P4 Vs. Athlon 1700+ which handles mpeg-1 capture better?

[menace]

I'm thinking of upgrading my P3 667 to an Athlon 1700+ or to a p4 1.5GHz. My question is if anyone has had experience using both or either and how the capture of MPEG-1 went? What resolution did it bog down on etc? Any inputs, opinions etc are appreciated.

[spidey]

I have a p3 866

It handled capturing from a Dazzle DVC 1 USB Mpeg 1's at 3000 kbps x 224 kbps audio with pefect results.

As far as avi capping it handles Vdub/Huffyuv (at 32 bit RGB) caps at 29.97 frames per second x 44,100 PCM with 5 dropped frames over the course of 2 + hours !!!!

Just some examples for you.

I prefer Penitums, but I will admit for the money I think you may be able to get more for less $$ on an AMD. But I have heard both praise and rants about the AMD's. Most rants have come from PC stores - remeber they work off of they're commission....ie for them the INtel would make them more money....

[sumibas02]

hi,

i have a SONY P4 1.3 Ghz/512 RDRAM i have captured from sony digital8 camcoder via fire wire i have used adobe premier5.1 LE/ ulead visual studio / media studio pro. i never had any problems i never had any frame drops so far. i have captured abt 10 tapes and used tempeg or lsx or cce to convet to VCD. it works fine for me. But i had little problem when i had 128 mb ram. after my ram upgrade nothing went wrong so for. but i keep hearing that amd is the best for all video stuff.

Bakasran

[sommersby]

Well, as far as sytem performance the 1700+xp is going to outperform the 1.5 p4 as it is the equal to a p4 2.0. as far as cupturing goes I run a 1600+xp and can capture at any resolution I want using vdub and huffyuv with very few dropped frames. It depends much more on the mother board and chipset than it does on the processor. if amd stick with a name brand board, mci, abit, asus, gigabyte, etc and make sure you have the 266a chipset, as for intel I would go with the new gigabyte 81rxp as it uses ddr ram which is much cheaper and performs just as well as rdram, has usb 2.0 and supports raid and up to 8 ide drives, and comes with creative 5.1 sound on-board, for the amd the equalivent board is the gigbyte 7dxr+, I wish these two boards were available when I upgraded a month ago, I would of tried the amd board for sure...Gary

[Allan55]

Hi,

IMHO your existing box is adequate for capturing... does your video card do overlays? I can capture DV on an Athlon 600 with no trouble.

Where it may be inadequate is encoding from AVI to MPEG...the faster the better here.

Allan

[plg-tae]

Well, as far as sytem performance the 1700+xp is going to outperform the 1.5 p4 as it is the equal to a p4 2.0????????????

thats about the dummest thing ive heard in ages....i have a p4 2.0 ghz and a athlon xp 1900...the athlon doesnt even compare to it....ive done dvdrips,captures,and encoding of every type to decide which box i would use for my dvdripping/capturing needs.....the p4 wins hands down....although on less demanding codecs like mjpeg both did well...but then so did my p3 500 with mjpeg..so that doesnt say much...on encoders like cce i get way faster speeds with p4 as well as tmpeg..not to mention the authors of both those apps use p4..(they would have bought a athlon and optimized it for that if it were better..notice its optimized for p4?)..forget opnions and rants and false statements on performance from athlon owners and take the word of a person who owns both....athlon is great for how cheap it is,,,but it simply doesnt compare to p4 at all...
p.s.
my p4 1.7ghz box from work also beat out the athlon xp 1900 in all tests..
so im basically about to give my athlon box to my nephew..worthless
the athlon 1700 is not better nor equal in any way to the p4 2ghz....dont believe what anyone tells you...and if u dont believe me test for yourself...cause talk is cheap... :P

[sdispun]

Fact:

http://firingsquad.gamers.com/hardware/athlonxp/page5.asp

To read all about it, just start from page 1 same link../default.asp
Best regards,

[publius]

I have been capturing with a P4 1.8 and have had no problems. I am using VDub with a Visiontek Everything and capturing to Huffyuv from a VHS source with 3 dropped frames on a video that it just under 3 hours. I have the new MSI board with 512 DDR and a dedicated 100 gig HD.

[kitty]

Most software seems to be optimized first for the Pentium & the P4 has SSE instructions that help in video processing. If you are going to do heavy MPEG encoding think P4 over Athlon.

