Minimum hardware spec for pc with DVD writer?

[Kev']

Hi, does anyone know if there is a minimum processor / harddrive spec for a machine with a DVD writer. I have a writer on the way, and have some older bits laying round from previous upgrades and failures. I was thinking of using my old server as a dedicated machine, dual p3 550, 512 meg ram, scsi lvd cheeta (10,000 rpm) crappy video card (which may be an issue) and win 2k pro. This was a good machine in its day, it's not being used, would it handle burning to dvd-r's at even times 1 or 2? I'll be using dvd squeeze, will it be too slow for this. Any advice would be appreciated, obviously I'd like to use it, but if isn't going to be a go I'd rather not make a pile of coasters - and just dig around for soething more suitable. Thanks in advance.

[bailey]

the dual cpu's will not be of any use.
that is going to be a very slow system for burnning dvd's
with a 3 gig cpu and dvd-x-copy it takes 30 min to read and 30 min to burn, so with your sustem it would take a lot longer.

I would recommend something a lot faster, and a bit more ram would help too,

[Kev']

Thanks for that, so what it the relationship between cpu speed and writing speed? Am I correct in thinking that the cpu speed is only part of the equation, maybe the manipulation part, but the reading and writing are done by the dvd drive/s themselves. So an increase from say 550mhz to 3gighhz would not be like 6 times faster, or would it? Sorry for appearing a bit slow, like my intended machine, I'm just wondering do you have to compress from the dvd reader, or can it be straight copied, manipulated and then recorded. What I'm trying to sork out is if the reading and writing part are just a factor of the dvd drives. If so, does that mean only the manipulation part would be cpu specific, or am I over simplifying?

[RJ]

There is no relationship between CPU and writing speed, nor will the video card be of any issue. The hard drive has to provide the necessary data rate and you'll be able to burn the DVD. Now a 10000rpm SCSI card, well, most people, me included, don't even have such a powerful drive

1x DVD is 1353 KB/s

The fastest right now is 8x. Means 10824 KB/s or 10,6 MB/s.
Even 7200rpm drives can do more than twice of that

You are right, only the manipulating part are CPU dependent, because you need the CPU for the encoding/decoding process.

So any current Pentium 4 EE or Athlon 64, coupled with the newest WD Raptor drives won't do any better burning than your nice dual Pentium III 550 with the 10000rpm hard drive. Even if it was a single PIII with 7200rpm hard drive it would be fine.

RJ

[Kev']

Thanks RJ, I'll stick with my old server as a pure dvd writer, and see how it holds up. I've built killer seti machines, that knowledge might help. This will be an interesting comparision between the new and the old, I think the frequency wars are a bit of that. It looks like I'm in the old, don't have the money camp, and any help would be cool...