P3 better for MPEG Compression?

[RadioactiveCPU]

From what i heard, the P3 is better for MPEG compression because of the more advanced instructions contained within the chip. But i also know the Athlon blows the P3 away in speed. Is it worth getting an Athlon but sacrificing that MPEG compression speed? or is it not true? will i notice any difference?

 

[Cerb]

Those instructions will be useless if the program you are encoding with does not use them. With Audiocatalyst and LAME, they are too close to call. I'd say get the Athlon, as it is cheaper for the same performance. Not to mention when the encoding speed is around 10:1 realtime, it won't matter that much. I've been more limited by ripping speed than anything else.

 

[TELeast]

Yes, I think it depends on the software you are using, whether it is optimized for one CPU or the other...such an example can be seen from TOM's Hardware reviews:

http://www4.tomshardware.com/cpu/00q4/001125/index.html

Tom was comparing P4, P3 and AMD-TB for encoding MPEG4. At first, he obtained the best scores for AMD-TB, even kicking the P4's ass. Then, Intel (being Intel) recoded the encoding software overnight and asked Tom to try again with the modified version. The P4 then kicked the AMD-TB's ass, but the P3 was still way behind.

So to answer your question based on Tom's review, the TB is better than P3. And if AMD does what Intel did and recode the encoder to optimize for AMD CPU, you may even see a bigger boost in performance.