question! [AMD64 vs P4]

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question! [AMD64 vs P4]

Postby LovEnPeaCE » Sat Aug 21, 2004 10:16 pm

ok guys, i need to know if an amd 64 is better for video editing than a p4.....i don't want any crap saying well personally, no flaming, and no gayness, i just want the facts.....can anybody help me?
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Postby Scintilla » Sat Aug 21, 2004 10:32 pm

Which Athlon 64 or Opteron, and which P4?
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Postby Scintilla » Sat Aug 21, 2004 10:41 pm

Okay, I admit I should have been a little more helpful.

The benchmarks I've seen have Intel chips <i>generally</i> doing better than comparable AMD chips at video and audio <i>encoding,</i> but it would really depend on which specific chips you want compared.

Plus, there's so many other factors to be considered (RAM, HD, etc.).
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Postby madmag9999 » Sat Aug 21, 2004 11:31 pm

the amd64 with a 64bit os and a 64 bit program will out preform the p4 but the factors Scintilia metiond are very importan becouse a 2800 64 bit chip and a 3.2ghz p4 might do nearly the same. and the hdd ram and other stuff are also important factors, for video editing id sugets 1gig ram+ and a 7200rpm 8mb cache hard drive.
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Postby LovEnPeaCE » Sun Aug 22, 2004 6:29 pm

well the prescott p4, and both athlon 64's (fx and nonfx), excluding the opteron, the ram would be as you said, at least 1 gb(dual channel on p4, same on fx, single channel on plain 64)
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Postby madmag9999 » Sun Aug 22, 2004 7:15 pm

the fx will pwn the p4. and last time i heard the prescott had major heat problems. id go with the amd 64 fx if u have the cash non fx if u dont. but i wouldnt buy intel.
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Postby LovEnPeaCE » Sun Aug 22, 2004 7:19 pm

yaya the prescott did have heat problems, but thats mostly for losers who use the stock cooling :-p besides, with proper cooling/airflow, it shouldnt be that much of a problem unless you really want to keep your temperatures really low
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Postby LovEnPeaCE » Sun Aug 22, 2004 7:20 pm

keep in mind, that we're talking about video encoding/rendering here, as in really BIG files
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Postby madmag9999 » Sun Aug 22, 2004 7:47 pm

yea i know. and even w/o stock cooling the prescot will run hot and the hotter it runs the worse it preforms so unless ur gona water cool it i wouldnt suggest it.
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Postby dwchang » Mon Aug 23, 2004 12:58 pm

I'll try to answer this objectively, but keep in mind I work for AMD.

As Scintilla added, P4's generally do *slightly* better in encoding audio and video. I will admit that much. At the same time, the margin is very slim and in the most recents ones I saw, it was nearly identical (for a slightly "slower" Athlon).

Now that's one side of the picture, but I think it really comes down to one thing...the future. Getting a P4 may seem good since it's slightly better, but the next generation of computing will be 64-bit and we will be running 64-bit software. It's not as far off as you may think. In fact, 64-bit Windows is already done from what I hear (I won't get into WHY it's not released yet :-/).

With that said, buying a 32-bit P4 is kind of dumb. You're buying something that will effectively be obsolete in less than two years. Intel themselves are already going the X86-64-bit route (followers :-/), so it's not like they haven't said that 32-bit is the past.

So although the P4 may do slightly better at the moment, come a year or two, you'll be unable to run 64-bit applications. As madmag said, you're trying to compare a 64-bit processor to a 32-bit processor while running 32-bit software. We don't know how the Athlon-64 will perform with 64-bit native software, but if Linux (which has been 64 bit for a long time) benchamrks are any indication, it points to positive gains.

In any case, I suggest going for the *cheaper*, yet more future-looking Athlon-64 instead of the prescott that may run slightly better, but is more expensive...that much gain and no future isn't worth it imo.
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Postby VicBond007 » Mon Aug 23, 2004 8:34 pm

I've built quite a few machines for video editors before, so I'll try to shed some light on this subject.

