Fastest CPU? P4 or Athlon XP?

[Mole]

Which CPU would be fastest to encode DivX5 between a Athlon XP 2000+ and Pentium 4 2.2 GHz?

Both will be using DDR RAM.

Does SSE2 speed up things or is still raw FPU power that counts.

I believe the Athlon XP 2000+ should have a faster FPU than Pentium 4 2.2, but if DivX5 have support for SSE2, the P4 would probably be fastest.

[diji1]

Hi - i wouldn't like to make a guess as to which encodes faster, as i don't know, but if you look at it from an overclockers point of view i think the northwood p4 is the way to go. seems also that the performance *difference* between lower clocked athlons and p4 becomes less and less as we move over 2gigs and after 2.2 the athlon is starting to fall behind - so i think you will get a punchier system for your money i think if u intend to overclock. before any raving amd zealots jump on this: amd admits this in their own cpu ratings system. what with p4 price cuts having just occured ( 2.2 p4 slashed by 40% ) and the apparent oc'ing ability of the northwood, that's what i'd be leaning towards if i was buying a new system. just my opinion. that's without considering any sse derived advantages though.

[khp]

www.tomshardware.com has done quite a few cpu comparisons.

In some of his newest test he used xmpeg, to test video encoding speed. He clearly doesn't have a clue about video encoding, but maybe knows a thing or two about hardware :)

[theReal]

I guess the Northwood P4 would be better if you are using the quad-pumped 5-hundred-something MHz memory. With normal DDR RAM, I'm not sure...

Wait a little while for the new AMD Thoroughbred and things might be different again... then wait some more for the AMD Hammer's (Claw- and Sledge-) and Intel will be history ;) (I guess they will be out with a new chip by that time as well...)

[Mole]

I had a look at the benchmarks at Tom's hardware and it looks like the P4 is going to be faster than XP.

I'm planning to buy either an XP 1900+ or P4 1.6 GHz. The P4 will be OC to at least 2.2 GHz to 2.4 GHz (depending on my luck). I've heard they OC quite well and there's a very good chance that it'll definately hit at least 2.2 GHz on air cooling.

Prices for both CPU's are about the same. Since the FBS of the P4 has to be raised to 133/533 MHz or faster, there's a good chance that the P4 will leave the XP in the dust.

[theReal]

Just looked at the Tomshardware test, and it says very, very clearly that the Intel RDRAM systems are way faster for everything than the AMD systems.
I wouldn't bet on such a good Intel performance with DDR-RAM, though...

[Mole]

Yeah, I just noticed that it's RDRAM and not DDR RAM.

What I don't know is whenever memory bandwidth or raw FPU power which is the key factor in DivX5 compression.

Anybody who can shed some light on this?

[Arky]

Interestingly, if you read Tom's Hardware more thoroughly, you'll find that he concluded that DDR333/2700 is a better bet than RDRAM800, strange though that may seem:

http://www.tomshardware.com/mainboard/02q2/020514/p4x333-03.html


The important point here is the newer 533mhz FSB on the 2.26/2.4/2.53mhz Pentium - the above does not apply with 400fsb chips. Remember that to reap the benefits of the 533mhz FSB Pentiums, you also need to buy a motherboard which supports PC2700, rather than just PC2100. This is an important consideration because currently only ONE of the Intel 845 chipset variations supports PC2700/333 DDRAM (version "G"). Because of this, you will need to find a board with the Intel 845-G, or the SiS 645-DX, or VIA P4X333, all of which will allow PC2700 DDRAM.

I have spent all day reading Tom's page, because I am just about to build a new PC! I am opting for 2.26ghz-533FSB P4, on either an ASUS P4S-533 SiS 645DX mobo, or a Soyo P4S-645DX DRAGON Ultra mobo.

Undoubtedly, AMD will catch up when they release the forthcoming "Thoroughbred", but I am content with the knowledge that the current Intel architectures are robust enough to withstand overclocking with relative ease, and are better placed to exploit the benefits of DDR300/PC2700 than AMD are. Add to this the fact that there has been a recent 40% reduction in most P4 prices, and AT THE
PRESENT TIME, the answer for the power-hungry enthusiast is obvious.


Arky ;o)

[chemmajik]

Dude you just bought you a Celeron... :) just with a bigger cache

[Acaila]

Add to this the fact that there has been a recent 40% reduction in most P4 prices, and AT THE PRESENT TIME, the answer for the power-hungry enthusiast is obvious.
Exactly, the power-hungry enthusiast buys two, not one processor :D.

