AMD or Intel

[waheed]

You can see my Computer Details on the tab.

Ive just upgraded my DVD Drive to a Combo Blu Ray Writer/HD DVD Rom Drive.

However, My playing a Blu Ray movie (War), there is a massive lag in the video and stutters.

My PC has been able to play various 1080P clips in WMV HD, DivX, Xvid, TS format etc... Cant see why not Blu Ray (maybe its all the process used by HDCP crap)

I know my CPU is the bottleneck so Its time for an upgrade.

Since I have a AMD socket 939 MB, some of you may know that AMD no longer manufacturer socket 939 processors and they are none exist in stores. People are paying ridiculous prices for them on ebay.

So Ive decided to upgrade. This would mean a new CPU. MB and Memory, leaving the option open for Intel. I'm not sure whether to go for a dual core AMD AM2 or a Intel Core 2 Duo.

Any recommendations?

[zoobie]

I went thru the same process a few months ago
my research pointed to intel for performance and amd for value
I bought a mobo for $73 US and a dual core amd for $65 US...both new
works for me and my HDV

[edDV]

HDV is fairly easy Mpeg2.

BluRay/HD DVD can use MPeg2, VC1 or h.264. The latter two require both a fast CPU and highest end display card acceleration.

[disturbed1]

I'd look at the application that's playing the video back, instead of you CPU. Since your graphics chip doesn't support all pure video features, no H.264 Decode Acceleration with IDCT and CAVLC/CABAC, nor VC-1/WMV Decode Acceleration with IDCT, it only has basic h264/VC-1 acceleration, you might want to instead update that to a series that does. Or explore other playback software. nVidia also has issues with HD DVD playback acceleration.

In order to even use the limited PureVideo acceleration that your card has, you have to use the correct software that takes advantage of this. The cards that support all PureVideo features are 8500GT, 8600GT, and 8600GTS. According to nVidia, the 8800 line doesn't offer any more support than our 7600GT cards do.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=10043938&&#post10043938
http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=29573

Even with a quad core intel, you'll still get frame drops without using the correct playback software.

[stiltman]

http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_2k_93.71_2.html

[disturbed1]

http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_2k_93.71_2.html

http://www.nvidia.com/page/purevideo_support.html

[edDV]

Botttom line is VC-1 and H.264 at 1080p/24 requires heavy CPU+GPU. Maybe next year it will be easy.

[stiltman]

http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_2k_93.71_2.html

http://www.nvidia.com/page/purevideo_support.html

Their site sucks and is Misleading

[disturbed1]

I have 2 7600gt (PCIe), bought one for my girlfriend and her Windows PC. We also had a couple ATI x1600 (AGP). The ati card did far better than the nVidia card for h264 playback in Windows. She doesn't notice any game playback differences between the 2, but she isn't a hardcore FPS type . ATI in Linux is lacking useable drivers, which is the main reason we switched back to nVidia. For Windows machines, they just might be the better HTPC solution.

The ATI AVIVO cards need special drivers, special codecs, and special playback software as well. IMO - all this accelerated play black is just a marketing gimmick, that only works when the moon, sun, and stars all align .

[jman98]

Unless your video card has HDMI output, both PowerDVD and WinDVD will downscale the video output. This unnecessary downscaling could be heavily taxing your CPU and causing the stutters. Just a guess. I could be wrong.

[stiltman]

My motherboard has the Intel X3000 builtin
I put in a ATI X800
I now put in a Quadro FX 3450

I use it just for video editing. I'm not a gamer.
I thought looking at my link, it was good to go, but looking at yours, it not

[disturbed1]

My motherboard has the Intel X3000 builtin
I put in a ATI X800
I now put in a Quadro FX 3450

I use it just for video editing. I'm not a gamer.
I thought looking at my link, it was good to go, but looking at yours, it not

Same here, if it displays video full screen with good colors and no video tearing, it's a winner.

I read the same link you posted before I bought the 7600's. I was debating between the 7600's, 8500, or 8600. As you can see I came to the conclusion as you Oh well, I don't own a PC HD/Blu drive, so it's no sweat off my back. But I do have access to plenty of 720p, 1080i, and some 1080p content. Most of it happens to be 720p, which is no problem with our current setups. By the time I spring for an HD PC drive, Blu Ray will be replaced with something that's consumer friendly, and it'll be time for another PC upgrade. Or it'll be Blu Ray profile 6.ou812 given the rate they constantly re-invent the wheel.