[menace]

HOLY CRAP!!!! Thanks for the tips guys! --I'm swinging towards the p4 as my p3 has given me very loyal service, however my buddy is an athlon fan and he swears that they rule aggghhhh decisions, decisions. Thanks again--feel free hoever to continue to comment, my decision is in no way made yet

[richpjr]

kitty - one small correction. All Athlon XP cpus support SSE instructions. The P4 supports SSE2 instructions, so if the application you are running supports SSE2, then you will see a performance boost.

plg-tae - my response is similar to the one above for kitty - if your software supports SSE2 you will see a difference. Aside from SSE2, just about every review I have seen clearly favors the Athlon XP over similar clock speed P4s, usually by a pretty wide margin. The new P4's with the bigger caches tighten things up, but cost a ton of money.

One other factor to consider - you might get a small improvement in performance either way depending on which chipset and memory you are using for each of the processors (rambus vs DDR vs SDR ram).

menace, I think just about any high-end P4 or Athlon XP system will do the job for you just fine.

Just my 2 cents,

Rich

[DiViNeLeFT]

Well, as far as sytem performance the 1700+xp is going to outperform the 1.5 p4 as it is the equal to a p4 2.0????????????

thats about the dummest thing ive heard in ages...

i think there is somethin wrong on your athlon box... do you have quality parts besides the cpu?? because an athlon 1700 should be equal to about a p4 2ghz... my athlon 1600 which is overclocked to 1.58ghz... so just shy of a 1900... but even without it being overclocked it beats the p4 2ghz in mathmatical and multimedia benchmarks. benchmarks dont lie man, they are unbiased.

[sommersby]

Well, as far as sytem performance the 1700+xp is going to outperform the 1.5 p4 as it is the equal to a p4 2.0????????????

thats about the dummest thing ive heard in ages....i have a p4 2.0 ghz and a athlon xp 1900...the athlon doesnt even compare to it....ive done dvdrips,captures,and encoding of every type to decide which box i would use for my dvdripping/capturing needs.....the p4 wins hands down....although on less demanding codecs like mjpeg both did well...but then so did my p3 500 with mjpeg..so that doesnt say much...on encoders like cce i get way faster speeds with p4 as well as tmpeg..not to mention the authors of both those apps use p4..(they would have bought a athlon and optimized it for that if it were better..notice its optimized for p4?)..forget opnions and rants and false statements on performance from athlon owners and take the word of a person who owns both....athlon is great for how cheap it is,,,but it simply doesnt compare to p4 at all...
p.s.
my p4 1.7ghz box from work also beat out the athlon xp 1900 in all tests..
so im basically about to give my athlon box to my nephew..worthless
the athlon 1700 is not better nor equal in any way to the p4 2ghz....dont believe what anyone tells you...and if u dont believe me test for yourself...cause talk is cheap... :P

ONE sugestion, why don't you read a liitle bit before making STUPID STATEMENTS that shows just how ignorant you are, EVERY PC magazine, at tleast the 5 or 6 diffent ones I read every month state very plainly that in overall test the AMD out performs the INTEL, the 1600+ even outperforms the 2.0 gig p4 in most office applications, only in gaming does the p4 2.0 outperform the amd 1900+ and that is only by a very slim margin, and the NEW CPU magazine rates the new AMD 2000+ better overall than the new northwood P4.

As for memory, because rdram is only 16 bit wide compared to 54 bit wid for ddr it has to be clocked 4 times faster just to equal ddr, which it is, actually more than 4 times faster in clock speed, but because of it's latency in real world usage, that is where it is not bring fed constantly, it is no faster and in most cases slower than ddr ram, why do you think intel is seperating itself from rdram, if they ever get the latency issues fixed it may survive. I do read. allot. I could of upgraded to any system I wanted to, but why throw away money other than to say I have an intel.
PC magazine last top 10 home desktop picks showed the AMD 1800+ in the top 4 spots. shees, I didn't want to get into this never ending debate but you have to be a real moron to make the statment you made, show me an article that disagrees with this and I will print 10 here that back me up, and every time we ask a moron like you to show the proof in black and white they disappear......lol

[sommersby]

Sorry, that was supposed to be 64 bit wide on ddr, I was a little angry writing that post, I will end saying there is nothing wrong with intell p4's, they are a great cpu, I think they have better inherent heat protection than the AMD's. I just get soooo tired of the, I have an intel so anything else is crap, statements by people here. What I said I can back up with facts, not wishfull thinking...lol

[sommersby]

Fact:

http://firingsquad.gamers.com/hardware/athlonxp/page5.asp

To read all about it, just start from page 1 same link../default.asp
Best regards,

thanks sdispun,

another black and white statment, I like it....*S*

[preacher238]

IMHO, the Athlon XP 1900 I just bought (with 512 MB SD RAM) kicks BEEHIND when it comes to encoding, ripping, editing etc. I know there are a lot of P4 people that will call me ignorant, dumb, stupid (insert insult here) but i happen to be more than pleased with my setup! Athlon XP RULES!!!!!

