Overclocking and Premiere

[Jason Garrett]

I’ve recently built a new system with an i7 2600k and an Asrock P67 Extreme 4 Gen 3 board and I have tinkered with the overclocking just a little bit. The board has presets for overclocking actually that has been all that I have tried. I couldn’t get Premiere to encode without crashing while overclocked though.

Any suggestions? Is that out of the ordinary?

[Panagiotis Raris]

overclocking with generic settings is not recommended; tweak it and test. my rig was stable on prime95 as well as intel burn test v2 for hours at 4.2Ghz, but crashed no matter what until i backed it down to 4.0Ghz. i havent finished OC tests at 4.2, and i am basically planning on keeping it at 4.2 for editing.

overclocking for rock solid stability takes a while.

[Brett Delmage]

I'm running stable 4.43 GHz on Asus P8P67 with i2600k and 16 GB RAM.
My overclocking is just the standard Asus "one Step up" autotune "Fast", not even the fastest ;-)
I like stability.

I'm running IntelBurnTest V2.5 at the "Very High" stress level fine.

How is your cooling?

I have a Coolermaster V6 here which seems to work well enough in a coolish basement at 21C right now. I could use more heat from this computer :-) Time to do some more rendering :-)

I think I just got lucky with these parts. My i6 940 didn't overclock nearly as well.

Brett

[Jason Garrett]

I should be good on cooling; I didn’t notice it getting too hot – I opted for one of these on my build:
Newegg.com - ZALMAN CNPS9500 AT 2 Ball CPU Cooling Fan/Heatsink

Prettiest fan that I’ve ever seen actually – it’s almost like a little art piece.

The Asrock board has more tuning capacity than I have ever seen – my last custom build was probably around 2000? LOL I went with a retail machine on my last purchase - so, I’m a little overwhelmed by all the options of overclocking.

Is there anything specifically that I need to be looking at with Premiere encoding in mind? I’m not using overclocked memory – only 8 gigs for now. That shouldn’t be any factor in stability.

I actually think my hard drives might possibly be the bottleneck to be honest. My processor isn’t even near 100% while encoding.

[Jay West]

Originally Posted by Jason Garrett

I couldn’t get Premiere to encode without crashing while overclocked though.

From this statement, I assumed that PPro is encoding at stock speeds, but I just wanted to check to be sure. You do not get crashing at stcok speeds or do you know, yet? If you have not actually tested it at stock speeds (i.e., the board's the pre-set o/c turned off), see if you have the same problem.

Other than that, here are some suggestions for other things to look at (that is, to look at in addition to the points already made.)

The I7-2660k has a built-in overclock -- turbo mode -- that is supposed to allow it to be run at 3.8 ghz as a matter of course. I'm not familiar with the Asrock board, but there may be a switch or jumper on the board along with a bios setting to implement this. If it is not set, you might be getting a conflict which could produce a lock-up or crash.

Another thing to check is your power supply unit (PSU). Panagiotis has a recent post on some problems that he traced back to the PSU being not quite strong enough to handle the load imposed by his components and PPRO.

http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/adobe-cr...ly-pp-cs5.html


While your system strikes me as a little light on RAM for easy editing with PPro, that amount of RAM seems to me to be less likely to cause crashing and more likely to just plain make things slow, instead.

Have you checked the RAM modules to make sure you do not have a bad one. (Some ASUS motherboards have a RAM checking utility; maybe your Asrock does, too?) Similarly, a slow set of hard disks (I'm assuming you are keeping all the data and scratch files away from the system drive) is more likely to impact performance by slowing things down rather than crashing the system.

When the encodes crash, are you using hardware MPE or software MPE? What graphics card are you using?

Have you tested the encode problem with more than one project? If this is all with one project, you might try cleaning the cache (under Edit -- . Preferences --. Media) and deleting all render files (under Sequence). Then, re-render and try the encoding again. Sometimes, this helps.

Finally, on cooling, when you say you did not notice the system getting too hot, were you using a temperature monitoring utility or were you working from an impression (such as putting your hand the exhaust air stream)? You may have a good cooler on the CPU, but CPU or the surrounding chipset might be overheating under load. With my previous mobo and CPU, everything had been fine for months, and then I started to get lock-ups and crashes about four or five minutes into an encode. i switched on the temperature monitoring utility that came with the mobo even though everything seemed fine, I found that the CPU was quickly going above 80° C even though the system mnitor showed that the CPU cores were not maxed out. Basically, my heretofore reliable CPU was starting to burn out under some rather mild overclocking. By the time I caught the problem, the CPU was dying. Every CPU and system is a bit different . Sometimes, two otherwise identical CPUs will react differently to overclocing. One may take it and another may not.

[Brett Delmage]

Originally Posted by Jason Garrett

Prettiest fan that I’ve ever seen actually – it’s almost like a little art piece.

Yes. The Sandy Bridge chips are great - they don't make too much waste heat and many decent coolers will work fine.

The Asrock board has more tuning capacity than I have ever seen – my last custom build was probably around 2000? LOL I went with a retail machine on my last purchase - so, I’m a little overwhelmed by all the options of overclocking.

No surprise! There are a LOT of things one can tune on the new CPUs. It could take a full week just to try them all! That's fun and all, and will get you the last bit of juice, but the BIOS overclocking settings and add-on SW that often comes with a motherboard are useful to get most of the way there. Especially if you don't have that much time.

