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Postby klinky » Wed Jun 18, 2003 10:44 am

Maybe if your tests were more scientific :p. But I think it's rather obvious that a 1.4Ghz CPU is going to lose out to a 2.4Ghz CPU, even if it's a Pentium4 2.4Ghz.

Video card wouldn't have any impact on compressing, or well anything to do with video editing either :|
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Postby dwchang » Wed Jun 18, 2003 1:29 pm

klinky wrote:Maybe if your tests were more scientific :p. But I think it's rather obvious that a 1.4Ghz CPU is going to lose out to a 2.4Ghz CPU, even if it's a Pentium4 2.4Ghz.

Video card wouldn't have any impact on compressing, or well anything to do with video editing either :|


Not that I wanna dig this old thread up again, but one thing I'd like to state (as I have MANY times) is that speed != performance. It's QUITE possible a 1.4 Ghz CPU can beat a 2.4 Ghz CPU. If it executes more instructions per cycle and more efficiently, it would be it very easily.

HOWEVER, from my knowledge of Apple CPUs, that's not the case. Given, a 1.4 Ghz Apple would spank a 1.4 Ghz P4 (which doesn't exist...just extrapolating) since it is a more efficient core.

As for the statement about never buying a MAC, you should keep in mind that the best editing software is on Apples and NOT PCs (Final Cut Pro 3.0).
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Postby alternatefutures » Wed Jun 18, 2003 1:52 pm

dwchang wrote:
klinky wrote:As for the statement about never buying a MAC, you should keep in mind that the best editing software is on Apples and NOT PCs


Nope, Avid XPress Pro is on both, ditto with Media Composer (if you want best-of-the-best). If you're looking for bang for your buck, then Vegas is only on Windows.
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Postby dwchang » Wed Jun 18, 2003 2:02 pm

alternatefutures wrote:Nope, Avid XPress Pro is on both, ditto with Media Composer (if you want best-of-the-best). If you're looking for bang for your buck, then Vegas is only on Windows.


Really? Didn't know. All I know is that FCP is better than Premiere which is the tool of choice here (as you know). So what is this program and what makes it so special?
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Postby klinky » Wed Jun 18, 2003 2:03 pm

Well, maybe I should have suggested that a G4 1.4Ghz is not going to outperform a 2.4Ghz CPU. When comparing CPUs to see which one is "better designed" I would think it better to pit two equally clocked cpus together than one that has a 1Ghz "advantage". Of course one could also suggest that they should be pitted against each other on the basis of cost. I am not sure how much a G4 1.4Ghz cpu costs though :P.

But basically saying you tried a 2.4Ghz P4 against a G4 1.4Ghz, does not actually mean the 1.4Ghz G4 sucks. Though I do like the x86 platform better. Also he left out other things such as the video formats he was exporting to. Then the mentioning of graphic cards playing a part in the performance of compressing lead me to see that maybe his validity as a benchmarker is suspect.

As for best video editing software available. Final Cut Pro is known as the "defacto". But many packages are coming out for the PC which are starting to rival many of the long-time Mac only solutions.

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Postby alternatefutures » Wed Jun 18, 2003 2:17 pm

FCP is only the best NLE under $1000. Now, the question is does it's $999 pricetag mean it is $500 better than Vegas? Unless all you've ever known is FCP, definately not. Is Avid Xpress Pro $700 better than FCP... probably not, but if you're thinking of buying a high-end Mac with FCP you could buy an equally powerful PC with Xpress for an equitable price. Media Composer is a hardware solution, and I'll let you guess how much that one costs, but it still qualifies as an NLE (and if someone offered to exchange your Mac running FCP with a Media Composer Adrenaline, you'd be well advised to accept) You can read about Vegas and Xpress with the following links;

http://www.sonicfoundry.com/products/vegasfamily.asp
http://www.avid.com/products/xpresspro/
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Postby Edo » Wed Jun 18, 2003 4:09 pm

Since my last post I've noticed you guys mistakenly didn't read my whole post. IF U READ CAREFULLY!!!! I said a "DUAL 1.4GHZ" Mac system over my 2.4GHz P4, that means the MAC had a 400 MHz increase over min and still lost by half!