[chemmajik]

AMD Thorough-Breds XP2200+ @ 2.7 - 2.8GHz
http://www.anandtech.com/news/shownews.html?i=16463&t=wn

[alkasecond]

Originally posted by Arky
Interestingly, if you read Tom's Hardware more thoroughly, you'll find that he concluded that DDR333/2700 is a better bet than RDRAM800, strange though that may seem:

http://www.tomshardware.com/mainboard/02q2/020514/p4x333-03.html


The important point here is the newer 533mhz FSB on the 2.26/2.4/2.53mhz Pentium - the above does not apply with 400fsb chips. Remember that to reap the benefits of the 533mhz FSB Pentiums, you also need to buy a motherboard which supports PC2700, rather than just PC2100.


This isn't true at all.
533 MHz doesnt require DDR2700 nor does it run necessarily faster
with it.
Remember DDR2700 = 166MHz , DDR2100 = 133MHz.
Running your fsb at 533MHz(qdr) you're really running 133MHz fsb.
DDR2100 will run at it's speed with minimum overhead latency.(semiSYNC).
While if you run DDR2700 at it's speed(166MHz ) it has to be run
asynchronously to fsb , what increases overhead.
In any case cl2 DDR2100 will be faster in normal usage than
cl 2.5 DDR2700.

[chemmajik]

Then there is the DDRII issue... But until we see a DDRII motherboard I'm pretty sure the best benchmark is PC1066 RDRAM thus far.

[MaTTeR]

I'm with Acaila on this one. Dual AMD chips are far to cheap and wicked fast to ignore.

I have a realtively inexpensive dual AMD setup cranking out Xvid encodes around 84FPS @ 596 Resolution. I have my doubts the fastest PIV could compete in the current architecture.

Asus A7M-266D
512MB 333Mhz/PC3100 (Agressively Tweaked)
Dual AMD XP 1600 @ 139FSB (Turbo Mode)


Does SSE2 speed up things or is still raw FPU power that counts.
In my experience, raw FSB and fast RAM(CAS2) makes the largest difference in encoding speed. Not sure about Divx 5 but it appears XviD does support SSE2.

[diji1]

... check out this dual xeon system (http://www.tevox.de/schepp/) . smokin ...

... also, rather interesting Aopen ( Benq ? ) board (http://club.aopen.com.tw/News/News_showAnswer_Old.asp?RecNo=713&Language=English) ... if u appreciate the sound obtained by using vacuum tubes.

[chemmajik]

Dual Athlon
Hammer
Barton
wait & see mode on.

[binky the stunt cat]

Whenever prices drop on P4's, prices drop on Athlons. But we must remember that XP systems are cheeper, which is a good thing. Your echanging the lack of OCing for a cheeper system, that (at least on chips up to the XP1900+) are faster than their P4 counterparts. To get the most out of a P4 system, you'd need the P4b's with DDR333, or a much more expensive RDRAM system. For example, the p4 1.8A is retailing at NZ$483, while the XP1800+ is at NZ$305. The XP is 37% cheeper than the P4, and the savings dont stop there.
So while P4 systems may be slightly better overall, if you aint got the cash to fork out for one, the XP's are quite good. Heck, my next upgrade is from a SDRAM Tbird 900 KT133A system to a DDR, XP1800+, KT266A system, and i'm expecting to get at least 20fps when encoding DVD's, as opposed to my current 7-8.

[Mole]

Yeah, but I was comparing the prices between XP 1900+ and P4 1.6 GHz which are about the same.

I won't probably be able to expect the XP to OC much, but the P4 will almost certainly do at least 2.2 GHz, which will surely leave the XP 1900+ in the dust, even with a P4 DDR system.

[theReal]

The P4 1.6GHz with DDR-RAM does not seem to be very good, from what I see in the reference values in Sisoft Sandra. Even my T-Bird 1400 beats it in all CPU tests (and not only by a little...)

Maybe this is the old core, and the P4 1.6 also got a new core-design now? I don't know.

[Mole]

Yes, but the P4 will be OC to at least 2.2 GHz by increasing the FBS.

[chemmajik]

Mole so since you decided on the chip, what motherboard are you going to choose? What memory you going to get? Probably SIS or I845 with DDR333 I bet?

[Mole]

I'll probably gonna get a board based on the SiS chipset with DDR333.

