Which has more promise, 64-bit or multithreaded

[Blue_MiSfit]

Hey all,

So I'm thinking to go with a big upgrade sometime in January or February, after AMD establishes the new M2 Socket, which should be a graceful transition. I will either upgrade to a 3700+ M2 Athlon64, complete with new board & 2 gigs of ddr2/667 plus SLI...

OR

A dual core Pentium 4, at or around 3.2 GHz - essentially something in the high $200's range, with a similar featureset on the motherboard.

Which do you think would have better performance? 2 threads, or a really well tuned amd64 port on Windows x64?

I'm thinking 2 (possibly 4 with hyper-threading) threads would yield much better speed with x264 than using amd64. What do you guys think?

-MiSfit

[ViCroié]

If the code takes advantage of the 2nd core (wich is the case with X264) it will be much more noticable then just 64-bit extention.

Since this is about video coding, the intel wont let you down.
I'm sure that with the future in mind, dual core will be a very good choice.
But still, this is a comparison betwean a very optimized single-core and a first generation dual core.
I would personaly wait longer untill intel would release their 'conroe' wich is a dual core 'pentium M-design' with 64-bit for the desktop.

[chilledoutuk]

get an X2 and then you can do both

[Doom9]

Codecs whose manufactuer hasn't been paid by intel for optimization generally prefer the AMD platform ;) And if you look at recent processor benchmarks.. if you care about video encoding, go AMD dual core. If you care about raw gaming performance, go for the fastest single core (intel or AMD, unless your heating is bad - then you absolutely need intel.. )

[DryFire]

If you do a lot of encoding I'd go for an A64 X2 aswell, the price differece for an Pentuim d 3.2ghz and an A64 X2 3800+ shouldn't be much.

And if you need a heater you can alwasy overclock your athlon.

[squid_80]

Hey all,
Which do you think would have better performance? 2 threads, or a really well tuned amd64 port on Windows x64?
-MiSfitAre you implying my win x64 port is not well tuned? :p
Seriously though, 64-bit will get you ~10% increase. Dual core = ~40% increase, from what I've heard. (Forget hyperthreading, it's useless for SIMD programs.)
Get an X2 and you get the best of both.