[geniv]

I just got a Athlon 1800+ upgrade several weeks ago. and it kick ass. never had any problem. (sure I got crashes but it's probalby my overbloaded Win98 with all the crap I put in)

I use to be a intel fan now that I tried an the athlon XP I'm in AMD favor.

Athlon XP 1800+ $137 retail
P4 2.0ghz $315 OEM

the AXP out perform the P4 and cost about $200 less. go do the math.

asked the same question on a hardwarewebsite and everyone told me to go with AMD. hehe. for games the only one that Intel beat AMD is on Quake3 and I don't play that game I"m a UT fan.

[sdispun]

sommersby, you're welcome bro.. and believe me, I have more then 10 to back you up. After all, we're the first to dip the whole rig in liquid and clock my 366 poppy to 650Mhz.

http://octools.com/index.cgi?caller=articles/submersion/submersion.html
http://octools.com/index.cgi?caller=articles/submersion2/submersion2.html

Back then Intel RULES, time changed, thing changed.. but I'm too old for that now, so I dip something else in liquid now-a-day. :)

[Sulik]

For most applications, the Athlon will outperform the P4 because of better x86/x87 performance.
However, when it comes to MPEG encoding performance, the P4 will have a slight edge because of SSE2. But the key is memory bandwidth, so an Athlon+DDR will blow away a P4 with PC133 SDRAM for encoding.
However, the P4+DDR/RDRAM with SSE2 will usually outperform the Athlon, but not by much (The P4 executes SSE2 instructions as 2 separate SSE instructions internally).

I usually prefer the P4 over the Athlon mostly because of crappy chipsets out there, but once you find a stable platform, the Athlon can give you a better bang for the buck.

[menace]

well the decision has been made:

Abit KR7A motherboard with a AMD 1700+ cpu and 256MB DDR ram. Anyone want some sdram?

Thanks to all for your input!

[TheInformer]

menace,

What type of SDRAM and how much for it?

[geniv]

You made the right choice my friend. btw: how fast is your current rig?

[Bstansbury]

That's a great choice,... I believe the KR7A is a Raid MOBO, which means you'll have to get some new hard disks also. This is the same systems I have been looking at.

Also, check out the data on DDR memory,... they are not all the same. I've seen some with unbuffered outputs, some with, some make no mention of it.

Your initial question was about MPEG-1, but your new system should go way beyond that. There is so much discussion on this web about capturing in VirtualDub in AVI,... this seems to eat up the performance. I was turned on to using MPEG-2 Capture of I frames only at 15 mbs, 640x480. Believe it or not, this takes less strain on any system than full
res at AVI. It also allows you to input high res into TMPEGen for converstion to anything you want. This suggestion came from Rforenot who adds a lot of quality suggestions on the VCDHelp forum.

Let us know how it all works,... also, what OS are you going to use.

[Chris X]

First off Im an A+ Certified Tech and a AMD Athlon Thunderbird owner. 1.4GHz oced 1.53GHz.

Believe it or not the 1.4GHz Tbird outperformed the P4 2.0 GHz in some tests. The Athlon has a superior Floating point Unit and IPC over the P4. Not 2 mention the P4 has a reduced catch, even smaller then the P3s.

I use 512megs PC133memory on a KK266-R motherboard (Apollo kt133A chipset 686b southbridge) Supreme performance, can get DDR performance with my SDram using this motherboard and im damm happy.

There is no way, even with SSE2. That a P4 2.0GHz will outperform an AthlonXP 1900+ and that is the bottom line. AthlonXP 1900+ is leaps and bounds more powerfull then a P4 at 2.0GHz. The AthlonXP 1900+ features SSE and Enhanced 3DNOW.

at 1.4GHz (default) I rank a score on United Devices THINK Computational task I score 140% on my processor alone. 40% faster then the 1.5GHz P4 in comparesion. Overclocked, I score 53% FASTER.

Just 2 clear that up. Yes u will achieve Xellent performance with your 2.0Ghz P4. But lets try 2 keep this real shall u.

