Computer hardware, and how it affects encoding quality

[Nilfennasion]

I've basically decided to take the plunge, and upgrade to an Athlon XP 2800. I have no idea what to expect in terms of how it improves the video encoding speed. What I would like to know is whether it will yield any difference in terms of the output quality. Anyone game enough to speculate?

[teegee420]

If you're using the same encoder I don't expect quality to change at all. It'll just encode faster. That's always a good thing, no? I think you'll be pretty happy since you're upgrading from 850mhz.

[Nilfennasion]

The addition of 1950Mhz and 512MB of DDR RAM (as well as a bigger processor cache) should have me grinning from ear to ear.

[Suntan]

Only gain in quality will be if you add more processor intensive encoding options that you left out before because it took too long to encode, like upping the vhq level for an Xvid encode or adding a denoising filter (if you source was noisy in the first place of course), but if you don't change the encoding settings the quality should be the same.

Of course if you use your computer to playback then you can look at using more processor intensive "postprocessing" settings which may improve PQ.

-Suntan

[flaninacupboard]

except a 2800+ runs at 2.1Ghz :P

If video encoding is your main use for the machine you'll actually do better with a P4 system, but if you're gaming too then the AMD is a good choice, and nice and cheap

If using TMPGenc you may see a -slight- quality improvement, because of enhanced DCT calc which you need SSE for, which i don't think the duron supported (may be wrong on that)

for me on a 2600 TMPGenc encodes ~real time for a 2pass, and CCE is about 2x real time for 2 pass. dvdshrink shrinks a title in about 40 minutes.

[Nilfennasion]

except a 2800+ runs at 2.1Ghz

How's that??

I was going to go down the Intel road, but it would have entailed $300 more once the cost of a new power supply was factored in.

[flaninacupboard]

the athlon use a rating system, not clock speeds.

a 2000+ is 1600Mhz
a 2600+ is 1950Mhz
a 2800+ is 2.1Ghz
a 3200+ is 2.2Ghz

you also get weird disparities between bus speeds and clock speeds and core types and caches. i.e. a tbred B core at 266 bus, labelled a 2600+ runs at 2.1Ghz, but the barton core with 333 bus, 512k cache and also labelled a 2600+ has a core at 1.95Ghz, consequently the old core is quicker than the new core.

[Nilfennasion]

That just plain sucks. I am starting to think maybe Intel should get my business after all.

[teegee420]

I would still go with AMD. Best bang for the buck. Especially if you factor in overclocking.

[flaninacupboard]

That just plain sucks. I am starting to think maybe Intel should get my business after all.

hardly.

if you match an intel and an amd clock for clock (so a 2.2ghz athlon versus a 2.2ghz P4) then the P4 would be left squarely in the dust, the athlon would be considerably faster. have a read of this chart http://www6.tomshardware.com/cpu/20030217/cpu_charts-24.html

compare the xp3000+ running at 2.2Ghz to the P4 2.2, the result should be similar but there's a massive difference. the 3000+ rating is justified as it performs more like a P4 3.0 than a P4 2.2

when you compare a xp3000+ at £82.25 and a P4 3.0 at £151.02 it's easy to pick which represents better alue for money

[Nilfennasion]

Yeah, maybe, but in light of this advertising dishonesty, I still don't see why I should reward AMD for it. When you say "2800" to most people, they automatically think it is the clock speed. When they learn it isn't, well, they react like I do, naturally.

So what you're saying is that I should go with them anyway? Quite honestly, for the extra couple of hundred dollars, I'd far prefer to just install an Intel processor and get 3 Ghz, because it seems to me like AMD is a false economy.

[teegee420]

Not exactly. AMD arguably has a superior chip technology and as such their clock speed doesn't need to be as high to match Intel's performance. I wouldn't go so far as to call it false advertising.

[guns1inger]

Before you start slagging off AMD for rating their products this way, consider this. Intel recently announced that they were dropping their current megahertz based rating system for for something closer to AMDs because the cycles no longer drive the speed alone. There are so many factors now, including bus speed, memory speed interfaces etc. that simply saying 3.2ghz is meaningless.

Looks like AMD were ahead of the game (again).

[johns0]

If you spend the extra $300+ you will only see maybe 5 or 10 minutes shaved off a 2 hours encode or transcode,not worth it to me.

[northcat_8]

My friend has a P4 3200 system (I think) and I run a 2.2 AMD system. Even though my AMD runs at 1.8 Ghz, my system is much more stable than his and our encoding times are very very close. I personally do not like the Pentium machines for video work. AMD is better IMO and it doesn't cost nearly as much.

Other factors play into your quality and speed. Don't get me wrong, processor is the biggest impact, but HD speed, number of hard drives, amount and type of RAM, page file, and reading and writting to different hard drives are also speed and quality enhancements.

Just my 2 cents.

[Nilfennasion]

Okay, I've relented and decided to stick with the AMD parts. Hopefully they will arrive in time to do the upgrade this weekend.

[zak_swan]

have u checked your motherboard supports new processor? and u will probably need new cooler too.
and also have u checked size of fsb? i bought an athlon 3000xp and it turned out to have only 166 fsb but they go up to 200
well when i say 166 i think this is doubled so it's 333 i'm not an expert.
it took me 3 days to get system running lol
i got a cheque for a tax rebate thought great i'll treat myself to a new processor bought it then the guy in shop said u will need cooler too so bought that then he said will your motherboad support it i said dunno, so gave him manual he said u will need new motherboard.
so took it all home stuck it in.
forgot to put paste between cooler and processor so probably damaged it , so then i put paste in done benchmark thingy and it says its running fine.
also cause i was using old HDD with new motherboard i had to do repair on XP but it crashed halfway through. this may of been coz i used recovery XP disc instead of proper one. anyway borrowed mates XP disc used my code and hey presto 3 days later i was in business!

[flaninacupboard]

have u checked your motherboard supports new processor? and u will probably need new cooler too.
and also have u checked size of fsb? i bought an athlon 3000xp and it turned out to have only 166 fsb but they go up to 200
well when i say 166 i think this is doubled so it's 333 i'm not an expert.
it took me 3 days to get system running lol
i got a cheque for a tax rebate thought great i'll treat myself to a new processor bought it then the guy in shop said u will need cooler too so bought that then he said will your motherboad support it i said dunno, so gave him manual he said u will need new motherboard.
so took it all home stuck it in.
forgot to put paste between cooler and processor so probably damaged it , so then i put paste in done benchmark thingy and it says its running fine.
also cause i was using old HDD with new motherboard i had to do repair on XP but it crashed halfway through. this may of been coz i used recovery XP disc instead of proper one. anyway borrowed mates XP disc used my code and hey presto 3 days later i was in business!

Wow.

[deckard8]

A better bet (bag-for-buck) would be to get an XP2500 mobile processor. These are the most overclockable processors around and are still available (though hurry as stocks are dwindling - they are not being produced anymore).

My system uses an overclocked XP2500 mobile running at a true 2700ghz with standard cooling running on a cheap Asrock mobo. That translates in XP speed terms to about XP3600/3700ghz. All for a processor costing £60 pounds. - Beat that!

[flaninacupboard]

My system uses an overclocked XP2500 mobile running at a true 2700ghz

Congratulations, you have the fastest computer known to man