Capturing hardware: AMD Athlon 64 vs. Pentium IV?

[toscano]

I'm just about to purchase a dedicated PC for video editing (primarily for capturing and restoring old VHS cassettes). A friend of mine who works in video editing recommended the AMD Athlon 64 processor over a Pentium IV for capturing. My only hesitation is that the capturing/restoring/DVD authoring software I'll be using (All-In-Wonder software for capturing, probably TMPGEnc for encoding and authoring) was designed to work with a Pentium processor. Since I have no idea how much of a difference this will even make with regards to quality, I thought I'd check to see what you have to say about it. Thanks in advance!

[lenti_75]

AMD is faster and cheaper don't matter on what it was supposed to work with.

[Shocker Milwaukee]

The P4 excels at video editing.

[Sulik]

The advantage of the P4 for capturing is hyper-threading. It definitely reduces the probability of dropped frames when doing something else while capturing.
The ideal for capturing is obviously the newest dual core CPUs, either from AMD or Intel.

[offline]

P4 for capturing/editing. Northwood core if you can get one.

[KenJ57]

Why Northwood?

[disturbed1]

Why Northwood?

It doesn't run as hot, and most test reports show a 3.0 Northwood outperforms a 3.0 Prescot.

[johns0]

Athlon64 all the way.

[smoki]

P4 Northwood or, if you can afford it, Athlon64 X2 (dualcore).

"normal" A64 better for gaming than P4, but not as good as P4 allround.

[anitract]

I'd go Athlon64. They are some great processors...I'd recommend one of the low wattage/heat models if you do go that route.

[banger298]

if you have the money get a Athlon64 X2 4800 no intel can beat this chip ,look at bench marks and that video work too

[junkmalle]

Although the Athlon64 (single and dual core) is a great all around processor you have to consider what software you will be using. Some programs are heavily optimized for the P4 architecture and the fastest P4's still run some of those programs faster than the fastest Athlon64 (even the dual core X2).

In cany case, you probably won't be buying the fastes processor in either class. The CPU's alone cost about $1000. Best bang for the buck is in the $200 to $400 range.

[Mr_khyron]

Although the Athlon64 (single and dual core) is a great all around processor you have to consider what software you will be using. Some programs are heavily optimized for the P4 architecture and the fastest P4's still run some of those programs faster than the fastest Athlon64 (even the dual core X2).

In cany case, you probably won't be buying the fastes processor in either class. The CPU's alone cost about $1000. Best bang for the buck is in the $200 to $400 range.

They are heavily optimized with SSE3 and A64 have SSE3 soo...

[lenti_75]

Although the Athlon64 (single and dual core) is a great all around processor you have to consider what software you will be using. Some programs are heavily optimized for the P4 architecture and the fastest P4's still run some of those programs faster than the fastest Athlon64 (even the dual core X2).

In cany case, you probably won't be buying the fastes processor in either class. The CPU's alone cost about $1000. Best bang for the buck is in the $200 to $400 range.

This is SOOOOO BS......

AMD is a lot faster these days.....sorry for Intel fans....you just spend more for less.

stop your love for intel, and start reading.

:P

[soundforbjt]

Although the Athlon64 (single and dual core) is a great all around processor you have to consider what software you will be using. Some programs are heavily optimized for the P4 architecture and the fastest P4's still run some of those programs faster than the fastest Athlon64 (even the dual core X2).

In cany case, you probably won't be buying the fastes processor in either class. The CPU's alone cost about $1000. Best bang for the buck is in the $200 to $400 range.

This is SOOOOO BS......

AMD is a lot faster these days.....sorry for Intel fans....you just spend more for less.



stop your love for intel, and start reading.

:P

Not for video. I have both and my P4 hyperthreading encodes faster than my amd64.

[greymalkin]

yep..i second that...i think it's the AMD fanboy who should stop and listen rather than those who have experienced the benefit and prefer intel for video editing.

Anyone can go to Toms Hardware and see the great gaming capabilities of AMD..and my last 3 processor were AMD. I chose intel at the time because they had the 800mhz FSB and AMD hadn't gotten there yet. As a bonus I found that it does really well with video editing..a hobby I had just gotten into.

And the price difference used to be pretty significant between intel and AMD, but the more popular they became, the more that gap closed.

So even if AMD64 wins in the dhrystones, whetstones, and blarney stones...that isn't a real-world application.

[banger298]

the 64 x2 is faster than any intel at any thing and thats it intel is no longer the best,fastest ect , read the reviews ,not what we say read them and see for your self ,even the Intel Pentium D Processor 840(think you call them that)are to slow even at doing video work they fall behind the new 64 x2's ,just look at this link
http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20050509/cual_core_athlon-15.html
intel fans sorry you lose and toms hardware likes intel
the link is for the video part

[junkmalle]

dhrystones, whetstones, and blarney stones...