AthlonFX will 0wn anything out there right now, hand's down. That being said, know that the "cheap as hell" price for an OEM FX-51 is $740 for just the CPU. With that investment, you're not only buying kickass performance now, but when 64 bit really works it's way into the home market (I give it about 18 months. MS has got their end taken care of, it's mostly waiting for the hardware support from everything else, and of course apps), you'll get a nice performance boost from that.

The Athlon64 is praised a lot on the interweb for things like "OMG Doom3 SO FASTZ0R!" and I won't deny it. I'll put an A64 in a gaming rig and not think twice about it. Problem comes around when you try to do real work. Having the onboard memory controller definately has it's advantages, but it still presents only single channel memory access. When encoding/decoding, memory bandwidth is extremely important. Fast hard drives are nice, but they'll only help in writing your final video to disk, and quite frankly, that's gona take a while regardless of what you have, so you might as well grab a meal or something while you wait. You're gonna spend 90% of your time ACTUALLY EDITING and the A64 comes up rather short in the performance department here.

My advice right now is to stay away from the Prescotts. Their core is more mature (I made a rhyme that time!) and they are theoretically marginally better performers than last year's Northwood cores, however they run very hot, and the available motherboards right now are nothing short of problematic, Southbridge recalls or not. If you don't want to sell your reproductive organs in exchange for performance, I recommend a P4 "C" (Northwood) with a motherboard running the i875 chipset (Asus and ABit are my two top choices for that chipset). Invest in a nice HSF (Zalman CNSP7000a-AlCu) and get a cheap P4 (2.4/2.6) and overclock it up to 250FSB or beyond (provided your RAM can take the beating. Using CPU/RAM ratios KILL editing performance). The performance you'll get while editing is unrivaled by anything running under $700 a chip. for memory, 512MB of dual channel pc4000 is good, in fact that's what I use now, though once you get hot and heavy into After Effects, you may run into problems (like me!) where you'll get frames that will not render because they'll exceed 300MB/frame due to the complexity of the scene. 1GB RAM is very good, if you're willing to pay.

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Postby madmag9999 » Mon Aug 23, 2004 8:46 pm

iv read and seen on other ppls systems that dule channel memory does not up the preformance all that much. and like dw said the 32bit systems will be gone in about a year and a half, so id say u should go with a A64bit 2800 or 3000 with one gig of ddr 3200 and a fast hdd.
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Postby Scintilla » Mon Aug 23, 2004 9:16 pm

Isn't it also true that AMD will be phasing out Socket 754 in 2005?
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Postby dwchang » Mon Aug 23, 2004 9:23 pm

Scintilla wrote:Isn't it also true that AMD will be phasing out Socket 754 in 2005?


Yes...or rather after 2005 we won't be producing anymore.

Also why not just get a 939 Athlon-64 which has dual-channel memory? That way you'd have both the compatibility for the future *and* dual-channel memory.That would take care of both things Vic is talking about ;).

On top of that, the 939, as Scin is implying, is the future. 754's are fine, but I'd rather spend a bit more money and get a 939 since you'll get a motherboard that will work with all the chips coming out *after* 2005.

There's a nice little chart here with the breakdown of what is dual-channel and cache sizes:

http://tech-report.com/reviews/2004q3/a ... dex.x?pg=1
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Postby Brolly345 » Tue Aug 24, 2004 3:59 pm

I'd say if you want to spend a whole shitload of money on a processor that you can't even use to it's fullest potential for a while, due to the lack of 64 bit applications and OS, then I would buy an AMD 64 bit processor, but if you want something that is a decent price I would go with a P4. All the equipment you would need to buy just to run the 64 bit processor would cost an insane amount of money, and in my opinion, is a total waste. I edit on a P4 and do just fine. And I didn't have to sell my reproductive organs, as dwchang said, in order to get it. If you really think about it, buying what's good now and then upgrading later is a better idea because, after a year or two, you arent going to miss the money you spent on the thing before you upgraded. But it all boils down to how much your willing to spend.
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