Recommendations for Digital Video PC - Intel vs AMD

[NCDreamer]

I am building a PC for my brother who does digital video and photo editing, DVD and MP3 ripping, and normal office applications (no gaming). I am torn between going AMD vs. Intel. He already has a high-end video card and 100GB HD, and has about $1300 for the rest of the system. How do I best spend his money? I need specific recommendations (mb, processor, memory, etc) and it needs to be released products as his current system died this past weekend and he needs the new one built ASAP.

It seems people really like the Pentium 4 1.6A because it easily runs stable at 2.2 GHz or better. If the extra $60-120 is not an issue, should I go with the 1.8A or 2.0A processors? Do they overclock as well as the 1.6A?

FYI, my machine is an Athlon XP 1800+ with Alpha Pal 8045 , MSI K7T266A Pro2-RU, 1GB Mushkin 2100 CL2, Lian-Li PC-65 case, Matrox G550, and an assortment of fixed and removeable media. No complaints except that the system makes my room way too warm.

Thanks in advance!

--Carl

 

[ShinSa]

You cant go worng either way really. It's hard to say that one processor is better than the other but AMD is certainly more affordable when comparing perforrmance by performance. I really can't say one chip is more stable than the other. I never have lockups with my AMD under windows XP.

For video editing, try to work your way up from the bottleneck. That is Storage, then memory, and then finally CPU. Keeping this rule will get you the best performing editing machine.

If you can fit SCSI into your budget it'll help alot. If not, at least some 7200RPM IDE drives like the Western digital w/ 8mb buffer. Lots of RAM and Storage is a must.

Im running a XP1700+, Abit KR7A-Raid, and 256Mb Micron DDR, and a Texas Instrument Firewire card. Using Studio DV for quick editing and premiere 6.0 for major projects.

Sheer speed of Kr7A helps alot when I'm doing my editing.

RAID will also help since RAID shines when moving around big files such as those captured clips.

 

[NCDreamer]

So are there no Intel overclockers in this forum? No other recommendations?

 

[CubicZirconia]

<< So are there no Intel overclockers in this forum? No other recommendations? >>



Intel overclockers are all over the place in here. Seems that people have better success with the 1.6a compared to the 1.8a. I'm not sure about the 2.0 though. Personally, I think you'd be fine going with an athlon xp. That way you don't really need to bother with ocing unless you really want to.

 

[PowerMacG5]

If your going to do video editing, video extraction, video compression, etc... I would strongly recommend an Intel processor. Intel P4's have also over-performed AMD chips in the area of video/audio compression and extraction.

 

[Diable]

What apps are you going to use to encode the video? If the program is SSE2 enhanced get a P4 for sure. If its not either will work fine just get the one thats cheaper.

 

[Hulk]

I have a little benchmark site here you might find interesting:

Video benchmarks

Don't underestimate the incredible power of the amazing superscalar FPU of the Athlon! I have a P4 and am happy with it but I am amazed at the Athlon MPEGI-2 encoding performance. It also does as good job at DV rendering as well.