pentium 4 or athlon

[:)ggyo]

hi all!!:)
i would like to ask which is the best cpu pentium4 or athlon for divx encoding and why?

[Doom9]

p4s are a bit faster with the latest divx4 codec. The actual numbers are a bit sketchy but for a very rough estimate you can check www.tomshardware.com.. just keep in mind that a lot of things they say is just crap. And one thing even they have to admit.. the Athlon XP offers a much better fps/dollar value, so it's basically up to you. If you go P4.. get a DDR board. The SDRAM boards will slow down your CPU a lot and if you go RAMBUS... well.. you'll be supporting the devil and pay way too much for little gain over DDR.

[Captain_Nipple]

Ahhh.....that classic question again :)
I think that the money you could save with the AMD platform compared to the Intel option one could buy a dual AtlonXP/MP system and you could be rippin dvd faster than Roadrunner can say "Beep,Beep"
Tyan and Asus are two manufactures that come to mind.

One question though....is it down to the OS(NT,2000,XP) that does the work or does the software have to be optimized also? :confused:

www.tomshardware.com have good hardware reviews but crap DivX guides.
Xmpeg for fcuk sake.

Good work Doom9 & TheWef

[wmansir]

Both the OS and the software have to be optimized to take full advantage of dual procs. The latest version of xmpeg is written for SMP, so both procs get %100 usage.

But even if the software isn't written for SMP the OS will try and balance the load of multiple processes over the cpus. This means if you use Gknot (or just avisynth), the decoding, resize, noise reduction, ect that is done with Avisynth will be set to use one proc, and the encoding will be set to use another. From what people have posted this method gives around 100%+60% cpu usage, and leaves the system very usable while encoding.

Also you have to figure a dual MB is about $100US more than a decent single board, in addition to the cost of the extra processor.

[ChristianHJW]

.. fully agree with wmansir !

In the DVD2AVI/MPEG2DEC/AVISynth/Vdub (or nandub ) encoding method, curretnly known as the 'GordianKnot 0.2' method there are 4 dll's involved during encoding :

mpeg2dec.dll
avisynth.dll
divx.dll
vdub.dll

Win2000 installed on a SMP system can handle this quite well, you'll get between 85 - 95% CPU usage ( related to both CPUs ).

When encoding from an AVI in Vdub, means without the frameserving ( resizing/cropping/ etc. ) in AVISynth you'll get 60% CPU usage max. obviously because only 2 dll's

Vdub.dll
DivX.dll

are involved.

Of course, the SMP mobo's are quite expensive, but just think about the upgradeability of such a System !! When i purchased my EPOX board ( about 6 months ago ) i made a mistake because its 2 FCPGA slots and we know Intel will stop PIII at 1.15 GHZ ( at least they say so ), so 2 x 1.15 GHz is maximum for me ( unless Cyrix launches a FCPGA CPU with 1.5 GHz ;) that's SMP capable ), thats about equivalent with an XP1800+ i guess.
But someone who decides for an SMP Athlon board now, just think what kind of upgrades he may be exspecting ! How about a 2 x XP 2500+ ?? You'll be able to use this PC with the very same mobo for at least the next 3 - 4 years, and i doubt there will be a lot of faster machines out there then .....