I must state again! the MAC CPU's "ARE" slower than PC type CPU's! ie. Pentium and Athlons, If you don't belive me check out some stats on google.com. MAC's are good but there is way too much hype. Remember the only reason why MAC's are fast is because of the OS configuration and programing andnot the CPU or BUS.
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Postby dwchang » Thu Jun 19, 2003 1:35 pm

Edo wrote:Since my last post I've noticed you guys mistakenly didn't read my whole post. IF U READ CAREFULLY!!!! I said a "DUAL 1.4GHZ" Mac system over my 2.4GHz P4, that means the MAC had a 400 MHz increase over min and still lost by half!


First off you are VERY incorrect in this statement. A dual 1.4 Ghz does not equate to a 2.8 Ghz Computer (i.e. 2*1.4=2.8). A dual 1.4 Ghz means that it can take in approximately twice the amount of instructions since it divides that tasks between the two processors. It DOES NOT mean that it runs the instructions twice as fast since a single instruction will still operate at 1.4 Ghz.

You're probably asking if it takes twice as many instructions, wouldn't that mean it is equivalently running at twice the frequency and the simple answer is no. I could explain with a great deal about architecture, instruction issuing, squashing instructions and so on, but that wouldn't be that pertinent.

Suffice to say a Dual 1.4 Ghz can EASILY be slower than a single CPU 2.4 Ghz.

Edo wrote:I must state again! the MAC CPU's "ARE" slower than PC type CPU's! ie. Pentium and Athlons, If you don't belive me check out some stats on google.com. MAC's are good but there is way too much hype. Remember the only reason why MAC's are fast is because of the OS configuration and programing andnot the CPU or BUS.


You are correct that PCs are faster than MACs, however the architectures are entirely different so you can not make a general Ghz argument (like you made above). A 1.4 Ghz MAC != 1.4 Ghz PC. As said, the architectures are different and thus you can not measure their performance as 1:1.

As for the reason MACs are fast, it is NOT only because of programming and whatnot which you are implying. Their CPU is elegantly designed, although not as efficient as some PCs (namely the Athlon and NOT the P4, which everyone knows about through this thread), and thus it performs fairly well at the frequency as I stated.

As I have stated numerous times:

Performance = Speed (frequency) * instruction/clock (efficiency)

The problem with MACs (somewhat Athlons) is that their speed is very low (i.e. 1.4 Ghz vs. 3 Ghz P4s). Their architecture is pretty sound, but they can't get the other part of the equation (speed).

By the same respects, people may argue Athlons are the same since they are only at 2.25 Ghz, however the architecture is more efficient and thus similar/comprable performance to 3 Ghz P4s. HOWEVER, as you can see even with as efficient a core as an Athlon, they still lag in frequency quite a bit and thus the overall performance is not that good.

As stated, it is NOT just the software.
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Postby the Black Monarch » Thu Jun 19, 2003 3:53 pm

dwchang wrote:
the Black Monarch wrote:Since this is a powerbook-oriented thread, what are your thoughts on Apple chips?


They're slow...?


Once again, dw has blown us all away with amazing technical detail.
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Postby dwchang » Thu Jun 19, 2003 4:21 pm

the Black Monarch wrote:
dwchang wrote:
the Black Monarch wrote:Since this is a powerbook-oriented thread, what are your thoughts on Apple chips?


They're slow...?


Once again, dw has blown us all away with amazing technical detail.


You never asked for any. I stated what my thoughts were...I think they're slow...

Ass!
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Postby Edo » Thu Jun 19, 2003 6:16 pm

Okay your right to an extent, none the less PC would still be better than a MAC as for you saying it's not all software. I'm afraid your wrong. I've taken classes in computer enginering and electronic design for 3 years now, I know how and what goes throught the CPU and what not. Like you said as well, I'm not going into detail with it. Nor do I know all the details since I never got really deep with MAC's.

