Brad Templeton wrote:
In fact, take a look at http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20041221/cpu_charts-18.html.There is no cool-aid here. AMD and Intel systems are different. AMD wins on certain problems, Intel wins on others. AMD uses slower clocks, which means less heat, which is great on the broad set of problems where the AMD outperforms. On some problems though, Intel's faster clock and faster FSB really do mean something.
Video decoding and encoding appear to be one of the problems where Intel wins handily.
My P4-3ghz system when playing HDTV runs at 60% idle. When playing SDTV it runs at as much as 95% idle. No xvmc.
My Athlon XP-3000 system when playing HDTV runs at 25% idle but sometimes dips down close to zero.
So if playing HDTV is your goal, there is not even any question about which of these two processors to get. Indeed, though while I have not done it, you might even want to pick a slower Intel chip (say a 2.6hgz) over an AMD-3000 (2.1ghz)
However, the AMD-3000 would outperform the Intel 2.6ghz in other applications, so if you want those, you might choose AMD.
We await reports of the CPU utilization for folks on Athlon-64 processors, in both 32 bit mode and 64 bit mode. This is hard to predict. The A64 uses an even _slower_ clock for the same "number."
When it comes to mpeg, the size of your clock does matter.
This is the results of the video encoding benchmarks. This will give you a good idea of how different processors measure up when it comes to video applications. Notice how Intel CPUs with similar numbers (i.e. P4 3 GHz compared to Athlon 3000+) perform better.
I just checked yesterday and the price for a P4E 3.0 GHz was roughly the same as an Athlon 64 3200+ ($185 - $190). And the Intel outperforms the AMD on the MPEG-4 encoding benchmark by about 10%.
So I'm finding myself wishing I had purchased an Intel CPU for my HDTV mythbox instead of my AMD. Maybe I'll just have to get another system. >:)
Brian _______________________________________________ mythtv-users mailing list [email protected] http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
