Digital Video Capture and AMD?

[ncg]

Anyone have experience with Pinnacle products and AMD systems? I called Pinnacle and they say that they do not support AMD and so cannot comment on compatibility. These are the prospective specs:

Abit KT7R or Asus A7v
1ghz+ TBird
Pinnacle DV500, maybe the DC1000
Not quite sure on the Video Card, maybe ATI AIW
768 mb pc133
1x30 IBM 7200
2x45 IBM 7200

Any comments? Thanks in advance.

 

[ncg]

Bump.

 

[ncg]

NO one out there who's into this sort of thing?

 

[Cosmic_Horror]

what problems are you facing?

 

[ncg]

I'm about to build a new system and I am trying to find out if using AMD is viable with higher-end Pinnacle DV-capture cards. I would just use an Intel 815e board, except for the 512mb ram limitation. The big question, I guess, is should I just stick with a BX board, instead?

 

[ncg]

OK, these are the possibilities:

Abit KT7R or Asus A7v
1ghz+ TBird
Pinnacle DV500, maybe the DC1000
Not quite sure on the Video Card, maybe ATI AIW
SB Live Platinum
768 mb pc133
1x30 IBM 7200
2x45 IBM 7200
May have compatibility problems w/DV capture.

Asus Cusl2 or Abit SA6-R
Intel P3/866
Pinnacle DV500, maybe the DC1000
Not quite sure on the Video Card, maybe ATI AIW
SB Live Platinum
512mb pc133
1x30 IBM 7200
2x45 IBM 7200
Limit of 512mb Ram.

Abit BE6-II or BX133-R
Intel P3/866
Pinnacle DV500, maybe the DC1000
Not quite sure on the Video Card, maybe ATI AIW
SB Live Platinum
768 mb pc133
1x30 IBM 7200
2x45 IBM 7200
Leaning in this direction, but not sure if I should buy new BX.

Any experiences or recommendations are appreciated.

Thanks!

 

[RadioactiveCPU]

I know that AMD Athlons and Tbirds and Durons aren't as good for MPEG compression as the P3's are. the P3's are said to have those better advanced instructions for MPEG compression/uncompression. That may not help you, but maybe some others.

 

[ncg]

Thanks for the reply. Very good point about mpeg compression.

I am leaning towards the P3 just to save any 'maybe' hassles. I think the issue, however, would be more the chipset... where Intel, BX or 815e, would be more of a development standard than the VIA.

 

[jpprod]

RadioactiveCPU: MPEG encoding is a floating point and memory-bandwidth intensive operation. Clock for clock, Athlon has substansially higher floating point performance than P3. It's possible that equally clocked P3 can edge out an Athlon in MPEG encoding software which is optimized for Intel's SSE and not for AMD's 3Dnow extensions, but given equally optimized ground it's no-contest. On the other hand, Pentium4 with it's remarkable memory subsystem is propably the number one choise for video encoding as long as money is not a consern.

Optimized Flask MPEG4 encoder results

 

[jpprod]

A good link related to the original question in this thread... Toms Hardware reviewed a Pinnacle DV card on an Athlon system without problems.

Pinnacle Studio DV Plus

 

[ncg]

Thanks for the link, jpprod. Unfortunately, they reviewed the low end card, but at least that is some assurance.

 

[dougjnn]

I've been reading about problems with ATI Radeon/ W2k / Via (some say AMD, but I think its Via) compatibility issues. These don't arise in W98se. But can be severe in W2k. Supposed to be an ATI/Via driver conflict issue. Not everyone has the problem. Tom's hardware forums Video section has a long thread complaining.

Don't think the Geforce cards have the W2k problem. Or Radeons with Intel mobo chipsets.

I was partial to a Radeon 32 DDR myself, until I heard about all this. Well, maybe by the time the DDR chipset mobos are out in a few weeks, ATI will have a driver fix. Or via will. Or both.

 

[ncg]

Thanks, dougjnn. I am looking forward to the capabilities of the AIW... I better go check out that thread, first!