Well, I do game a little, but I doubt World of Padman (http://www.worldofpadman.com/) would be taxing on anyone's system. My sister plays it on an AMD 800 with an ATI rage 128 16mb card

[waheed]

I would have thought it was more CPU intensive than GPU. My mate also have a Blu ray drive and a 7600GT, but different specs being a AM2 motherboard, Dual core 4400+ CPU and 2 gig RAM. His PC playsback Blu ray fine without any problems (even by disc).

We both use PowerDVD Ultra for playback with hardware acceleration enabled.

@jman98
yes, my GPU does have HDMI output (being a Asus EN7600GT) and so does my monitor which supports full 1080P (24" Benq FP241W).

[Krispy Kritter]

As neither of you are using a video card with gpu support for video playback, both of the systems are doing it with cpu. You are at a big disadvantage running only a single core cpu and only 1GB of RAM in Vista.

[hanugro]

I think HD can be helped by newer GPU card, it will make cpu utilization lower. If you are encoding as well, think you may want to buy quad core, it is much faster with multithread apps like premiere, TMPGEnc, etc.

[edDV]

The 7600GT handles MPeg2 fine. VC-1 and H.264 are more troubling. Common software player tricks degrade frame rate or process at lower raster size (e.g. 960x540) to avoid CPU chokes.

[waheed]

Im not quite ready in upgrading my GPU at the moment as I only purchased it less than a year ago since my last card (6600GT) blew on me.

However, do you think overclocking the GPU would be beneficial.

I have decided to go for a AMD Dual Core 6000+ CPU with 2 gigs of RAM and a high end MB.

Just for consideration purposes, which GPU would be recommended.

[edDV]

Im not quite ready in upgrading my GPU at the moment as I only purchased it less than a year ago since my last card (6600GT) blew on me.

However, do you think overclocking the GPU would be beneficial.

I have decided to go for a AMD Dual Core 6000+ CPU with 2 gigs of RAM and a high end MB.

Just for consideration purposes, which GPU would be recommended.

Best to wait for full hardware display card decoding with zero CPU load and foolproof HDCP. There are a lot of online reviews of decoding comparisons. It is clear that current hardware is on the edge (not quite there yet).

I bought the 7600GT knowing I'd need to update later for Blu-Ray / HD-DVD when the time comes.

[johns0]

The cards that support all PureVideo features are 8500GT, 8600GT, and 8600GTS. According to nVidia, the 8800 line doesn't offer any more support than our 7600GT cards do.

The 8800gt series-Blu-ray/HD DVD Support – Featuring revolutionary second generation NVIDIA PureVideo HD Engine.

[Squash]

The first of the new Nvidia 9x series cards were released for sale yesterday, the GeForce 9600GT. They're selling for $180 at Newegg and are getting good reviews.

From Tom's Hardware:

"...new PureVideo HD functions have been added via the 174. drivers, which were made available to the press only for the 9600 GT. There are four improvements: dynamic enhancement of color and contrast (the exposure of each frame can be corrected via the histogram, meaning that it's calculated 30 times per second), simultaneous dual-stream video decoding (Picture In Picture is supported, though with new versions of the players), and finally the possibility of keeping the Aero interface when playing HD video."

[Video Head]

Unless your video card has HDMI output, both PowerDVD and WinDVD will downscale the video output. This unnecessary downscaling could be heavily taxing your CPU and causing the stutters. Just a guess. I could be wrong.

Your card and your display also need to be HDCP compliant.

O.T. - I wonder how many people have bought Blu-Ray or HD-DVD players and have them connected incorrectly. It is the belief that they are watching high-definition that makes it look bigger, better and faster. 720 or 1080, ah it's close enough...

[hanugro]

Hm, Just wondering that Intel has released 45nm core duo (E8xxx series) with SSE4.1. I think it will be faster than AMD ATM. AMD is still strugling with Phenom release. Hopefully they are ready to give Intels serious competition soon as I will upgrade my X2 3800 to quad core CPU next month.

[edDV]

NVidia step at a time progress.
http://www.nvidia.com/page/purevideo_hd.html
http://www.nvidia.com/object/IO_43029.html
http://www.electronista.com/articles/08/02/22/geforce.9.roadmap.leaked/

I'm still a spectator, not yet a buyer.

[disturbed1]

The cards that support all PureVideo features are 8500GT, 8600GT, and 8600GTS. According to nVidia, the 8800 line doesn't offer any more support than our 7600GT cards do.

The 8800gt series-Blu-ray/HD DVD Support – Featuring revolutionary second generation NVIDIA PureVideo HD Engine.

