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gaming..... and mpeg4 encoding......

S

slurmsmackenzie

Golden Member
given the strong persuasioin of anandtech's members, as well as pricing i had decided to go with a 754 a64. the post a couple spots prior to mine touches on hhttp://forums.anandtech.com/me...rthread=yyperthreading hyper threading and it's value in certain situations. sorry, i'm not fancy pants with the links, but you get the idea. supposing that i wanted to convert a full dvd (2hrs or so) to divx as well as play the most recent of games, would HT give me the boost i'm looking for? is gaming and encoding not as cpu intensive to need HT? i would appreciate some UNBIASED opinions on the subject. i've seen people respond before with "get one for gaming, one for encoding", but c'mon i can't afford all that. would an ample gfx card take the cpu's performance out of the equations as far as gaming is concerned? should i wait for a 939, which has showed more resiliance in encoding while still holding amd's edge in other areas? on the other hand... that 2.8c seems to have a sweet spot that allows for serious overclockability. i'm torn, confused, frustrated, and at the edge of my wits about it. fanboys welcome, but try to give me some specifics if you would be so kind. i appreciate any light you can shed on the subject.

as if this post weren't long enough. i do a lot of dl'ing, too. i've heard that isn't very cpu intensive, but just wanted to add that just in case it makes a difference. again, thanks.
 
HT works decently, not optimally, meaning not doubling, not even 50% higher performance, instead, in those few apps that support it, you may get up to about a 40% increase at times but in most of those apps a 10-20% increase is what's gonna happen.

No games support it. It's not a worthy feature to spend your money on, unless you use those specific apps that actually support it. I don't know the list, however, the software should tell you on the box or something.

As far as Socket 939, it's a joke. The only reason to get it is to be able to possibly upgrade to a much faster CPU than Socket 754 will be limited to while keeping the same mobo. That's not worth the initial price. Are you gonna buy two CPUs within one year. There doesn't seem like AMD can do much more besides give it dual channel, increase the cache and the clockspeed.

I wouldn't worry about Socket 939 as it doesn't have anything special to speak of except it provides higher performance for AMD's A64. It's like a Cache increase.

What I would do is, first I would choose AMD because they kick ass at games and tend to demolish the P4 in almost everything.

So AMD and then, regardless of socket, choose a chip speed that fits your budget. Just remember that Socket 939 has to have dual modules, which not only cost more, but if you plan to OC, then it also hinders OC potential on the RAM.

I would get the 3400 1MB edition, but that's just me. The price performance right now seems to be the 3200, I just like to step above that.

And just as a comparison of socket prices. The 3400-S754 is provides deadly close performance as the 3500-S939, but can cost about 100 bucks more including mobo.
 
i have a 2.6c running at 230fsb. playing cs and prime 95 was not even close to smooth as silk as i heard some people claim on my 9500np softmodded. w/abit' eq running in the background the game would stutter. so far my jump to ht was not worth it. i had a xp2500 machine. i simply don't run programs that used HT. i'll try to see if i can run virus check w/norton and game w/o problems. so far disappointed with HT.
 
i have xp pro, so no problem there. is video encoding affected by HT? i don't wanna have to stop my game or gordian knot because one or the other is stuttering or hampered by the fact that both are running simultaneously. is the fps on games so much greater with a a64 so that i'd notice a huge difference? would HT be optimized in that scenario?
 
Originally posted by: slurmsmackenzie
i have xp pro, so no problem there. is video encoding affected by HT? i don't wanna have to stop my game or gordian knot because one or the other is stuttering or hampered by the fact that both are running simultaneously. is the fps on games so much greater with a a64 so that i'd notice a huge difference? would HT be optimized in that scenario?
Click to expand...
Some video encoding programs are enhanced for HT, some are not. That being said, I don't think many people would want to game and encode simultaneously.

 
Originally posted by: oldfart

Some video encoding programs are enhanced for HT, some are not. That being said, I don't think many people would want to game and encode simultaneously.
Click to expand...
Exactly. Both are very demanding tasks that I'd prefer ran seperately regardless of the platform. Either fast P4c or 939 are good overall choices for GKnot and gaming. You won't be disappointed either way. I can't really think of a game that's so marginal with a fast vid card that A64 makes the difference in FPS crucial. Nor does the P4c have a big enough lead in GKnot to warrant any real decisive advantage for which to purchase. For myself, I choose the the A64 line because of NX and 64bit capabilities, but HT also makes a very good counter-argument since I run DC projects. Heck, flip a coin already 😀

 
Why AMD?

A64 3200 - $192

P4E 3.2 - $212

P4C 3.2 - $239.4

P4E is a bit slower than a P4C at the same clock speed, but you *might* be able to OC higher.
 
I honestly doubt anything short of a dual proc machine will encode MPEG-4 WHILE playing games at the same time and be smooth.
 
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