RPM drive
GeForce FX Go 5200 32MB
Combo CD-RW/DVD-ROM
Running WinXP Home.

As I see it my options for a DVD burner are:

1. NEC 3540A for the desktop @ $50.00
2. Dell Combo DVD-RW for the laptop @$200 from Dell(slower than the NEC by about half I believe), maybe $100 and change from ebay.

Another issue here is processing power. As I see it with the current processing power I have it would probably take me between 4 to 5 hours to burn a movie. Most economical option here for an upgrade would be to upgrade the Dell DVD-RW which uses P4@1.6Ghz. CPU wise I could upgrade the desktop with a motherboard, Cpu and memory to the 3+Ghz I suppose.
If I upgrade the desktop the question is upgrade it to what and how much?

As I understand there are new AGP's, PCI's and interfaces since I last kept up with technology in 2002.

Any suggestions, observations?

Thanks.

[heymrdj]

Its not really how much power the burner takes (although I recommend at least 1.4GHZ) but how long you're willing to wait for transcoding. My P4 2.8GHZ with Hyperthreading and 800 front side bus takes about 1 and a half hours to burn a movie. normally 50-60min. for transcoding and 20-30 min. to burn on my TDK 440N 4x DVD burner.

[RJ]

What's the current lowest processing power possible in Ghz for DVD burning nowadays?

About 300 to 500 MHz, I guess.

For DVD burning all you need is a fast hard drive (any 7200rpm hard drive will do that), and hard drive and DVD burner should be on separate channels. With DMA enabled the CPU is barely involved in the burning process.

As I see it with the current processing power I have it would probably take me between 4 to 5 hours to burn a movie.

Nope. With 4x it'll take 15 min, with 8x about 8 min, with 16x about 6 min.

Anything else is not burning. You probably referring to encoding/transcoding. Even then, with my old PIII 800 it was done in about 50 minutes (DVD Shrink).
My current P4 2.6 does that in about 20 min with DVD Shrink and deep analysis enabled.

RJ

[Charles]

Which burner would you choose in my situation, desktop @ $50 or laptop at $200?

[RJ]

I'd definitely upgrade the desktop. It's much cheaper and it should be more powerful. . . even though that laptop has a fast hard drive (usually laptops have slower drives).

RJ

[MaxRat]

I agree with RJ....But....

IDE transfer speeds and bus speed factor into the mix...

The pc in my sig rips and burns a complete movie (start to finish) in 6-7 minutes with the Nec 16x's burner...

Now My other pc has the same burner with a Athlon 2400 cpu (@ 266fsb) and the same movie takes 13 minutes start to finish....

Even just the burning phase alone both burning at 16x's one will in 3 minutes the other takes 5-6 minutes....weird...but...

Encoding is all about cpu speed and bus so....I would say a budget pc would do good...

[Charles]

What would be a good choice for a decent upgrade? Lets say motherboard, CPU and memory, taking in consideration I would keep the IDE interface.

This is what's currently in the desktop:
Asus TUSL2
1.2 Celeron 133 FSB
512MB memory 100Mhz
120Gig Maxtor 7200RPM
Viper 770 32MB Video Card
Plextor 12/10/32A
Lite-On 16x DVD-ROM
Enermax 350W P4 ready
I am running WinXP Professional

[MaxRat]

well .....

budget wise a AMD Sempron 2400-2600 (socket A) And a board by Asus, Abit, Biostar, Chaintech and Gigabyte...Ram....ddr3200 512 or 1gig (I prefer 1gig for dvd burning)

this would put you in the 12-13 minute rip and burn range....

If you have the hard drive and opticals you can buy the rest for under $200.00 buck at the EGG...