Video benchmarks at tomshardware has shown that the performance is just slightly slower than PC800 RDRAM.

P4 1.6 @ 2.2 GHz + PC2700 DDR RAM seems like the most bang for the bucks at the moment.

Going to RDRAM will increase the cost dramatically at only slightly more performance.

[chemmajik]

Just make sure you get a 533 compatible motherboard, because even VIA announced a DDRII 600 motherboard today. So what that tells you is there will be a new motherboard chipset revisions coming for the P4. Glad I bought a XP motherboard so I don't have to worry about this issue, till Prescott or Hammer, or Barton or Dual...

[Mole]

Worry about what issue? That there will soon be a new chipset coming out?

I don't see how that can be an issue to worry or care about at all.

I want a computer right now. If I'll have to wait a bit for some new stuff "right around the corner", I might as well forever, since when that new "stuff" comes out, there'll always be something else right around the corner again.

So, let's talk about the present situation and not the future shall we?

[chemmajik]

Since you put it that way, I'll be nice and tell you something. Better hurry up right now & go down there and get that P4 1.6, because they arent making them anymore if you look at the Intel road map. Yeah you'll get them probably easily for the next 3mths but expect it to be hard after that or at a higher price. The higher they go on the B0 stepping the harder they are to overclock, told you, you had a Celeron dude...:devil:
ps:Two fold reason why they arent making them is overclockers, and most of all there rushing to reach 3Ghz before the Hammer comes out at 3400+ if rumors are correct.

[int 21h]

Intel already had the P4 at 3ghz long before this, even on the old die. Intel has demo'd the same setup many times, air cooled even. Not only that, you can easily take a Northwood up to 3ghz with decent cooling. (The current record is something like 3.6ghz or some ungodly thing) If you think normal people are doing that, what do you think the leaders of the industry are doing?

If AMD doesn't sink some serious money into development (i.e. their own fabrication facilities and die reduction issues), they will be left behind.

Things to look forward to, instead of all of this clockcycle crap, enchanced branch prediction (the better it gets the faster stuff goes), I'm also looking forward to seeing the hyperthreading enabled in the consumer level products (AMD is developing similar technology to execute multiple threads within different instances of the processor).

[chemmajik]

AMD must be doing some development for a 800Mhz Hammer to run faster then a P4 at 1.6Ghz, but of course thats just one benchmark, but it is positive. Anyways I'm going to ignore this thread I'm burned out enough from these cpu wars & video card wars. Just hopefully by next year we will be able to do 720x480 captures with mpeg4 & mpeg2 without a hardware encoder thats all that matters to me.

[theReal]

Tecchannel.de tested the production sample of the 800MHz claw hammer, read it (in English) here: http://www.tecchannel.de/hardware/937/

They say that the 800MHz hammer is only a production sample made for stability and there will be no 800MHz Hammer for sale (they speculate about 1.6GHz)
They also say that the cooler of the 800Mhz hammer didn't even get hand-warm with a low-noise fan.

So then, for a production sample with only half the speed, the quake benchmark looks quite good!

P.S.: to go to the next page of the article, click on "weiter" (they forgot to translate it :) )

[Mole]

I'm also not interested to discuss Intel vs AMD stuff since you're obviously pro-AMD and quite an AMD advocate. Neither do I need to be "educated" about how CPU works. I am well aware of the new Celerons and that they're basicly P4 with lower cache. Besides, what the hell do I care what the CPU is called, whenever it's Celeron, Pentium, Duron, Athlon or whatever or from AMD or Intel. As long as it's give me best peformance for my money, I'll buy it.

The Duron is also identical with Athlon, except lower cache too. So, perhaps we'd also say that your system is a Duron with lower cache?

FYI current system is Athlon XP 1500+, so it matters to me nothing what CPU is in my computer. What matters to me is how much money is left in my bank account and the good feeling that the money was well spent.

My original question was whenever if anybody has any experience or benchmarks to show between the two CPU's at mentioned speed and whenever DivX5 supports SSE2.

The systems will be bought in the very near future. Currently there's plenty of 1.6 GHz P4 available and of course I'd be buying in the very near future. If I'd wanted to buy something 4-5 months from now, I'd probably ask then and not now. NOBODY will be able to accurately predict something in this industry 3 months from now. Hell, I'd not even dare to predict what's going to happen even 1 month from now.