Is there anything specifically that I need to be looking at with Premiere encoding in mind? I’m not using overclocked memory – only 8 gigs for now. That shouldn’t be any factor in stability.

The suggestion to check your memory is a good one. I highly recommend Memtest86+, and it's free/libre software: Memtest86+ - Advanced Memory Diagnostic Tool

I actually think my hard drives might possibly be the bottleneck to be honest. My processor isn’t even near 100% while encoding.

[/QUOTE]

Bu sure to check out this free PP benchmarking SW. It can tell you which areas on your computer need work first, and how your computer compares to other systems. One of its authors, Harm Millaard, is active in the forums here and also the Adobe forums.

Good luck!

Brett
PPBM5 Benchmark

[Harm Millaard]

On the Adobe site, there is a specific hardware site Adobe Forums: Forum: Hardware Forum

If you go to the Overview tab, there is a bunch of articles under the Hardware FAQ list. One of them is completely about overclocking the i7-920. It is not about overclocking the i7-2600 or the i7-2600K, but it may show you what to pay attention to when you are looking for a fast overclock and where the pitfalls may be that prevent you from getting it stable.

One of the things I have noticed with using the manufacturer's overclock settings is that they raise voltages far more than you would like. Higher voltages mean higher temps and lower life-expectancy. All are bad for your system. Another thing to watch carefully is the QPI/DRAM, ICH and IOH voltages. These can have a major impact on the stability of your overclock.

Hope this information can help you achieve a good overclock.

[Jason Garrett]

Originally Posted by Jay West

From this statement, I assumed that PPro is encoding at stock speeds, but I just wanted to check to be sure. You do not get crashing at stcok speeds or do you know, yet? If you have not actually tested it at stock speeds (i.e., the board's the pre-set o/c turned off), see if you have the same problem.

I rendered a project successfully with it at stock speed – no problems. I was a little alarmed that after tinkering with it trying to get the project under 25gigs after rendering (this is fairly new to me) – I tried a few of the overclocking settings and it crashed and then reset it back to stock and my encode time shot up from 5.5 hours to around 8 hours. Something maybe didn’t get set back? Not sure. Maybe the final encode settings required a little more time – not really sure. I was toying with bitrates in a VBR 2 Pass encode trying to get it to fit – I’m not even sure if that estimate it gives might have been a better way to do that. I didn’t compare how accurate it was – I was sort of playing around anyway.

Originally Posted by Jay West

When the encodes crash, are you using hardware MPE or software MPE? What graphics card are you using? .

I’m using the GeForce GTX 550 Ti – it was out of consideration for price - trying to build a machine as cost effectively as possible. I have the trick applied to unlock it for hardware Mercury Engine enabled.

Originally Posted by Jay West

Have you tested the encode problem with more than one project? If this is all with one project, you might try cleaning the cache (under Edit -- . Preferences --. Media) and deleting all render files (under Sequence). Then, re-render and try the encoding again. Sometimes, this helps.

Yes, it was my very first Bluray project that made me nearly fall over when I put it up to encode on my old computer – it came back saying EIGHT DAYS to encode! LOL thanks for the tip – I will look into that.

Originally Posted by Jay West

Finally, on cooling, when you say you did not notice the system getting too hot, were you using a temperature monitoring utility or were you working from an impression (such as putting your hand the exhaust air stream)? You may have a good cooler on the CPU, but CPU or the surrounding chipset might be overheating under load. With my previous mobo and CPU, everything had been fine for months, and then I started to get lock-ups and crashes about four or five minutes into an encode. i switched on the temperature monitoring utility that came with the mobo even though everything seemed fine, I found that the CPU was quickly going above 80° C even though the system mnitor showed that the CPU cores were not maxed out. Basically, my heretofore reliable CPU was starting to burn out under some rather mild overclocking. By the time I caught the problem, the CPU was dying. Every CPU and system is a bit different . Sometimes, two otherwise identical CPUs will react differently to overclocing. One may take it and another may not.

The Asrock board has a pretty impressive utility with all temperatures reported for cpu and the board itself – not to mention a graphical interface for overclocking in Windows that I gather is a fairly new implementation – I know my last custom build was all bios accessed overclocking, but that was eons ago. My case selection is very well ventilated too – it’s got two built in fans and the option for several more if needed. Antec Three Hundred Black Steel ATX – very pleased with the build quality of that box for the money by the way. Even has a little of a Mac knockoff look to it – lol

Thank you all for your suggestions – I will check out your recommendations. Much appreciated!

[Jason Garrett]

A quick update; I haven’t tinkered with this a great deal, but I did use the preconfigured overclock settings for 4.2ghz and I seem to be stable for encoding with that. I wish I could say that it seemed like it improved performance, but that didn’t happen. Not significantly nor have I done anything other than throw an encode of a project at it and see what the time estimates are.

It’s holding around 65c or less and I see the max temp for the processor is 72c I believe. I’m debating if I can’t find any significant improvement if it’s worth any additional heat to the $300+ processor – can’t say that it’s making additional heat at this point though.

I might be better off trying to find a multimedia benchmarking program to get a better gauge on any actual performance enhancement – if hard drives, memory, are the bottleneck anyway, etc.

[Jason Garrett]

Originally Posted by Brett Delmage

Bu sure to check out this free PP benchmarking SW. It can tell you which areas on your computer need work first, and how your computer compares to other systems. One of its authors, Harm Millaard, is active in the forums here and also the Adobe forums.

Good luck!

Brett
PPBM5 Benchmark

Will do! Thanks for the post on this!