P4 or Athlon XP which is better for encoding....

[tinycorkscrew]

d4n13l -

Well said.

It is possible that Intel will one day (sooner or later - who knows) take back the performance crown. They certainly have a lot of room to grow with the P4. Right now AMD is cheaper and better performing, so buying an AMD is an easy choice, but if, in the future, Pentiums overtake AMD, then one would have to weigh performance versus value.

You are right that the P4 relies on optimized code. Currently there are only a handful of programs that use SSE2. If you go to Intel's site and look at the list, chances are you won't even recognize more than 2 or 3 applications. I'm sure more programs will make use of SSE2 over time, but it's already been quite a while and the number is still quite small. Also, the next generation of AMD chips will make use of SSE2 instructions (like the current ones use SSE), so all this may be a moot point half a year from now.

You're also dead on about motherboards. I don't have any statistics, but it seems like most people that build their own computers are using AMDs. One reason that those of us who build are doing it ourselves is because we don't want to spend more money than we need to. Building a computer is simply less expensive than buying a prebuilt system. However, in our quest to save money, some of us buy cheapo motherboards and then wonder why our systems aren't stable.

[Sefy]

I agree with everything said, but would like to add, that those who build their systems wisely, would prefer a slower CPU and a stable mainboard, over a super fast CPU and a crappy board, we aren't that greedy

[d4n13l]

In my humble opinion, the P4 still has a lot to offer, it is no way near at its full potential yet. That is why I think it would be fairer to make up my mind on what I should buy next year. Then there will be no excuses from Intel if it still cant beat (or at least equal) the Athlon with its P4 - At least I gave it a fair chance to play catch-up!
I will be able to judge the P4 once and for all, I just hope that Brookdale will be all it is cracked up to be: At the very least it will make things more interesting.

PS
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On 2001-12-12 13:21:31, Sefy wrote:
I agree with everything said, but would like to add, that those who build their systems wisely, would prefer a slower CPU and a stable mainboard, over a super fast CPU and a crappy board, we aren't that greedy
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Damn right.
The motherboard is the most important peice of hardware in any system.

[gf]

The features of the original Pentium 4 were actually quite impressive, but it was discovered that if it was produced on time with all of those features, the die would take up over 300 mm square of space. This would not be cost effective in any way for Intel, and the projected yields of such a massive chip would make it cost prohibitive. So the processor was cut down to what we have now, and the overall performance shows that it is somewhat of a crippled part.

[Sefy]

That's why I always said Intel screwed it's user, gave alot of promises, and delivered nothing, maybe if the P4 was released as it should have been released, AMD wouldn't have such an easy job beating it.

[tinycorkscrew]

It seems like Intel got caught up in pushing the Mhz for marketing reasons. Maybe they felt the pressure to uphold Moore's Law? The fact is, a P4 does 20% less work per cycle than a Pentium III, which still performs pretty well. If there were a 2ghz Pentium III, I'm pretty sure it would outperform the current Athlons.

[Sefy]

I doubt it, cause I do recall on Tom's Hardware there was a one per one (1000mhz) benchmark test, before the XP came out, and althought the P3 beat the P4 at 1ghz, they were both under the AMD Athlon 1000mhz.

[kinneera]

This debate becomes so tiresome, thought I would try to add a little humor to the mix:

http://bbspot.com/News/2001/09/giggahertz.html

[jemmopz]

As one of the fellow OCAU member humourously put it:

P4 = P Flaw

[tinycorkscrew]

kineera -

Pretty funny link.

Like a lot of people, I'm not a fan of the XP nomenclature, but it appears to be working to some extent. Oh well.

[Sefy]

tinycorkscrew, those who buy the CPU for it's performance, don't really care about the labeled speed, they know what the clock speed is, and they know how it performs.

For those who buy by numbers, then it's a fair comparison to say a XP 1800 would atleast equal Intel's 1.8ghz