P4 or AMD 64

[coinz]

Now I'm building up a computer for a friend. He mainly wants to use it for changing his video tapes into dvd's..along with some light gaming. Now my question, is there really that big of a difference if he were to choose P4 over the 64. I have the athlon 64 and I love it but I use it for gaming mostly and I heard that the P4 was better for video encoding..but by how much?

thanks

 

[Markfw]

the Athlon64 is very close in the encoding, and rules in gaming any many other areas. It is usually the better choice at the moment, but not allways. Depends on how much heavy multitasking he does and how much encoding.

 

[coinz]

the most he's going to do with this computer is changing the video tapes to dvd's but is there really a significant difference in cpu's. Is it like 10,20,30 mins differences because that really doesn't matter?

thanks

 

[coinz]

um any help would be appreciated

thanks

 

[bim27142]

you mentioned light gaming, so my best bet is to be P4 since it'll be used more on media encoding...the differences might not be that noticeable to average users IMO...personally, either of the two, they are both great processors...but i think you can save more if you go for an AMD rig(comparable to a similar performing P4 rig)

 

[Thermalrock]

a winchester will encode alot more media than a p4 given the same ammount of power

 

[coinz]

Originally posted by: Thermalrock
a winchester will encode alot more media than a p4 given the same ammount of power

am i correct in saying that the winchester core is on the socket 939 chips or also on the socket 754?

thanks

 

[SinfulWeeper]

The P4 reigns supreme by a big margin when encoding based on my experience to any A64.
It does not game as well though. But not by a bad margin. Say where an A64 system gets (assuming same video card and same amount of memory) 110fps, the P4 will get only 95fps.

People rave about how important and signifigant that 15fps is... but unless he is a hard core gamer, he'll never know the difference. Where he will notice the difference though it time almost halved for converting 2-6 hours VHS tapes to DVD. My cousins A64 3200+ simply does not hold any water compared to my 2.4C @ 3GHz. And yes, his A64 is OC'ed also, I just do not remember how much.

 

[SinfulWeeper]

I take back halved... more like a third less time.
And just so you AMD people dont get all upset, you'll be happy to know my next build will be an A64, NF4 based with SLI... now that I already converted most of my stuff and DivX'ed the rest. I want some game time. I'll still hold my P4 rig for the purposes of more encoding/converting in addition to crunching for the TeAm. But my home new everyday rig will be that A64

 

[Thermalrock]

Originally posted by: coinz

Originally posted by: Thermalrock
a winchester will encode alot more media than a p4 given the same ammount of power

am i correct in saying that the winchester core is on the socket 939 chips or also on the socket 754?

thanks

winchester is only on 939. but theres also newcastle on 939. well actually the new castle will waste alot less watts than a p4 too but the winchester will need even less. think its p4 100-140 watts for the high model numbers, 89 watts for the new castle and 67 watts for the winchester.

 

[bim27142]

Originally posted by: SinfulWeeper
The P4 reigns supreme by a big margin when encoding based on my experience to any A64.
It does not game as well though. But not by a bad margin. Say where an A64 system gets (assuming same video card and same amount of memory) 110fps, the P4 will get only 95fps.

People rave about how important and signifigant that 15fps is... but unless he is a hard core gamer, he'll never know the difference. Where he will notice the difference though it time almost halved for converting 2-6 hours VHS tapes to DVD. My cousins A64 3200+ simply does not hold any water compared to my 2.4C @ 3GHz. And yes, his A64 is OC'ed also, I just do not remember how much.

here's your answer buddy!!

 

[Thermalrock]

whatever the athlons encoding is prolly closer to the p4s than the p4s game + other stuff performance to the a64. either way the athlons the better choice untill intel get the desktop pentium m ready. maybe i dont know this tho the athlon will encode better than the p4 when 64bit compiled encoders are available in 2005. either way id be pissed if i couldnt use xp 64 bit when it comes in a few months and the only cpus hell be able to run that on are a64s opterons and the new xeons.

 

[CaiNaM]

bleh.. more FUD spread by amd fanboys..

assuming a winxp environment and comparably 'rated' cpus (ie 3ghz p4 vs 3000+ a64, etc.), depending on the game, amd's are generally 10-15% faster if you play at cpu limited resolutions such as 800x600 with no aa/af. with aa/af or at higher resolutions of 1280 or 1600 where the video card is the bottleneck, 0-10% is the likely advantage. hardly "ruled", tho indeed generally beaten.

one must consider the amd is slightly less in price in comparably rated cpus, tho recently the difference has become minimal in most cases.

general appications the a64 is also slightly faster in the majority of cases.

s754 will be slower than s939 in encoding the video. the s939 is better and fairly close to the intel.. offhand i'd say within 90-95%, so pretty close (audio encoding is often equal or even slightly faster on s939 depending on the application).

now, play a game while you're encoding in the background, and the intel is hardly affected, however the amd will take 2-3 times longer, so what takes 1 hour to encode in the background on an intel will likely take 2 hours or more on the amd.

as for xp64, it may or may not offer any noticeable performance advantage. at least with the betas, the drivers (or lack of) is holding back any acutal potential. i do think it's better to be able to take advantage of it or not, but by that time hopefully dual core a64's will be available, eliminating what i consider a64's last real shortcoming.

 

[Thermalrock]

pretending the p4 ht is a dual cpu system again....

