Will MSP support Athlon 64 / XP 64 any time soon?

[pennstat]

I hate Intel. They're the unethical, Microsoft-like predators of the CPU world. From a technical perspective, their processors run hotter, use more electricity, and are more expensive than AMD. I've been Intel-free for over five years, and I love it.

That being said, I know that apps need to be compiled in 64-bit mode in order to take advantage of what 64-bit CPUs and operating systems provide. You can't just say, "Oh yeah! It's a 64 bit O/S and chip, so everything will be faster!" **buzzer** Sorry, you lose.

Does Ulead intend on making an upgrade/patch to let MSP take advantage of Athlon 64 CPUs? I'm going to be upgrading my video editing system soon; but if MSP isn't going to have true 64-bit support, I might as well just buy the fastest Athlon XP CPU that's out there as an Athlon 64 will be unnecessary overkill. Similarly, if MSP 7 is no longer going to get any upgrades with Ulead working on MSP 8, I might as well wait to upgrade my system until MSP 8 is releasd since CPU prices will have dropped by then.

I know that MSP supports hyperthreading; however, that leads back to Intel, which I won't use, and dual-core is just too bleeding edge as the cost for a dual-core CPU will quickly prove.

Any word on Athlon 64 and XP 64-bit support either in MSP 8 or as a patch to MSP 7?

[Devil]

The only 64 bit OS that works in full 64 bit mode is Linux. The so-called XP 64 bit Windows is a poor hybrid and there is no true 100% 64 bit Windows in the offing in the near future and, even if there were, most of your peripheral devices will not have 64 bit drivers available. So what is the point of having a 64 bit system when you cannot drive your preferred graphics card, hard disk drives, DVD burner etc. in 64 bits? MS announced they were developing a 32 bit version of Windows in 1993. It came with WIN95 which ran under 16 bit DOS. It took them 6+ years before W2k was the first true 32-bit OS. Longhorn is theoretically due out in ~18 months but even that will not be fully 64 bits and, when it does come out, may not even run on current systems, which will already be obsolescent.

That having been said, do you really think it likely that software authors will devote much time on an unknown OS vapourware? Especially as 64 bit compilers for Win are conspicuous by their rarity. The immediate future is certainly dual core, whether the cores be 32 bits or 64 bits working in 32 bits.

I'm really surprised at the vituperation against Intel, which you liken to Microsoft. You abandon Intel (which are streets ahead of AMD), yet you appear to keep favour with Microsoft. Logically, you should be using Linux or some flavour of Unix, in which case I'd say go straight ahead with 64 bit hardware and good luck with your drivers.

[pennstat]

The only 64 bit OS that works in full 64 bit mode is Linux.

That's actually not true. Solaris 10 is 64-bit on AMD Opteron processors, thanks to the strong partnership between Sun and AMD.

Believe me! If Ulead ever made a 64-bit Media Studio Pro for Linux or Solaris (neither of which will ever happen, I'm sure), I'd be on that so fast that I'd make a sonic boom! A brand new Sun Blade 1500 or 2500 on my desk just for the occasion! And the Linux crowd would buy it in droves -- at least those who don't vehemently adhere to the highly arrogant "everything on Linux should be open-source" dogma.

By the way, NVidia now officially supports Solaris 10 x86 and many NVidia cards also allow video capture. (I had to return a 6600GT with video capture about two months ago because it was the wrong connector type but I didn't catch that before I purchased it. ). So, whereas your statement about drivers is to a certain point correct, the open-source nature of Linux and now Solaris will likely result in a very strong surge of "missing" drivers. Unfortunately, Ulead products appear to be so rooted in DirectX/Windows Media that non-Windows versions will probably be out ... oh ... let's see ... maybe ... never? And I don't know that the video capture/editing market for UNIX systems will ever be enough to justify redesigning and recoding MSP to take advantage of them. Pity, really.

If I recall correctly (and at 4:30 AM that's unlikely), there are Linux video editors out there, but I utterly doubt that they even come close to MSP or Premiere.

It would seem that dual-core or dual-proc (AMD, obviously) is indeed what I should be focusing on. Then again, would MSP even take advantage of them? Having multiple processors is irrelevant if the application is single-threaded.

[ejskater16]

As far as editing on linux goes...

Check out Cinelerra for editing, and maybe Kino for capturing/exporting...

[THoff]

Hmm, dual-core is too bleeding-edge, but you want 64-bit support?

Anyway, given that many 32-bit apps run faster on 64-bit Windows XP, it does seem like a worthwhile upgrade even if you don't have a complete suite of 64-bit applications. Merely having a newer, higher-clocked processor is a good investment for anyone doing any sort of media work, especially if that also gets you a new AMD CPU with SSE3 support.

[Devil]

MSP7 already has some multithreading capabilities and, if you look at Mark Dileo's benchmark results, they show that dualies are advantageous for rendering, HT somewhat less so, but still better than "singlies". I would therefore imagine that dual-core would therefore give very advantageous results.

I still cannot understand why you consider Intel as being so bad, when your OS maker has been proven so often, in court, to be much worse.

[pennstat]

Hmm, dual-core is too bleeding-edge, but you want 64-bit support?

What can I say? I've been Sun Microsystems administrator for over a decade. I've been using 64-bit operating systems and hardware for years! Unfortunately, there's no Media Studio Pro for Solaris or this wouldn't be an issue! Besides, other game and application companies have released enhanced binaries to their products to take advantage of the extended properties of an Athlon 64 with Windows XP 64. It might not be true 64-bit, but obviously there *is* some benefit beyond raw speed.

But depending on the speed of the processors that are being compared, it still might be more cost effective to go dual chip rather than dual core. One would think that, for example, dual Athlon 64 3200s would overall be better than an Athlon 64 X2 4400, yet the X2 4400 is more expensive than two 3200s by almost $150, at least according to New Egg. (In fairness, I didn't look up the motherboard prices. Since it's close to midnight, I'm not going to. )

I still cannot understand why you consider Intel as being so bad, when your OS maker has been proven so often, in court, to be much worse.

You've apparently not read the lawsuit against Intel or the statements from various developers who can prove AMD's statements. But I don't want to hijack this thread any further away than necessary.

[dat7719]

As a longtime AMD user early K5, XP and now 64 3000, I have been looking at using WinXP64 but the main issues are drivers for HW.

MSP7.3 runs faster on AMD64 3000 than it does on an AMD XP 3000 or Sempron 3000. I have found the winXP running on 64 bit AMD has provided a very stable platform, I also have an AMD XP2400 and older XP 1800, all running winXP SP2.

The 64 bit runs cool and quiet. This can not be said for Intel P4s

In time 64 bit processors will be supportted, AMDs approach makes the processor compatible with 16bit, 32bit or 64bit operaton. Intel 64bit processors do not have this flexibility.

HT was a quick fix by Intel to fool buyers into thinking it was like a dual processor capable cpu, however, it only provides 3-4% improvement for most operations.