question! [AMD64 vs P4]

[VicBond007]

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.

I go sleep now.

[madmag9999]

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.

[Scintilla]

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

[dwchang]

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

[Brolly345]

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.

[dwchang]

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.

Except you can buy an Athlon-64 3000+ for under 300 dollars and a Prescott will easily cost the same or more.

On top of this, it's not like 64-bit applications are that far out. It's not even a year and even if it was, a year isn't that long either. I could use a similar argument with 'Why waste your money on something that will be obsolete in a year?'

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.

Except you *can't* upgrade from Prescott. You can't just take the chip out and magically put in a 64-bit processor into your motherboard. If you go with 32-bit now, you're effectively saying you'll stick with 32-bit with no possibility of upgrading to 64 without buying a whole ton of stuff.

It effectively comes down to buying now for the future or buying in the future. One requires you to put the $ down now while the other will be cheaper (not really based on what I said in the first part of this response), but then you'll spend a bunch of $ again to upgrade. You still spend a ton of money, but it's a matter of when and how much.

[Brolly345]

it's not like 64-bit applications are that far out. It's not even a year and even if it was, a year isn't that long either.

I never said they were far out. I just haven't seen any of them yet. So If I go and buy a 64 bit processor I want to use it, not wait for those fancy 64 bit applications to come out.

You can't just take the chip out and magically put in a 64-bit processor into your motherboard. If you go with 32-bit now, you're effectively saying you'll stick with 32-bit with no possibility of upgrading to 64 without buying a whole ton of stuff.

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.

As you can see I'm aware of the cost of all the equipment you would need in order to upgrade from a 32 bit processor to a 64 bit processor. That and the only thing, I can think of, you would have to buy with this processor is a new motherboard, new OS, and maybe a new power supply. If you bought these when the were pretty mainstream it wouldn't cost that much money.

It effectively comes down to buying now for the future or buying in the future. One requires you to put the $ down now while the other will be cheaper (not really based on what I said in the first part of this response), but then you'll spend a bunch of $ again to upgrade. You still spend a ton of money, but it's a matter of when and how much.

I agree with this. But as I said before, if you buy the upgrades after a year or two it's unlikely your going to miss the money you spent on the new upgrades. I know that's wasted money, but Average Joe Computer User doesn't plan on the next best thing that is going to come out. He buys what's in front of him and available.

[Scintilla]

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.

Didn't DW already point out that there's a good Athlon64 that can be had for less than most Prescotts? And I find it hard to believe that the motherboard and memory would be that much more expensive...

[Brolly345]

Didn't DW already point out that there's a good Athlon64 that can be had for less than most Prescotts? And I find it hard to believe that the motherboard and memory would be that much more expensive...

I'm not even talking about Prescotts >_<, I'm talking the price of an Athlon. And, yes, he did point that out. When I talk about price I mean extremes. The Athlon FX-53 is $740. That's much more that anything else I've seen (except for a P4 3.6 Ghz which is about the same amount). Then if you add the mobo that's about $120. I don't know what they're going to be selling the 64 bit OS for... And I never mentioned memory. If I decided to switch to an Athlon 64 I would just need the processor, the OS, and the new mobo to put it in. Everything else I have would plug right into the thing and run without a problem.

[Kalium]

64-bit OS: $0. Linux is free.
64-bit apps: $0. Open Source Software is free.

Go look on sourceforge. There are 64-bit apps out there, most definately.