LOL!

[Cornbuds]

I'm just about to purchase a dedicated PC for video editing (primarily for capturing and restoring old VHS cassettes)

Helloooo...I think half the people that replied to this didn't read your first sentence.

I personally own nothing but AMD and believe AMD currently is the company with far better products. With that being said, Intel P4's excel and are far better than AMD in one area - audio/video encoding. Nobody know's why for sure (many believe it's because of the longer pipeline in the P4), but P4's just smoke every comparably priced AMD chip out there. Read the reviews in any computer magazine, [H]ardforums, Tom's Hardware, Anandtech....they all show the same results.

For a machine dedicated to audio/video encoding, you want a P4 Northwood core. Prescott is nothing but a power sucking hog and offers nill benefits over the fastest Northwood cores.

[junkmalle]

AMD vs Intel, some examples:

http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20050627/athlon_fx57-07.html

Of course, that's only a few programs...

[Cornbuds]

AMD vs Intel, some examples:

http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20050627/athlon_fx57-07.html

Of course, that's only a few programs...

Good point junkmalle. If you got $1,000 to drop on the processor alone, who the heck cares about a few seconds faster between AMD and Intel. For the rest of us that actually have a budget , the P4 Northwood core is unbeatable for audio/video encoding and capturing.

It's all about the price to performance ratio.

[Shocker Milwaukee]

I don't know if this is relevant or not, but I just found this at www.yourprocessorblows.com

[junkmalle]

Here's some charts with a lot more processors:

http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20041221/cpu_charts-18.html

It's about 6 months old so it doesn't have the latest processors but it goes all the way back to a 100 MHz Pentium!

[Shocker Milwaukee]

That chart doesn't look as official as mine.
I'm gonna have to question it's veracity, I'm sorry.

[junkmalle]

Here's one we can probably all agree on:

Whatever CPU you get, avoid motherboards based on a Via chipset!

[Shocker Milwaukee]

junkmalle, now you've crossed the line. I'm going to have to ask you to step outside....

[V20]

The Pentium P4 still beats AMD in one area, video encoding. AMD may beat Intel in gaming but still lags behind in video.

This is especially true if you're going to use Tmpgenc 3.0 Express, since it's been optimized to run on the P4 Pentium Prescott (somewhere on the net I read it was an 8-12% speed increase for the Prescott core).

Although this test is from 2004, look here how the Pentium P4 Prescott beats the Athlon 64 FX-53 by nearly 25% when video encoding with Tmpgenc 2.5 Plus:

http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20040322/prescott-14.html

Here's a slightly newer test that shows the Pentium P4 Prescott again beats the Athlon 3800 939 in video encoding with Tmpgenc 2.5 (not by as much, but still about 10%):

http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20040601/socket_939-21.html

Lately, toms hardware has not been using Tmpgenc in thie video encoding tests, and results are not exactly the same with other video encoding software (Pinnacle, DivX encoding, etc.)

Like everything in computing, you will have to decide exactly where you want to compromise. If this computer is going to be dedicated to video encoding, Pentium P4 will beat AMD for that specific purpose.

It might be different if you were doing video encoding only 10% of the time with the computer and it was used mainly for other things (gaming, Internet surfing, etc.)

Although I don't have a link, I believe I saw a test where the new 64 bit Pentiums still have a speed advantage over the Athlon 64's when doing video encoding.

The nice thing about building your own computer is that you can customize all the hardware to be optimum for what you want to do, not like buying a generic stock computer which is a 'jack of all trades master of none' compromise.

[banger298]

expain this
and this and this one
more



are these the new chip's from intel and amd

[vitualis]

Single core top end P4/Xeons probably still outperform single core top end A64/FX for video encoding.

However, dual core is another story. I'm pretty sure that the top A64 X2 signficantly outperforms the top Pentium D/EE even for video encoding. You are going to be paying $$$ for that performance though.

Regards.

[junkmalle]

expain this...
and this...
and this one...
more...
are these the new chip's from intel and amd

What's to explain? On those particular benchmarks some Amd chips beat some Intel chips and vice versa. The king of the Intel hill (in pricing at least), the Pentium D 840 Extreme Edition, is missing (it probably wasn't available at that time). The regular 840 has hyperthreading disabled (2 simultaneous threads), the EE has hyperthreading enabled (4 simultaneous threads). The Extreme Edition is sometimes faster, sometimes slower than the regular 840:

http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20050405/pentium_d-13.html

Current pricing from Newegg.com:

Athlon X2 4800 $1065
Athlon 4000 $ 473
Pentium D 840 EE $1014
Pentium D 840 $ 562
Pentium 4 660 $ 613

Bottom line: Decide how much you want to spend, look at the processors available in systems at that price, and see how fast they run the programs you will be running.