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BobbyDouglas -> RE: MOBOs (11/22/2005 22:11:18)
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Ok, I'm back and finished reading about the x2 3800+ vs the P4 3.2 Ghz 640.
First, we won't bring gaming at all into this stuff, you're not looking for a cpu for gaming, so let's leave that factor out. We already know that the x2 3800+ is going to be better performance than the P4 3.2 Ghz 640, but is it worth the price difference of £84?
Anand knows CPUs and Video cards. I think taking a look at the Anand benchmarks would really help just to get an idea.
I'll give my thoughts after all these quotes
AMD Athlon x2 3800+: £196
Intel P4 3.2 Ghz 640: £112
Difference of £84
Your main concern is with multitasking/encoding, so let's take a look at those scores.
quote:
ICC SYSMark 2004
"The user renders a 3D model to a bitmap using 3ds max 5.1, while preparing web pages in Dreamweaver MX. Then the user renders a 3D animation in a vector graphics format."
AMD: 247
Intel: 206
2D Content Creation
"The user uses Premiere 6.5 to create a movie from several raw input movie cuts and sound cuts and starts exporting it. While waiting on this operation, the user imports the rendered image into Photoshop 7.01, modifies it and saves the results. Once the movie is assembled, the user edits it and creates special effects using After Effects 5.5."
AMD: 319
Intel: 252
Web Publishing
"The user extracts content from an archive using WinZip 8.1. Meanwhile, he uses Flash MX to open the exported 3D vector graphics file. He modifies it by including other pictures and optimizes it for faster animation. The final movie with the special effects is then compressed using Windows Media Encoder 9 series in a format that can be broadcast over broadband Internet. The web site is given the final touches in Dreamweaver MX and the system is scanned by VirusScan 7.0."
AMD: 256
Intel: 182
Mozilla + Media Encoder
AMD: 445 (lower is better)
Intel: 666
DivX 6 with AutoGK
Armed with the DivX 6 and the AutoGK front end for Gordian Knot, we took all of the processors to task at encoding a chapter out of Pirates of the Caribbean. We set AutoGK to give us 75% quality of the original DVD rip and did not encode audio; all of the DivX 6 settings were left at default.
AMD: 44.5
Intel: 32.6
Windows Media Encoder 9
To finish up our look at Video Encoding performance, we have two tests both involving Windows Media Encoder 9. The first test is WorldBench 5's WMV9 encoding test.
AMD: 303 (lower is better)
Intel: 386
cont.
Once we crank up the requirements a bit and start doing some HD quality encoding under WMV9, the single core performance drops dramatically:
AMD: 3.54
Intel: 2.14
3dsmax 6
For the next 3dsmax test, we used version 6 of the program and ran the SPECapc rendering tests to truly stress these CPUs. Since there's not much new to report here, we're only going to report the Rendering Composite score.
AMD: 2.32
Intel: 1.44
Final words
quote:
There's not much to say here other than that the Athlon 64 X2 3800+ is the clear choice for any user at this price point. What you give up in single threaded performance is more than made up for by the improvements in multitasking and multithreaded application performance.
Bit by bit, AMD is eating away at any possible recommendation that we'd have for the Pentium D. While the Pentium D 820 is still our recommendation at the sub-$300 mark, if your budget can handle it, we'd strongly recommend going for the Athlon 64 X2 3800+.
As for overclocking, we had no problems reaching 2.46GHz with our Athlon 64 3800+ sample using standard air cooling. The overclocking wasn't as impressive as what we saw with the Toledo based Athlon 64 4200+, but we will save a final conclusion on overclocking until we get more Manchester based processors in house.
We really didn't want to see AMD become a more expensive CPU manufacturer, and with the X2 3800+, we finally have a more sensibly priced dual core option. The choice is clear - the Athlon 64 X2 3800+ is better in every way than the Pentium D 830. For Intel's sake in the enthusiast community, Conroe had better be very competitive next year - because ever since Prescott, the Pentium 4 has been an utter disappointment.
Let's factor into the fact you want a 6 sata slot MB.
MSI NEO4 Platinum - £51.88 (8 sata raid ports) (1 PCI Express x16 slot)
ASUS P4P800-Deluxe - £60.60 (2 sata raid ports) (AGP 8x slot)
Here's what I would conclude... If you only have two hard drives (and need raid), and do not care much about gaming, the P4 3.2 Ghz 640 is a better buy. If you want more than two hard drives (and need raid), and do not care much about gaming, the x2 3800+ is the better deal.
Going the AMD route (you end up paying an extra £75) you will get a much faster CPU for multitasking, as well as the ability to have 8 hard drives in raid.
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