Be Excellent To Each Other

PLZ
ABT
150
PDS
THX

You're stealing the thunder from my other thread.

Consider it more of a tribute.. though I see I posted about a CPU first so ner!

I seem to recall Overclockers had some deals on Quad core CPU's a couple of months back (back when I was speccing up editing systems). Might be worth a look as they were barely more than a dual core.

See I'm hoping to get something that's going to be even quicker than my current dual core AMD X2 3800. I don't need graphics so much as I don't play many games and they look quite pretty enough for me as it is. I need brute force processor speed for mucho video conversion.

Would an intel CPU at 150 be better than AMD about same price?

Note I consider it worth getting a cpu for 150, I don't mind if I have to get another motherboard as well.

Surely a quad core is the way forward? My work PC has a quad core 2.8Ghz and it's a monster for transcoding. Depending on settings, I can crunch MPEG-2 into H.264 at over 100 frames per second.

The Mac has 2x quad core Xeons at 2.8GHz and the only problem is that it's currently impossible to get the best out of the system. I allocate 6 of the 8 cores to encoding and you still can't max them out. The limitations are due to application coding (apparently it's hard to write an app that is really efficient over more than 2 cores), OS limitations (which will improve) and memory bus limitations (which won't).

Multiple cores really is the way to go for encoding though. I'm typing this on my fuck-off fast Macbook Pro but the big Mac Pro makes it look so sluggish when it comes to rendering and encoding.

Maybe this CPU then..

Unless there's something the same cheaper online. DCS are convenient for me being just down the road and they usually have little difference to online pricess.

Though looking at Dabs there's one for £150 with free delivery that's a 9950 3.1Ghz Quad core.

Seriously, why AMD? There's a very good reason why AMD are losing money and marketshare to Intel at the moment. I always used to buy AMD but they are so far behind Intel these days it's untrue. I'd need very compelling evidence to be buying AMD.

What Chinny said.

So I'll get a better CPU from intel at £150?

The Q6600 is a lovely chip (Quad Core 2.4). More L2 cache than that AMD one and it's easily had for about £120.

Will that greater L2 Cache make it convert video quicker than the AMD chip?

It'll help. And the extra £30 will mean that you can go and do something interesting while it's converting video anyway!

It's also a 1333MHz FSB rather that a 1066MHz which that AMD is.

Encoding can be repetitive, so yes it should.

Also keep in mind I've never ever seen anything other than Intel chips in professional encoding boxes. Even going back 5 years it was Xeons all the way.

However it does depend on the encoding software. Back when I worked for (not ITV - Ed) we had a fantastic encoding boxes called Digital Rapids that cost approx 10 grand a pop. They had dual Xeons. However while we could encode most formats super speedy, Real was always a pain as the encoder could only use 1 CPU.

Likewise with my new Mac, the more cores you throw at the encoding you get diminishing returns. Hence why the Mac is configured to use 6 cores for encoding while I can use 2 cores to do other stuff. In fact the other week I had it encoding a load of stuff up in OSX while Parallels was also running encoding up a load of stuff under Windows using Procoder. I still had CPU time to spare!!! No slowdown at all.

So the real benefit of multi-core and lots of cache is doing lots of things at once.

Oh you need an OS that can properly handle multiple cores + loads of memory. The Mac has 6 gig. No good having a very capable system if it ends up thrashing the HD because it's out of memory.

The Q600 will stamp that AMD chip into the ground so hard it'll emerge in China.

I like AMDs too, my laptop is one, but for a desktop, and certainly for raw power you would be mad.