Intel vs AMD for encoding

[gadgethead]

Which is best Intel or AMD.

I need to mainly back up DVD's to DVDR and play DivX

[pixel]

Which is best depends entirely on your use.

AMD is best at general tasks, but Intel is best at intensive tasks.

Choose your price then go from there. If you can afford it, a Pentium 4 with an 800MHz FSB is fastest.

If you are just backing up DVD's and playing videos, they are not intensive, so save yourself some money and opt for an AMD.

I don't know if this is for a normal pc, or for a multimedia pc only. If it is just a multimedia pc, AMD is good enough.

[Piccoro]

AMD is best at general tasks, but Intel is best at intensive tasks.

CAD is not intensive?

What is your budget?

Athlon 64 would be the best out there period.
They even have an Athlon 64 3000+ now for ~200$.

P4 800fsb would be up there and most are at a decent price.

Athlon XP would be good too but more value range.

[pixel]

CAD is not intensive?

OK, sorry. The benchmarks I have read have shown that AMD is better at general things like mutlimedia etc. I'm not an AMD user so I don't know it first hand.

Athlon 64 would be the best out there period.

The P4 Extreme Edition is actually the best out just now. When Microsoft finally finish their 64bit edition we will get to see the true power of the athlon 64bit though.

[Piccoro]

A lot of the early bencharks with Athlon 64 fx 51 use the underclocked Nvidia Chipset and PC2700 Registered ECC ram instead of VIAs chipset which runs at the full 800FSB (instead of 600) and pc3200 Registered Non-ECC RAM.
Athlon 64 FX 51 is the first CPU to hit above 30,000 in 3dmark2001 as well.
Link
I have not seen any Tech site that denies the Athlon 64 FX51 as the best.
There were a few at release but now go to any Tech forum and ask "P4 EE vs Athlon FX" and see what they say.

If your budget for the CPU is around 200$ I would really consider the Athlon 64 3000+. The 3200+ model is 2ghz 1mb L2 cache (400$) while the 3000+ is the same speed at 2ghz but 512kb L2 cache.
The performance is nearly identical but for 200$ less. What a great deal.
Performance Review
Game Benchmarks
CPU on Newegg.com

[mrtristan]

Actually the P4 extreme and Athlon 64 test pretty evenly, with the AMD chip coming out slightly ahead of the Intel chip, in most benchmarks. However, the P4 extreme is more expensive than the fastest Athlon 64.

To get back to the question asked, AMD is still has a better price/performance ratio.