So here's the deal, we'll just end it here. Nothing more nothing less. Many people battle over which is better and what works what. I'm rather tired of batteling constantly. I've won many times only because my professors new the true reasons why and backed me up. I trust my proffesors and believe them, In the long run what matters is; is it worth the money to get a MAC Laptop. I say nay due to productivity time when you can get a way faster computer.

Remember MAC's are backwards in the computer world. Instead of software going with the hardware, the hardware goes with the software. This is the main reason why you truly can't customize a MAC, and is also why the programing code is now open to the public like UNIX and Linux, unlike Windows.

I guess you can say in other words you won this battle.
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Postby dwchang » Thu Jun 19, 2003 6:22 pm

Edo wrote:Okay your right to an extent, none the less PC would still be better than a MAC as for you saying it's not all software. I'm afraid your wrong. I've taken classes in computer enginering and electronic design for 3 years now, I know how and what goes throught the CPU and what not.


Uhm...I hate to use this card, but...I'm a Computer Engineer at AMD and thus know quite a bit about this. I also have a degree in this field from the #3 college in this field and work at one of the computer companies.

As for software, let me clarify something...software obviously DOES have something to do with it, but the reason (to me) MACs are so slow is because they are using an outdated chip design (fine I said it) that is not very scalable. This is the reason they went with two processors instead of one as a standard for high performance. They can't push their processor any further.

So YES, software DOES matter in that it CAN make up for SOME of these defficiencies, HOWEVER that doesn't change the fact that MACs aren't easy to scale in performance and are outdated with their G4 processors. This might be why they are going to (probably) use the PowerPC5 for their next computers.

Make sense?
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Postby Edo » Thu Jun 19, 2003 6:45 pm

I hate you :? LOL

Yah I have heard about that PowerPC5 I would like to see it.

I see know, that's could understand. Ok. You win.



:P so tell me which do you prefer AMD or Pentium? :P
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Postby dwchang » Thu Jun 19, 2003 7:01 pm

Edo wrote::P so tell me which do you prefer AMD or Pentium? :P


Cyrix :-P
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Postby klinky » Thu Jun 19, 2003 7:27 pm

Edo, I think your professor suck if they back up some of your ideas.

You come in with the wrong idea about video cards affect on video editing. Then you suggest that OS needs to be running on both cpus for it to work properly. That on a Dual G4, both cpus are treated as one. Which is not the case.

I suggested in a scenario as to the reason why the G4 was slower was because the compressor was using only one thread on one cpu. Thus it was not actually splitting the process between the two cpus. It would then be obvious that a 1.4Ghz G4 is going to fail against a 2.4Ghz P4.

You said this was not possible because the CPUs *ALWAYS* work together and that the software makes it so.


Earlier in the conversation I pointed out that a likely scenario for dual processor acheiving someone a performance boost was the idea that one CPU could be compressing/decompresing video while another applies a effect or transition on it. You thought this was a horrible idea. You explictly told me this was not how it worked. You referenced your amazing years of college work and mentioned that you had done battles like this before and had always come out the victor.

You also pointed me to this website:

http://www.apple.com/powermac/processor.html

Then told me to look at the graph alone. That would prove both processors worked as one. The graph is a completely synthetic benchmark that can easily be split over two cpus.

I also decided to read the darn text and if you look on the right side. What do we have here?

Image

This is almost exactly what I was saying previously. There is no mention of OS X merging two cpus into one either. It mentions alot about using amazingly efficent multi-threading. But multithreading is not merging two cpus into one.

Alot of times in dual CPU solutions, the largest real-world performance boost is about %180 of a normal CPU, you're most likely not going to notice a %200 performance increase due to various limitations of multi-processor computing.

The only thing I can think of on a consumer level that does anything like what you're talking about is hyperthreading from Intel, which does the reverse. Splitting one cpu into two virtual cpus.

So, I am not sure what your professors are talking about if they said you're right. Either they're crazy or you weren't listening.


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