Are the nForce3 250 motherboards good for conversion times?

[Wind Scorpion]

I have 1Ghz Athlon Thunderbird & it's time to upgrade.
I'm looking at the AMD64 nForce 3 250 motherboard.
Any pros/cons???

[Cobra]

Which AMD 64 are you thinking of getting? As far as conversion times and speed go, motherboards make only a tiny difference compared to extra CPU power.

Essentially, there are no cons aside from the price and the fact that no 16-bit programs will run. 64-bit computing is expensive just now, and Windows only runs in 32-bit mode. You can download a copy of XP 64-bit edition from Microsoft, and there are several flavours of Linux that are 64-bit. This will allow your operating system to take advantage of your 64-bit processor.

CustomPC recently took a look at how much quicker 64-bit computing is and used video encoding as one of their tests. It really benefits.

However, a quick 32-bit system will be more than adequate, I'm sure. Depends how "future-proof" you want to be.

If you can afford it, then go for it!

Cobra

[flaninacupboard]

i would imagine speed per pound a P4 system s the way to go for video encoding, or if you want to spend a little more then dual xeon will do nicely.

[Cobra]

Or you can wait until Intel launch their new 64-bit P4s, shouldn't be too long now. That is if you want to go with Intel CPUs.

Cobra

[rallynavvie]

64-bit Intel procs are supposed to be out Q3 this year. I don't know if they're releasing them as single P4s though, the information I have is on the 64-bit Xeon processors.

I haven't seen any encoding benchmarks that put 64-bit systems above their 32-bit counterparts. I think the greatest reason for that is there aren't any 64-bit native encoding apps on the market yet. Once these applications start taking advantage of the 64-bit instructions I'm sure it will make a difference.

BTW, some of the Intel boards out now will support 64-bit processors when they are first released by Intel. You could get one of those and get a 32-bit processors for the now and get a 64-bit one later on. That's what I did.

[flaninacupboard]

in this article
http://www6.tomshardware.com/cpu/20040106/athlon64_3400-19.html

a 2.2ghz A64 is quicker than a 2.2ghz A.

When i see a stable 64bit XP and a 64bit TMPGenc i'm changing

[rallynavvie]

Yeah, but also notice which processor beat out the overclocked A64
Even one 3.06 P4 will beat out the 3400 Athlon 64. So the 64-bit instructions aren't helping that much... yet. I have no doubt they will become faster. Having on-die memory controllers hasn't seemed to help too much for video yet either. 64-bit procs are dominating the market for server/database apps though. Workstations are still ruled by the dual Xeon market.

[flaninacupboard]

yeah, see my first post, i've no doubt a P4 system is better for video. just highlighting that a 32bit A is slower than a 64bit A with same clockspeed. Give me an A64 at 3.2Ghz and i'll stop telling people to get P4 systems for video! plus games would be sweet, the on die memory controller helps a lot with games, check the directx benchmarks in the same article, the P4 can't keep up.

[Piccoro]

nForce3 250 is a stable platform. It won't improve your video work over the nForce3 150 or the VIA chipsets.

Link

[deadpac]

[Piccoro]

AFAIK
SSE3 is only implemented in 1 program so far and it hasn't shown any increase in speed.
I do know that A64's implementation of SSE2 will only increase in 64bit mode.

But when the version of A64 comes out that supports SSE3 later this year, they will be on equal ground as far as extentions supported.

[Wind Scorpion]

Thanks for the pros/cons!
I'm going to take a chance on the CHAINTECH VNF3-250 ZENITH NVIDIA NFORCE3 250 800MHZ FSB SOCKET 754 & a AMD64 3000 from mwave.com.
I already have the Audigy 2 & Radeon VIVO, so I'll just transplant those and RAID two hard drives.
What hard drives have you all had good results with??

[rallynavvie]

I wouldn't RAID your boot drive no matter which hard drives you get. Not unless you're doing 0+1 or nesting.