Upgrading a computer - 2 500gb in raid 0 or more ram which would speed up encoding movies w/ Gordian Knot?

Question

I use my computer a lot to encode dvd's to xvid but want to make it faster. I was wondering which of these two would encode movies faster using a program called godian knot. 2 500GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s in a raid 0 config, or should i upgrade my OCZ Platinum Revision 2GB 240-Pin DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) to 4GB

here are the stats on my computer:
stats: XFX MB-N590ASH9 Socket AM2 NVIDIA nForce 590 SLI MCP ATX AMD Motherboard AMD Athlon 64 X2 5600+ Windsor 2.8GHz 2 x 1MB L2 Cache Socket AM2 Processor OCZ Platinum Revision 2 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) XION Supernova XON-600F14R-201 ATX 600W Certified Power Supply Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD5000AAKS 500GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s

Thanks for reading all that - if you did :) - Shawn

when i encode now my processor is at about 50% and my pagefile goes to 1.2GB

physical mem total 2096620
available 1051256 and the system chache 1196044

Answer 1

Both upgrade would help a great deal, but 4GB only if you have 64bit Windows, otherwise just add another 2x512 in dual channel mode.

RAID-0 is dangerous if this is your only working, you have been warned.

Answer 2

Actually your computer will encode movies fast enough because there seems to be no bottlenecks. Also, even using an IDE drive will not bottleneck your system. So I mean upgrading you hard drive might not improve your conversion times.

Anyway, you mentioned that you only have 50% usage when converting movies..... That's bad..... It needs to be on 100%. I suggest you change or update your movie conversion program because it doesn't seem to support dual core. If it can support dual processing, your conversion time can be slashed by up to half.

Answer 3

Both will not give significant performance in encoding. Upgrade the Hard Drive into high performance ones. Upgrade the hard drive into Western Digital Raptor X (150GB). Although the price for 150GB is very expansive, but it worth it. Big capacity hard drive like 500GB or 1TB does not have high performance.