New build for office stuff and some video encoding

[tawpgk]

Hi
A friend of mine wants to get a new computer and wants to do some video work, family stuff etc. Will
xp64 w/ athlon64 eventually be better than a P4 system? He was looking at a P4 3.0 system or building one himself. I thought going with the 64 bit processor would be better in the long run for him. Could you advise whether encoding will be better when the 64 bit apps come thru for video? Also what kind of video card would you recommend? would it have to be high end?

TIA

 

[Timbertea]

Hi
A friend of mine wants to get a new computer and wants to do some video
work, family stuff etc. Will
xp64 w/ athlon64 eventually be better than a P4 system? He was looking
at a P4 3.0 system or building one himself. I thought going with the 64
bit processor would be better in the long run for him. Could you advise
whether encoding will be better when the 64 bit apps come thru for
video? Also what kind of video card would you recommend? would it have
to be high end?

TIA

Why compromise? If he's serious about video encoding he should be
building a Dual Xeon system. They now have 64 bits, and an 800FSB to
boot. Dual Xeons will encode video faster than anything else out there
provided the software can run multithreaded. Okay, it's a few hundred
more (mostly the cost of the chips and $70-100 more for the
motherboard), but you end up with a machine perfectly suited to the
task. They are also superb for video editing purposes, and for those who
actually like to be able to use their computer for something else while
encoding/compiling...

 

[me]

Why compromise? If he's serious about video encoding he should be

building a Dual Xeon system.

what brand/model dual xeon you recommend?

 

[Timbertea]

what brand/model dual xeon you recommend?

BX80546KG3200EA


Might as well, it's only a 3.2Ghz chip, but it has the market speak
800FSB, 64 bit instruction set, and can overclock a little bit on air to
reduce the sting of the cost. (The heatsink these things ship with is
massive, and I mean truly massive. Make sure you get the metal plate
with your motherboard that goes on the back of the board and rest
against your case or your motherboard wont support the weight.)

And when the first dual core Smithfields come out, you'll still be
slightly faster than all but the insane top end model. (Slated to be
introduced over $400 more than the cost of these two).

As to motherboards, just expect to drop another $500 in to get what you
want. This isn't a cheap solution, but for encoding it's about as good
as you can get (other than spending 4x as much on the chips for only a
small gain). And expect $200+ for a power supply.

Video encoding, video editing, and digital recording is the only thing I
would reccomend this type of setup for. If you just need a great
workstation you can do it cheaper, but if you are going to be encoding a
lot the difference is not just a few seconds, it can be several hours of
time you get back on large files.

 

[tawpgk]

Thanks for the advice. He wasn't looking to drop that much coin, and video
would not be the primary application for the computer. I guess he will put
up with the longer encoding times. Thanks again.

 

[Timbertea]

Thanks for the advice. He wasn't looking to drop that much coin, and
video would not be the primary application for the computer. I guess he
will put up with the longer encoding times. Thanks again.

Well, if he can put it off a month or so ... Intel is releasing the
Pentium-D chip, he would have to buy a board with a 965 chipset (correct
me if I'm wrong this is from memory for hardware not out yet). The
Pentium-D is slated to be somewhere in the 300-400 range and it is a
dual core chip. It has hyperthreading disabled, but it has two physical
cores so it should still kick major hiney on video encoding
applications, and it will make an absolutely fantastic workstation. For
video encoding applications it will be just a little bit faster than a
dual processor Xeon at same rated Mhz with the 533 bus. It's still
pretty quick.


For the money, that is probably the best price/performance ratio you can
get for that task and have nearly the best for it.

No idea on the price on the new motherboards, but I expect them to be a
little over 200 and probably will use DDR-2. They should have a PCI-E slot.

--Timbertea

 

[Timbertea]

Well, if he can put it off a month or so ... Intel is releasing the
Pentium-D chip, he would have to buy a board with a 965 chipset (correct
me if I'm wrong this is from memory for hardware not out yet).

Err 955 Chipset. That is what I get for trusting memory. heh