What is the best hardware for video encoding?

[Douglesh]

I am throwing up between a number of options here. What is better to use, pentium 4 or AMD thunderbird? also what kind of RAM should i use, DDR2100, PC133, or RAMBUS?

[thxkid]

As long as you have at least a 1 gig processor and 512 megs of ram you will be allright, I happen to have a thunderbird 1.2 gig with 512 megs of PC133 ram and I capture anything I want with fantastic results, but hey If you can afford a Intel Pent. 4 with 256 or 512 megs of rambus then go for it. Make sure you also get a video card with 64 megs of ram and a 30 to 40 gig ATA100 7200rpm hard drive also.

[Douglesh]

ya i was planning on 30gig UATA 100/7200rpm.
P4 has decreased in price a little, im getting a 1500 with heatsink and fan for $400 AUD. But i dont know if i should use 256megs Rambus, or 512Megs PC133. I think the 256 megs rambus is significantly faster than the 512PC133 (seeing at though it is PC400mhz). It is also significantly more expensive, and far less available.

[Douglesh]

I also already have a TNT2 M64P 32megs. It performs OK for a PCI

[sot]

instead of much expensive rambus.. why dont u go for a 512mb ddr266.. not much expensive than 512 pc133 i think... it could be your value of money...

and one more thing... what OS would be great in video editing (win)??? win9x/me/nt/2k?

[kv5]

You could go for the 'REAL-TIME' capture card route ?
this is in no way processor intensive and alot cheaper!
i can highly recommend the 'DAZZLE DVC II' ... Just an idea

[jwhitlow]

I have both the Dazzle DVC II & the ATI AIW Radeon. Since getting the AIW, the Dazzle has gone unused. It is not because the Dazzle is a bad unit, but rather what I am wanting to do with it. I use the AIW to record shows while I am away. The Dazzle can only do this with the help of 3rd party software, TWNH. Even with it, you cannot change channels since the Dazzle does not have it's own tuner.
The Dazzle also has mild lip sync problems (at least on my system). I have seen none with the AIW.

[gimp]

I have a Dual 1.2 Athlon MP with 1 GB of PC2100 reg. ram and I use the AIW Radeon 32MB/DDR/AGP to do all my capturing. I capture at 720x480 at 8MB/SEC. with no frames dropped. I run XP Pro. for my OS

[Douglesh]

Ya rambus has superior performace though. 400 mhz ram. And as for athlon, it seems better value for money and performace than the much OVERPRICED pentium 4, i think i will go for a DDR 512meg for $160 instead of a Rambus 256 megs for $280.

What is a good althon chip? athlon thunderbird, or XP? i know duron sux, its not high enough, gigahertz is themax on duron, im thinking of getting an athlon XP 1800. is this a good choice/

[sot]

yup!! get XP one... they say its more efficient.. all rounded chip *g*... if u need more power, ride two horsess!! like gimp.. dual 1.2 athlon.. wowww!!

[Douglesh]

Dual 1.2? what do you mean? you have 2 CPU's plugged into your motherboard? explain please.

[sot]

u r absolutely correct.. its 2 cpu on single mobo.. just imagine...

check this for some review...
http://www.simhq.com/simhq3/hardware/reviews/amd_smp/

[Douglesh]

heh. OK Sot, i did a bit of reading on dual processing, i found this at another forum.

<TABLE BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER WIDTH=85%><TR><TD><font size=-1>Quote:</font><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR><TR><TD><FONT SIZE=-1><BLOCKQUOTE>
if you wish to view it as a factor of "clock speed" 2 750MHz's do NOT come anywhere's near matching the speed of a
single 1.5GHz. The system may have 2 CPUs, but still only has one bus for the entire system, if one CPU is accessing the
bus, the other needs wait till it's finished. Unless the code is very carefully written so that each CPU is only accessing it's
own registers you suffer quite a performance hit. I use to run dual 400MHz CPU's, they were easily out performed by a
single 600MHz. Using off the shelf software I'd guesstimate the 2nd CPU adds about 30% (+/-5%) to the overall work
performed. So 2 750MHz CPUs should work about the same as a single 1GHz, all other things being equal.

Hope this helps.
</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

Dual CPU isnt exactly 2 times the speed. Anyway, i have decided to go the AMD way with PC2100 DDR (266mhz) ram, it seems to be CHEAPER and perform better than the intel equivalents.

One more question. The last question i need answered

What is the difference between Athlon XP, and athlon MP???? Which is better????

[lupus]

Douglesh your quote there are not very accurate when it comes to AMD Athlon multi processing, in fact the quoted person seems a bit clueless.

AMDs dual processor chipset has got seperate "point to point bus" one bus for each cpu, so there is little truth to the notion that one cpu has got to wait for the other to access the bus. (Although this might be true for a Intel system)

Also the suggestion that the second cpu just adds 30% "using off the shelf software" (whatever that means) is a bit inaccurate.
If you have a program that is multithreaded, that can take advantage of the second cpu by launching several threads then you will gain a lot more than 30%, i think that you might improve performance up to 80% or more.
If your app is NOT multithreaded then you will probably not see much performance increase at all, exept maybe a few % for system activities.
In other words the program that you use will have to take advantage of the second cpu if you want to see any performance increase. But if you don´t have mulithreaded apps, there is still the advantage that when you are encoding video, or whatever, your machine is still free to other things at the same time ie. you could run a MPEG video encoding and MP3 encoding apps at once and not see any slowdown in either.

There is not much diffrence between XP and MP, they are pretty much the same, but MP (MultiProcessor) is tested and certified for use with multiprocessor machines. The XP is not, but both will probably work fine in a dual cpu setup.

[sot]

lupus.. thanks for your good points.. but, what are the programs that support multithreading?? i see TMPEGENC have this support, rite?

and hey douglesh.. i've read some review that although the bus speed for ddr is 266 (which is 2 times faster that sd 133).. performance increase is not that much.. it only adds some.. i can't remember where i get this... but is is true? anyone can explain? thanks..

[Douglesh]

Yeh, ive decided to go for Rambus, the 800mhz bus speed is heaps higher than DDR