8800GT and 8800GTS (512). Wonder why nVidia's documentation doesn't display this.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Nvidia_graphics_processing_units
and more on pure video
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NVIDIA_PureVideo

[Squash]

disturbed1,

They probably just haven't gotten around to updating it recently. Most of the 8800 series (GS and GTX) came out a year or more ago; the 84, 85 and 8600s (with the improved Purevideo2) about 9 months ago. The 8800gt only came out about 4 months ago and it incorporated the same purevideo improvements as the 84 through 86s. At least that's the way I remember it. It gets confusing.

[yoda313]

Fyi I have a nvidia 8400 and a amd dual core x2 5200 2.7ghz processor. HD is beautiful on a dvi-hdmi cable out to my westinghouse 1366x768 hdtv.

I can even do 720p high def quicktime trailers with no hiccups (I haven't done a 1080p trailer yet for two reasons - 1 its overkill for a 768p tv and 2 - it sucks downloading 200mb on a 300kbps dsl line for a 2 min video clip - not gonna do it!).

[Super Warrior]

Since i made the switch to laptops, i've had two. Both entry level comps.

First: Inspiron B120- had a 1.4Mhz Celeron-M w/1MB L2 Cache

Second/current: Vostro 1000- has a 1.8Mhz AMD Sempron w/512kb L2 cache. Also first ever comp to have an AMD cpu in it(always had celerons).

The Inspiron B120 with its Celeron-M was a LOT faster. My Current one with the AMD Sempron also runs nicely but it takes noticeably a bit longer to get things started up on a program before it can run it.

For example just selecting simple stuff like clicking to go into my control panel, was almost instantly brought up with the Celeron, but with AMD it takes about a second or two.

This may be because the AMD has less L2 cache, so it performs slower despite being 400MHz "faster" than the celeron. Overall, i still like my AMD and it does well for me.

[Krispy Kritter]

Super[/url] Warrior]Since i made the switch to laptops, i've had two. Both entry level comps.

First: Inspiron B120- had a 1.4Mhz Celeron-M w/1MB L2 Cache

Second/current: Vostro 1000- has a 1.8Mhz AMD Sempron w/512kb L2 cache. Also first ever comp to have an AMD cpu in it(always had celerons).

The Inspiron B120 with its Celeron-M was a LOT faster. My Current one with the AMD Sempron also runs nicely but it takes noticeably a bit longer to get things started up on a program before it can run it.

For example just selecting simple stuff like clicking to go into my control panel, was almost instantly brought up with the Celeron, but with AMD it takes about a second or two.

This may be because the AMD has less L2 cache, so it performs slower despite being 400MHz "faster" than the celeron. Overall, i still like my AMD and it does well for me.

I would think the difference would be more related to 1) HDD speed 2) amount of RAM 3) OS plus item 2

[sohaibrazzaq]

I'd look at the application that's playing the video back, instead of you CPU. Since your graphics chip doesn't support all pure video features, no H.264 Decode Acceleration with IDCT and CAVLC/CABAC, nor VC-1/WMV Decode Acceleration with IDCT, it only has basic h264/VC-1 acceleration, you might want to instead update that to a series that does. Or explore other playback software. nVidia also has issues with HD DVD playback acceleration.

In order to even use the limited PureVideo acceleration that your card has, you have to use the correct software that takes advantage of this. The cards that support all PureVideo features are 8500GT, 8600GT, and 8600GTS. According to nVidia, the 8800 line doesn't offer any more support than our 7600GT cards do.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=10043938&&#post10043938
http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=29573

Even with a quad core intel, you'll still get frame drops without using the correct playback software.

Thats wrong, i have played many Blu-rays on my Power DVD with my friends Blu-ray player and the CPU utilization is always less then 10% so i bet my 8800GT does the hardware rendering for playback.

[johns0]

I'd look at the application that's playing the video back, instead of you CPU. Since your graphics chip doesn't support all pure video features, no H.264 Decode Acceleration with IDCT and CAVLC/CABAC, nor VC-1/WMV Decode Acceleration with IDCT, it only has basic h264/VC-1 acceleration, you might want to instead update that to a series that does. Or explore other playback software. nVidia also has issues with HD DVD playback acceleration.

In order to even use the limited PureVideo acceleration that your card has, you have to use the correct software that takes advantage of this. The cards that support all PureVideo features are 8500GT, 8600GT, and 8600GTS. According to nVidia, the 8800 line doesn't offer any more support than our 7600GT cards do.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=10043938&&#post10043938
http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=29573

Even with a quad core intel, you'll still get frame drops without using the correct playback software.

Thats wrong, i have played many Blu-rays on my Power DVD with my friends Blu-ray player and the CPU utilization is always less then 10% so i bet my 8800GT does the hardware rendering for playback.

Already pointed out,read above.