Best mid-range CPU for video (transcoding, HDTV, HD)?

[squegole]

Hello

I'm from Australia. I don't know how different CPU prices are here compared to overseas but currently I'm looking to find the most affordable and best performing CPU for transcoding media and playing back DVB-T HDTV as well as HD media.

I've scanned Tom's hardware CPU charts but they do not include some of the CPUs available in my price range at the local computer store. For example Tom's charts don't review the Core 2 Duo E4400 which is in the sweet spot of my budget @ $145. Alternatively there is the Athlon 64 X2 4800+ which is included in Tom's charts and is being flogged down here for $139. The closest I can get to comparisons of these processors that are relevant to me are these:

Core 2 Duo E4300 vs Athlon 64 X2 4800+

XviD (Core 2 Wins by a whisker)

DivX (dead heat)

"HDTV" Playback (Blu-ray ?) (Athlon wins by 10%)

Apart from the Core 2 Duo tested being the E4300 not the E4400 I'm looking at, these tests - whilst thanks should go to Tom's for doing these - are not all that meaningful. Issues arise such as:

- Where are the HD benchmarks using codecs like H.264 and VC-1?
- What video cards are being used and how much are these cards handling the processor burden through their GPUs?
- "HDTV" playback using Blu-ray??? That seems a mistake unless it is referring to Blu-ray playback using TV-Out to a "HDTV" display
- The figures quoted are for a few minutes of video. This means they are not real world. Would it not be more meaningful to show figures for encoding standard length content such as a capped TV show?

With these points in mind, does anyone know how I can get some more useful benchmark comparisons for these processors regarding video transcoding, HDTV receiving and playback as well as HD playback?

Does anybody have strong anecdotal experience that might help me compare these two processors?

[Soopafresh]

E4400 - very good chip. They're both quite good, actually, but the 4400 has a bit of an edge when it comes to h264 encoding.

[jman98]

edDV has posted a lot about something that relates to your post and you should consider it. The truth is that nothing available right now is very good at 1080 H.264 (or X.264) playback. Many people have complained that their very expensive video cards don't do anything to support H.264/X.264 playback, making it all fall on the CPU. If you are going to go into H.264/X.264 in a big way AND for 1080i/p resolutions, you need to do some research before buying so you'll be sure you don't end up disappointed in what you get. edDV has stated that he's heard of people having to use non-standard hacked drivers and do various tricks to their systems just to try to get decent 1080p performance out of H.264 right now.

VC-1 playback isn't an issue at this time and lots of older CPUs can actually do this pretty well. Any current CPU will be fine for this.

You should be aware that playback of both BluRay and HD-DVD absolutely requires an HDMI compliant card if you want to see it in 1080p. Weird issues have been reported, like Doom9 (maintainer of the Doom9 website) reporting that his dual head card doesn't work at all with PowerDVD or WinDVD for HD-DVD playback and even though his card is HDMI compliant, both software programs downscale his output as if his card wasn't compliant.

[Krispy Kritter]

While the Core 2 Duo chips are usually faster at video encoding (for same speed cpus), this is usually offset by the price difference. The cost saved with an AMD cpu and motherboard compared to an equivalent Intel pair, can be used to upgrade the AMD cpu. As your results above show, those chips are fairly equal. Any other encoding should also be equal.

Video cards are irrelevant for encoding. They only affect playback.

For the most part, it comes down to brand preference. The only other thing to keep in mind, is the life expectancy of the MB chipset and socket that you choose so that you could have a choice in upgrade options later down the road.

[Soopafresh]

The E4400 has a 2MB L2 Cache vs the AMD 4800+ at 1MB. That alone makes quite a difference for encoding, not so much for decoding.

[squegole]

Thanks everyone for your replies. They're really very useful thus far.

@Soopafresh Thanks heaps, your opinion is backed by good facts too.

@jman98 Your post sounds really interesting. I completely understand how people would be disappointed with the graphics card market's video performance. They have such an extreme focus on gaming that they barely care about video. I found this article to explain things very well:

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3047&p=1

However it doesn't cover software too well. Those hacked drivers sound very interesting. Do you have any links to the hacked drivers or the edDV post(s) you refer to?

@Krispy Kritter That video card GPUs are not utilised for encoding has become all too obvious to me once I've seen through all the PureVideo and AVIVO marketing shite. Again is a sign to me the graphics industry doesn't care about anything but gaming performance, which is very pathetic I reckon.

[Soopafresh]

I saw this Asrock mobo, which looked like a pretty good deal. Claims it can do 1080p playback.

http://www.ocworkbench.com/2007/asrock/4Core1333-FullHD/g1.htm

[Krispy Kritter]

Just to clarify, video cards are not used for encoding, as pointed out above. However, video cards are used for video playback (decoding). So you will still need the appropriate hardware for your use.

encoding = cpu
decoding/playback = video card