If rumors are correct..., you say. Rumors are just that, rumors. Unless you can come up with some hard fact, then they won't do much good.

The computers will be used for a specific type of work and not used for anything else at all such as word processing or games.

By the time the Hammer gets out, there'll probably be affordable P4, which could OC to maybe 3+ GHz as well, but that's just speculation and we can wait for this debate then and don't waste the time to discuss it now. But by then, you'd probably tell that hang on, there's a new CPU around the corner again which will give so and so much better performance, so the debate and the wait goes on and on.

So far, benchmarks showed at tomshardare indicates that the P4 will be faster than XP.

[theReal]

Mole, any thread that starts with a question like "what is better, AMD or Intel?" is going to be a looooooong thread. This one is very civilized, I've seen flamewars going on about this question on other forums...

[Mole]

Yes, I am a moderator on the forums at hardwarecentral.com and virtualdr.com since 1998 so I know very well how ugly such wars can turn out.

However, my question was very specific and was about the specific CPU's and concerning today.

I did not ask about other CPUs or about uncertain things in the far future or rumors. So I believe my thread was not a flame invitation at all.

[avih]

the new AMD ClawHammer. 1st review and benchmark. seems to be 40% faster than the 32bit one :):)

http://www.tecchannel.de/hardware/937/index.html

[theReal]

avih, I just posted that link a few posts up... :D

Plus, the 64 bit capability doesn't play any role in this test because the 64 bit capability was disabled and all tests were made in 32 bit compatibility mode.

[avih]

BIG oops lol

[Acaila]

@Mole:

Mole wrote:
My original question was whenever if anybody has any experience or benchmarks to show between the two CPU's at mentioned speed and whenever DivX5 supports SSE2.

As a reply to that question I'd like to quote something I just found over at divX.com:
h00z wrote:
I hate to say it though... If you bought dual Xeons for DivX encoding, you wasted your money. My dual Athlon MP 2000+ machine still encodes faster than the 2.4ghz dual Xeon box. Now if it were MPEG1/2 encoding, then it would be a different story (link (http://forums.divx.com/viewtopic.php?topic=33421&forum=5))
That's from a guy I would trust with my life when it's about dual systems. And I don't think it would be the other way around for single cpu systems.
His own benchmarks: link (http://www.2cpu.com/Hardware/thunder_i7500/index_5.html)

But I guess by this time you've already bought your P4 system?

[Arky]

Well I've just bought a 2.26mhz P4b (533FSB), and I am confident it was the right choice.

Quite why anyone would wish to create Div-X FOR THEMSELVES in these days of large, cheap harddrives, and progressively cheaper DVD-R drives is beginning to make me wonder.

As I understand it, Div-X came about through the "need" to make Ripped films available to others worldwide, via extreme (read "downloadable") compression. If you are doing the riping for yourself, then unless you are doing it to distribute across the net to others, why are you doing it?? MPEG2 seems to be by far the better option if one is authoring for oneself, because big HDDs are far cheaper now than they were when Div-X first came into existence.


Arky ;o)

[Acaila]

Quite why anyone would wish to create Div-X FOR THEMSELVES in these days of
large, cheap harddrives, and progressively cheaper DVD-R drives is beginning to make me wonder.
I do it for sport. The fun of learning. Whether or not DVD-R's become very cheap I really couldn't care less. Internet connections are also becoming faster and faster, so in the end DivX might not be nessecary for downloading either. But what's the fun in copying a DVD when you also encode it into DivX/XviD? :)
Not to mention downloading a movie where you really don't have to do anything yourself anymore...

[Mole]

Well, if you read the benchmarks closely, you'll notice that the DDR RAM on the Xeons are only running at PC1600 while on the XP's they're running at PC2100. This is probably the major factor which makes the Xeons slower.

Since the Xeon's FSB is only 3/4 of the XP, if the Xeon's memory were at PC2100 the memory speeds would in theory be 33% faster. I don't know how much faster the numbers would be, but it'd be difinately faster than the numbers in the benchmarks, and possibly also pass the XP in performance.

The P4 systems will run the memory at PC2100.

[buba king]

that dual xeon vs dual mp is very inacurate.. running cheap ass slow ram on the xeon and expensive fast ram on the Dual MP... not worthy.

anyway... on pure DivX/mepg-2/1 encoding p4 is the fastest. The p4 just handles number crunching (Encoding) better than XP/MP.. nuff said.. And yes i have tested this.