Advice from the experts needed - PC upgrade time

robtywlak · Post by **robtywlak** » Fri Jan 04, 2008 7:13 am

To all Experienced MSP8 users:

I am in need of a PC upgrade as it has been over 4 years and my Athalon 3000 XP system is choking on 1080i HDV video and can barely handle 720p.

I am leaning towards AMD Athalon 64 X2 dual core 6000 system and want to get at least a 2x speed increase....AMD seems to have the edge over intel Core 2 Duo in both FSB speed and raw power clock for clock in addition to being lower cost.

I have about $200-250 to spend and would like some recomendations on MB, CPU and RAM. I am staying with Windows XP home and the F**K away from Vista. What are key things to look for besides no VIA chipsets...I have been looking at a GIGABYTE GA-M61P-S3 AM2 NVIDIA GeForce 6100 ATX AMD Motherboard for $75 on newegg.com

Brian, Terry, George and others what do you think?
I have not kept up with PC hardware advances

Regards,

Rob Tywlak
MSP8 beta buddy

Devil · Post by **Devil** » Fri Jan 04, 2008 8:26 am

Sorry, have no experience with AMD for video. I have Intel for all my video work.

troppo · Post by **troppo** » Fri Jan 04, 2008 8:30 am

I would only ever buy Intel. The Core 2 Duo are very good for video work. I have read innumerable tests where the C2D is substantially faster than the comparable AMD processor.

robtywlak · Post by **robtywlak** » Sat Jan 05, 2008 11:02 pm

That is very interesting...I would like to see some of these speed test results. From a cost Standpoint the Intel is 2x the price so I am going AMD for sure as I do not have the budget to take a gamble on Intel.

Everything I have read including the raw processor specs would indicate the AMD should be slightly faster when clocked at the same speed. Specifically the Athalon 64 X2 series compared to the Core 2 Duo. The FSB is almost 2x faster and it has more integer / floating point piplines than intel - This was the case years ago when I compared the Pentium 4 against the Athalon XP.

I have allways found that AMD gives more bang for the buck and that stil seems to be true unless I see some hard data to convice me otherwise.

Terry - know you are running AMD what are your experiences?

Regards,

Rob Tywlak

troppo · Post by **troppo** » Sun Jan 06, 2008 4:40 am

Yes, I would agree, the AMD processors are very competitive, and in a lot of areas superior to the Intel product. However, Intel processors have always had a very good instruction set for dealing with encoding.
Have a look at http://www23.tomshardware.com/cpu_2007. ... &chart=431
You can see the AMD X2 6000 is barely faster than the Intel C2D 2.4.
I know encoding is only a part of what we use processors for, but for video I would still stick with intel.
I guess AMD is cheaper for a reason.

MrA · Post by **MrA** » Sun Jan 06, 2008 6:01 am

I had a quad for a while, eventually gave it to my son. All I use now, for Windoze, is a dell e-310, and I don't even shut everything down for video processing. It has 2 megs ram, and a terrabyte of hard drive space, (dual 500 gigs). Think it is a 2.66 mghz, not sure. It works, so hummmppph.

robtywlak · Post by **robtywlak** » Sun Jan 06, 2008 6:21 am

Thanks for the link to Toms hardware... It would appear the C2D and Athalon 64 x2 are very very close when clocked at the same speed doing MPEG2 HD encodes so I am sticking with AMD since it is HALF the cost of the comprable Intel C2D processor and I have a long good history with AMD cpu's and Ulead products giving good results.

The Difficult thing now is to estimate just how much speed gain I will get over my Barton Core XP3000 Athalon compared to the 6000+ dual core processor. Based on finding a common cpu in the 2004 and 2007 charts it would appear about 3.5x which would be fantastic for my needs. I could not directly compare the 2 so I had to use an intermediate one.

Right now it takes about 3 min / min to encode MPEG2 720p at 30 fps. If the Athalon 64 x2 6000+ Windsor is truly 3.5 x faster than my current machine then straight encodes will be near realtime.

I am tempted to look at a Phenom AMD processor as those are 50% faster than the Athalon 64 X2 but that is likely out of my budget.

Regards,

Rob

MrA · Post by **MrA** » Sun Jan 06, 2008 6:35 am

robtywlak wrote:T
Right now it takes about 3 min / min to encode MPEG2 720p at 30 fps. Rob

And you in a hurry for what? Point is, why? You in the media biz? If you are why you here?

troppo · Post by **troppo** » Sun Jan 06, 2008 3:17 pm

MrA: I am in the media biz. Why shouldn't I be here?