Well, as far as sytem performance the 1700+xp is going to outperform the 1.5 p4 as it is the equal to a p4 2.0????????????

thats about the dummest thing ive heard in ages....i have a p4 2.0 ghz and a athlon xp 1900...the athlon doesnt even compare to it....ive done dvdrips,captures,and encoding of every type to decide which box i would use for my dvdripping/capturing needs.....the p4 wins hands down....although on less demanding codecs like mjpeg both did well...but then so did my p3 500 with mjpeg..so that doesnt say much...on encoders like cce i get way faster speeds with p4 as well as tmpeg..not to mention the authors of both those apps use p4..(they would have bought a athlon and optimized it for that if it were better..notice its optimized for p4?)..forget opnions and rants and false statements on performance from athlon owners and take the word of a person who owns both....athlon is great for how cheap it is,,,but it simply doesnt compare to p4 at all...
p.s.
my p4 1.7ghz box from work also beat out the athlon xp 1900 in all tests..
so im basically about to give my athlon box to my nephew..worthless
the athlon 1700 is not better nor equal in any way to the p4 2ghz....dont believe what anyone tells you...and if u dont believe me test for yourself...cause talk is cheap... :P

[menace]

Uh oh.... Bstansbury--So are you saying that my ATA100 HD will no longer work with a raid board? I was under the impression that these things were backwards compatible? Also, what about my IDE ATAPI CD-RW and CDROM? hmmm food for thought. I will probably go windows 2000 pro once i'm sure everything works--win2000 does NOT work for my current setup (ASUS CUV4x with P3 667 and 512MB)--i get random and complete lockups--mystery to me..anyways...

There should really be a hardware only section...

Thanks for the continuing support!

[sean madison]

Tell me how good u think this is-
I know its freakin fast but how fast u think it would take to encode like a 100 min movie with this baby-

Tyan motherboard- 512 mb ddrram 2 MP1800+- that is 3.1 GHz

Brief- 3.1 GHz at 512 mb ddrram
How good u think that is cuz im orderin it in like a couple months.

[Chris X]

That is an impressivly fast system however, u will not get the same performance u would obtain with a single AMD Processor that would operate at the frequency of 3.1GHz. . At most u will achieve a 40% performance boost over a single 1800+.

Most applications do not take advantage of dual processor systems. Its perfect for a dedicated Video Editing system.. But if that is what it is for. I recomend 2 AthlonXP 2000+ processors. They r faster and offer more performance. Nice system either way.


U do know that Win9X/ME r not compatable with that system dont u?

[sean madison]

well, lol, there is no such thing on pricewathc as 2 xp 2000.

They are called mps(multi-processors)

And one more thing-
Why isnt win9x\me compatible?

[TheInformer]

Menace,

Your ATA/100 drive should work.

Let me start off by saying that I use a KT133a based MSI RAID mobo, with a 20 gig drive on the primary IDE port (IDE1), a CDRW and DVD drive on the secondary port (IDE2), and a 60 gig Maxtor 7200RPM ATA/100 drive on the first RAID port (IDE3).

A RAID motherboard has four IDE ports. The first two are the ones that most all other motherboards have, and the second pair are the RAID ones.

You can configure the RAID ports to be either ATA/100 IDE ports in which case they will accept anything your first two IDE ports would, or as RAID ports in which case they will only accept hard drives. Mine only accepts ATA/100 hard drives - yours might be different in that aspect.

On my motherboard, I have to set a jumper to tell which mode the two ports should be, either ATA/100 or RAID.

IDE1 = Normal Primary IDE port
IDE2 = Normal Secondary IDE port
IDE3 = ATA/100 or RAID --------------\ these have to be
IDE4 = ATA/100 or RAID --------------/ the same

If you plug your existing hard drive into IDE1 or IDE2, nothing will be any different than it is now. If you want a RAID configuration, then my advice would be to buy two new identical hard drives and put them in IDE3 and IDE4, while putting your current drive in IDE1.



Quote_____________________________________________ _________
Uh oh.... Bstansbury--So are you saying that my ATA100 HD will no longer work with a raid board? I was under the impression that these things were backwards compatible? Also, what about my IDE ATAPI CD-RW and CDROM? hmmm food for thought. I will probably go windows 2000 pro once i'm sure everything works--win2000 does NOT work for my current setup (ASUS CUV4x with P3 667 and 512MB)--i get random and complete lockups--mystery to me..anyways... _________________

[valzuniga]

Did anyone else notice that this inconsiderate poster did not spell "dummest" correctly!?