Athlon vs P4; Which is better? Which should i get for encodi

[josetjr]

I wanna get a new computer to replace my 550mhz P3, but i don't know what processor PC to get. I'm considering getting an Athlon XP 1800, or a P4 1.7 GhZ. Which one would be better for DVD to SVCD encoding? Also can you post your DVD to SVCD times, and/or your PC system info?

[sommersby]

I sure hope no one responds to this, not to be rude but you will find about 20 past debates here about this very question, search for it, all this new debate will do is waste bandwidth!

[josetjr]

so where do i search for it then? The search feature is not working. I tried looking for it manually, but it is very tedious.

[alucard2050]

my 2 cents......i used a p2 for a while and an athlon. i will never go back to a pentium processor again........

[mikerios]

my 2 cents

My rig
P4 2 ghz 333 mem ( 512 mb and will up to 1 ghz soon ), Raid0 hardrive set up ( 160 gb ) 5 hours to render 720x480 ntsc using TMPEnc at CQR of 85 256bit 48khz Audio for 172 min movie.

[aznguy]

I got a Athlon 1.4 256DDR 100GB Geforce2 pro 64DDR, built it myself and on standard settings on TMPEnc, and encoding it to VCD is real time.

[vitualis]

Look, both the P4 and Athlon XP are excellent CPUs.

P4s cost more and in the current environment probably have a smaller upgrade path. They are, however, more stable (as a system) and have SSE2 instructions (which will make a difference with TMPGEnc and any other newer proggies with SSE2 optimisations).

The AthlonXP costs less have has about the same performance as the P4 in multimedia tasks and is probably faster as most other things. It doesn't have SSE2 instructions but does have SSE (which puts it into the P3 class). It has a longer upgrade path compared to the P4.

If you have plenty of money and don't really want to open up your box to install new things or tweak hardware, the P4 is probably for you.

If you have a tighter budget and you are competent with PC hardware, the Athlon XP probably offers better value for money.

Regards.

[sommersby]

search funtion is now working again.

[poopyhead]

p4 is horrible for the money. this doesn't mean p4 sucks, it's quite good. however, athlon gives much more "bang for the buck." with p4, you're also paying for intel's brandname, which costs a lot. with athlon, you basically pay at least $50-$100 cheaper for a CPU with similar performance.

btw...for the last time...RAM doesn't effect encoding time...it only matters if you run multiple applications at once. if you're only running tmpgenc on your comp, 512 MB DDRAM is gonna make no difference to 128 MB PC100 SDRAM.

[josetjr]

I have done alot of reading and I am considering getting an Athlon XP1600, or xp1700, or XP1800, now i have to figure out which one? The price is cheaper, and it can be upgradeable in the future. My only dilema is that P4's use SSE2 technology that makes encoding better? Is this true? OVERALL I'm looking to get something that will make my encode times (to SVCD) FASTER! And yes I am handy with computer parts. My options are Athlon XP1800 and lower, or P4 1.7ghz and lower. anything highter is too much $$. Thanks for your help.

[poopyhead]

josetjr,

fyi....the athlon XP 1800 can horsewhip the p4 2.0 gightz

[vitualis]

As a matter of fact, it can't when we are talking about multimedia performance (such as encoding).

It should also be noted that any test where the AthlonXP does perform better than the P4 (and vice versa), the difference is really only quite small -- not really "horsewhipping" anything.

The newer Northwood based P4s (2.2+ GHz) have at a per GHz level, much better performance than the older Willamette based P4s.

However, again, the REAL peformance difference between a P4 and an Athlon for any particular measure is really not that significant (where we are talking about top of the range). As people have mentioned before, the AthlonXP processor is much better VALUE FOR MONEY though so this may be an important consideration for you.

Regards.

[poopyhead]

vitualis,

dunno...at the high end levels...any small difference can be considered significant...considering an athlon 1.5 gightz can outperform an pentium 4 2.0 gightz.

[Sulik]

The key is memory bandwidth, so whatever you get, make sure you have DDR or RDRAM (A P4 with SDRAM is a waste).
SSE2 is better for MPEG encoding, but it only makes a minor difference (P4 processes 1 SSE2 instruction as 2 SSE instructions internally).

P3 and Athlon always had integer SSE support. A P2 vs Athlon comparison is quite unfair. (I upgraded from a 486 to a Athlon and I would never get a 486 again - duh!).

[vitualis]

@ poopyhead: fair enough, but I'm talking about real functional significance... The fact that the AthlonXP is 2% faster in some benchmark and the P4 is 1.5% faster in another actually doesn't mean a whole lot.

BTW, the 2.2 GHz P4 (Northwood) beats the fastest AthlonXP in just about everything (even cost... 8) ). Also, have you seen THG's water-cooled 2.2 GHz P4 at 3 GHz that is stable? That is simply awesome (150% increase) and speaks very highly of the manufacturing quality and future potential of the newer P4s.

@ Sulik: SSE2 makes a huge difference if the program has been optimised for it (try turning it on and off with TMPGEnc to see the difference if you have a P4). BTW, although the P3 always had SSE instructions, the Athlon didn't pick them up until the AthlonXP.

Regards.

[Sulik]

Of course if you turn off SSE2 the performance will drop dramatically, but turning off SSE2 and using regular SSE instead isn't a big difference (5-10% at best).

There is 2 main sets of instructions in SSE: integer MMX extensions and SIMD floating point.
The only one that makes a big difference in encoding is the MMX extensions, particularly the psadbw instruction. These MMX extensions are also present in AMD's MMX extensions and are 100% compatible with integer SSE.

[vitualis]

I can't comment on the actual number but a 5-10% drop in performance IS pretty significant (and I was of course talking about turning off SSE2 and not SSE).

Also, I don't understand your insistance that the Athlon was compatible with SSE prior to AthlonXP as it obviously was not.

Regards.

[Sulik]

I meant that the Athlon did not support the full SSE instruction set, but it did support the integer SSE instructions and prefetching, which are the ones most relevant to video encoding.
Look up the Athlon instruction set reference.

[vitualis]

CPU support of instructions, however, are not relevant unless actually called upon by software... which is why full SSE support in the AthlonXP is actually so significant (despite the previous Athlons already having it's own 3DNow, etc., instructions)...

Regards.

[josetjr]

I have decided to build my new computer. Hopefully when all is said and done, I should have this system:
Athlon XP 1800, 256 MB DDRAM, 40 gig Hard Drive, 8x Dvd-rom, Cd-rw drive, Case, Mobo, Video card, 56k Modem. All for under $500 (which includes some parts from my older system) This sounds like a good system for some SVCD encoding, right?

[vitualis]

Sounds fine to me...

The biggest difference to encoding time is the CPU (more power equals faster encodes).

Regards.