Just a heads up on the quad core. I don't think you will see much difference in MSP as it doesn't know how to multithread for 4 cores.

Hope the AMD thing works for you. I have owned a few (first was a K9!) and they have always been great. But personally I found Intel had significant speed increases with encoding. I can get a X2 6000 for $179, and a intel 2.66 for $235. For me it would be worth the extra $56 bucks.

But at the end of the day, they'll both be fast enough. I can edit HD on my macbook pro (intel 2.4) without it missing a beat. Doesn't stop me wanting the Mac Pro with dual Xeons though!

Have fun building your new system

Devil · Post by **Devil** » Sun Jan 06, 2008 4:32 pm

robtywlak wrote: Right now it takes about 3 min / min to encode MPEG2 720p at 30 fps. If the Athalon 64 x2 6000+ Windsor is truly 3.5 x faster than my current machine then straight encodes will be near realtime.

3x realtime to encode? Your computer must come from Noah's ark. I used to encode with a P4 3.06 GHz from DV to MPEG-2 at ~1.1-1.2x RT and that was years ago. Today, it takes 0.8-0.9x RT with a C2D.

MrA · Post by **MrA** » Sun Jan 06, 2008 4:50 pm

troppo wrote:MrA: I am in the media biz. Why shouldn't I be here?

Just a heads up on the quad core. I don't think you will see much difference in MSP as it doesn't know how to multithread for 4 cores.

Have fun building your new system

No offence intended, as I stated, earlier in the post, I gave the quad away. My intention was, so what, it takes time to process anyways. I do the same thing you do, and guess what, it's done on a cheapo pc.

I also do the same thing you do on a very expensive pc, and it ain't MS. But, with that said, whats the point? The job gets done, viewers see the end result, you customers actually ask how it got done?

troppo · Post by **troppo** » Mon Jan 07, 2008 12:56 am

Just a heads up on the quad core. I don't think you will see much difference in MSP as it doesn't know how to multithread for 4 cores.

No offence intended, as I stated, earlier in the post, I gave the quad away

Sorry I was actually directing my quad core statement at robtywlak.

I guess I like to get things done speedily, especially when I have a 3pm deadline to make the 5pm news. There have been times when literally every second counts.

But I would agree, that alot of average PC's today are more than capable to be competent video editors. I recently just purchased a run of the mill dell system for a client to do occasional editing, and I was very impressed. I guess it shows how far processor tech has come in the last few years.

robtywlak · Post by **robtywlak** » Mon Jan 07, 2008 7:36 am

Brian - I wish it was 3x realtime... no said it took 3 minutes to render 1 minute so that is 1/3 realtime. Invert the fraction

Yes I kind of am in a hurry... I don't have a lot of video time on my hands and don't like to wait for long renders though I can do the final while I sleep and have done that in the past. Can't stand jerky previews either so I am a speed freak if you will call it that.

Interesting the price difference is not as much in the southern hemisphere - here in USA it is 2x between the AMD 64 x2 and the intel C2D. that makes it a no contest for me. Especially when you factor in the MOBO difference - AMD boards are generally less as well.

Good to know MSP is NOT coded for quad core...but the Main concepts encoder is which is what Ulead is using. I do know MSP8 has DLL's for both AMD and Intel CPU's.

One more side note... I wonder how much a performance hit Vista makes because all of the Tom's Hardware tests in 2007 were run on vista.

Regards,

Rob

troppo · Post by **troppo** » Mon Jan 07, 2008 7:59 am

One more side note... I wonder how much a performance hit Vista makes because all of the Tom's Hardware tests in 2007 were run on vista.

Good point. I was installing software on a friends new laptop on sunday. It was only running vista basic, yet it was like stirring cold molasses with a bendy stick. Do people really want eye candy at the expense of so much performance? And dont get me started on the numerous security checks. It would ask me at least twice for each program I was installing, if i actually really wanted to go ahead. YES already!
I still can't see the vista attraction.

Devil · Post by **Devil** » Mon Jan 07, 2008 8:28 am

robtywlak wrote:Brian - I wish it was 3x realtime... no said it took 3 minutes to render 1 minute so that is 1/3 realtime. Invert the fraction

For me, 3 minutes is 3x 1 minute.