Video Editing? AMD Athlon 64FX-55 2.6ghz or Athlon 64X2 400??

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Dutch

Dear Colleagues,

I am in a bit of a quandry and ask for your guidance.

I am in the process of building myself a video editing box for use with
Adobe Premier. The box itself is going to have 4 gigs of memory and a
mid-range, 256mb video card since I am told that video rendering occurs
mostly on the processor.

I am looking at the AMD Athlon 64 FX-55 2.6ghz or an Athlon 64 X2 4400
processor. There is a significant difference in price, but thats not my
primary concern.

The bottom line, for video editing, I see that the FX-55 does not have a
dual-core processor while the Athlon 64X2 does. Am I correct that I am
better off in terms of performance for my particular application with the
dual core. . . or not?

Advice is greatly appreciated.

The Flying Dutchman
 
Get a dual core. If your present app doesn't take advantage of it, a future
version likely will. Plus, if your app just uses one core you can carry on
with other things using the 2nd core.

Or you can lower the app's thread priority in Task Manager in order to do
other things.
--
Ed Light

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Ed Light said:
Get a dual core. If your present app doesn't take advantage of it, a
future version likely will. Plus, if your app just uses one core you can
carry on with other things using the 2nd core.

Or you can lower the app's thread priority in Task Manager in order to do
other things.
Click to expand...

Of course, I mean while rendering.


--
Ed Light

Smiley :-/
MS Smiley :-\

Send spam to the FTC at
(e-mail address removed)
Thanks, robots.

Bring the Troops Home:
http://bringthemhomenow.org
 
Dear Colleagues,

I am in a bit of a quandry and ask for your guidance.

I am in the process of building myself a video editing box for use with
Adobe Premier. The box itself is going to have 4 gigs of memory and a
mid-range, 256mb video card since I am told that video rendering occurs
mostly on the processor.

I am looking at the AMD Athlon 64 FX-55 2.6ghz or an Athlon 64 X2 4400
processor. There is a significant difference in price, but thats not my
primary concern.

The bottom line, for video editing, I see that the FX-55 does not have a
dual-core processor while the Athlon 64X2 does. Am I correct that I am
better off in terms of performance for my particular application with the
dual core. . . or not?

Advice is greatly appreciated.

The Flying Dutchman
Click to expand...

AMD has stopped production of the X2 4400+ as well as all other A64s with
1M caches with the single exception of the FX62. You'll be much better off
with an Intel Core2 Duo system. The Core2 Duos have 4M of cache and run
rings around the A64s especially on multimedia tasks. The Core2s have just
come out and are a little hard to find. MonarchComputer told me that they
will start offering them next week.
 
General Schvantzkoph said:
AMD has stopped production of the X2 4400+ as well as all other A64s with
1M caches with the single exception of the FX62. You'll be much better off
with an Intel Core2 Duo system. The Core2 Duos have 4M of cache and run
rings around the A64s especially on multimedia tasks. The Core2s have just
come out and are a little hard to find. MonarchComputer told me that they
will start offering them next week.
Click to expand...

Unfortunately, the Core2 MB is double the cost of a S939 board and you will
have to replace ddr with ddr2 ram.
 
A dual-core is indeed what you want. Perfect time to purchase one too in
that Intel's new Core2Duo release has the prices on all CPU's plummeting.
While AMD has stopped production on their socket 939 and AM2 processors with
2MB of L2 cache (1MB/core) - they are widely available online with the many
resellers. Here's a link to the best buy I could find on the CPU you want -
the x2 4800+:

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+
http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=80728-R $355

For your application (video editing) - the 1MB of L2 cache/core is
beneficial. AMD has stopped production of these CPU's to help them cut
their production costs/CPU. Most real-world apps don't suffer from the loss
of cache memory with AMD because of their efficient memory controllers, but
your application does indeed benefit from higher L2 cache. Lucky you! The
online retailers are looking to flush out these chips from their inventory
and have slashed prices. In February '06 this CPU was $850 at NewEGG.
Socket 939 is a mature/reliable platform and will serve you well over the
next 24 months as the industry prepares for quad-cores and AMD moves to a
65nm production process. With Socket 939, you won't need to upgrade your
mobo and buy DDR2 memory either.

Here's a recommemndation for your video box:

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+
ASUS A8N5X http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813131569
$79
OCZ Platinum 2GB (2x1GB) DDR 400 (PC 3200)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820227210 $169

Good Luck!



My rig:
Silverstone TJ-03 / SST-ST60F 600W Modular / Foxconn C51XEM2AA-8EKRS2H /
FX-62 / CNPS9500 AM2 / 2Gb Mushkin XP DDR2 800 @ 4-4-3-10 / eVGA 7900GTX SC
/ WD 74GB Raptor / 2 - Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 320GB / Plextor PX-716SA
/ASUS DVD-ROM / Creative X-FI Platinum / Klipsch Promedia 2.1 / Saitek Gamer
/ Razer Copperhead / XP Pro SP2
 
Adobe's Premeire Elements 2 is dual core ready. You can download a trial
version and it will tell you if its using 1 core or 2 cores in bottom left
corner I believe.




--
Sapphire X1600 Pro 512mb AGP
MSI Theater 550Pro TV Tuner
Thermaltake LanFire Midtower(4X80mm fans),Antec 550 Watt PSU
Gigabyte GA-K8NSC-939 nForce3, A64 3500+, Stock Cooler IdleTemp 28 C
2 Gb Dual Channel PC3200 OCZ Platinum 2-3-2-5 CL2.5
Viewsonic A91f 19in Moniter
2XSATA WD 320gb Raid Edition, PATA WD 120Gb HD
Pioneer 110D Dual Layer burner
Logitech MX 310 Optical Mouse
Microsoft Sidewinder Precision 2 Joystick
Microsoft ergonomic keyboard
Cheap computer speakers with Sennheiser HD 477 Headphones

3DMark05Free-Overall-3134 1024X768, 4XAA/8XAF 6.4Drivers
Cpu - 4405
3Dmark2001 - 8702 4XAA/8XAF 1280X1024

Games I'm Playing- IL-2 Sturmovick Series
Empire Earth 2, Need For Speed: Underground 2,
Civ IV, Warhammer 40,000 Gold
 
Dutch said:
Dear Colleagues,

I am in a bit of a quandry and ask for your guidance.

I am in the process of building myself a video editing box for use with
Adobe Premier. The box itself is going to have 4 gigs of memory and a
mid-range, 256mb video card since I am told that video rendering occurs
mostly on the processor.

I am looking at the AMD Athlon 64 FX-55 2.6ghz or an Athlon 64 X2 4400
processor. There is a significant difference in price, but thats not my
primary concern.

The bottom line, for video editing, I see that the FX-55 does not have a
dual-core processor while the Athlon 64X2 does. Am I correct that I am
better off in terms of performance for my particular application with the
dual core. . . or not?

Advice is greatly appreciated.

The Flying Dutchman
Click to expand...

Best answer I can give you is "maybe"... It's been a long time since I used
Premier, and I was never really big into video editing so I'm not familiar
with how much time Adobe actually spent to optimizing that application to
run on multiple cores. While normally I'm all for AMD, if you're building
this system now it might be worth it to check out Core2 processors. They
generally perform much better than anything AMD has right now at just about
every price level. If you want something from AMD that will over competitive
performance you're probably going to end up waiting at least a few months
for new silicon to hit the streets. If you're mind is made up on AMD (or has
been made for you) then I'd say just Google for premier benchmarks and see
how different system configurations perform.
 
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