 

[CaiNaM]

Originally posted by: Thermalrock
pretending the p4 ht is a dual cpu system again....

nope, just stating facts. try it, then you won't have to fight ignorance

unless of course you're one of those who only acknowledge fact when it fits neatly into what they want to believe.

the athlon is a great chip, but to claim it has no weakness is a fallacy. it may not affect a great number of users who simply never use their hardware in that way (i mean lets face it, the majority of users don't do much more than browse the net, exchange emails, and play the occasional game), but there are those that demand more. if that weren't the case, there'd be no reason for amd to pursue dual core designs - they'd simply ramp up clock speeds. but even tho many 'amd enthusiasts' prefer to pretend it's not there, amd knows it's a weakness, and dual core will likely eliminate it.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Just an aside, but did the OP actually try to do a search on this forum to check for other threads like this? Questions like this are getting a bit uh, redundant. Ask the same question, get the same answers, start the same flame wars, blah blah blah. Anandtech has provided us with myriad benchmarks of Intel and AMD cpus to help us answer questions like these on our own *)

 

[VIAN]

simple truth is this:

For video encoding, you can get a cheaper P4 that will perform the same as a more expensive A64.

 

[Artanis]

Better read this:
http://hardware.fr/articles/496/page12.html
You can do DIVX media-encoding faster on A64 with VirtualDub
However P4 is only better on heavily optimised software, but everyone tries to optimise their software for Intel.

 

[Thermalrock]

i take it all back and im sorry for being a non believer, a p4 because of hyperthreading can of course run 2 threads at once without losing any speed. ht doesnt help about 20% like i said now actually if you start a second process the p4 wakes up and performs each one faster than he would only one. like if you encode something and it would take an hour and you wanna speed it up all you gotta do is start doom3 and the encoding will take only an hour while the game play will run at a few more frames............

some of you guys are pathetic.

 

[CaiNaM]

Originally posted by: Thermalrock
i take it all back and im sorry for being a non believer, a p4 because of hyperthreading can of course run 2 threads at once without losing any speed. ht doesnt help about 20% like i said now actually if you start a second process the p4 wakes up and performs each one faster than he would only one. like if you encode something and it would take an hour and you wanna speed it up all you gotta do is start doom3 and the encoding will take only an hour while the game play will run at a few more frames............

some of you guys are pathetic.

yes, you are.. and if you want to debate a point, why not come up with a logical argument? do the tests yourself. the proof, as they say, is in the pudding.

reading comprehension would also help. no one said the intel increases speed when performing a second task, so why pull that out of your ass to cloud the issue?

being a "smartass" because you have nothing valid to offer doesn't make you look "smart" in any way, shape, or form.

 

[coinz]

Originally posted by: CaiNaM
bleh.. more FUD spread by amd fanboys..

assuming a winxp environment and comparably 'rated' cpus (ie 3ghz p4 vs 3000+ a64, etc.), depending on the game, amd's are generally 10-15% faster if you play at cpu limited resolutions such as 800x600 with no aa/af. with aa/af or at higher resolutions of 1280 or 1600 where the video card is the bottleneck, 0-10% is the likely advantage. hardly "ruled", tho indeed generally beaten.

one must consider the amd is slightly less in price in comparably rated cpus, tho recently the difference has become minimal in most cases.

general appications the a64 is also slightly faster in the majority of cases.

s754 will be slower than s939 in encoding the video. the s939 is better and fairly close to the intel.. offhand i'd say within 90-95%, so pretty close (audio encoding is often equal or even slightly faster on s939 depending on the application).

now, play a game while you're encoding in the background, and the intel is hardly affected, however the amd will take 2-3 times longer, so what takes 1 hour to encode in the background on an intel will likely take 2 hours or more on the amd.

as for xp64, it may or may not offer any noticeable performance advantage. at least with the betas, the drivers (or lack of) is holding back any acutal potential. i do think it's better to be able to take advantage of it or not, but by that time hopefully dual core a64's will be available, eliminating what i consider a64's last real shortcoming.

hey so when you said playing a game in the background which he probably would not do but more likely some internet browsing or word, excel etc there really won't be much of a significant impact on the performance of encoding?

 

[CaiNaM]

Originally posted by: coinz
hey so when you said playing a game in the background which he probably would not do but more likely some internet browsing or word, excel etc there really won't be much of a significant impact on the performance of encoding?

well, would be more like encoding in the background while playing a game (so game would be foreground app). but no, in the circumstance you describe, i don't think it would be noticeable at all. browsing, email, editing text documents, etc. does not require alot of cpu cycles (once it loads), so those types of tasks have no noticeable impact. i don't think excel would impact anything unless you have a huge spreadsheet doing lots of lengthy calculations, etc.

 

[coinz]

alright thanks for all the replies guys and you too cainam, I think I'm going to recommend the amd 64. But one last thing which do you think would be the right processor(Socket 939) I was thinking the 3500+ and the MSI K8N Neo 2 Platinum.

thanks

 

[CaiNaM]

Originally posted by: coinz
alright thanks for all the replies guys and you too cainam, I think I'm going to recommend the amd 64. But one last thing which do you think would be the right processor(Socket 939) I was thinking the 3500+ and the MSI K8N Neo 2 Platinum.

thanks

i've found the ne02 a very solid mb.

as for the cpu, if you're going to overclock at all (the neo2 is a good board for overclocking), the 3000+ seems to be a good chip (mine runs 2.4ghz - about the equiv of a 3800+), but if you don't intend on overclocking, get the highest PR rating your (or your friend's) budget allows.

 

[coinz]

alright thank you..yeah his budget allows the 3500+ he won't be doing any overclocking so I think I got my stuff to finally put together this system