AMD / Intel - Vegas 9

Dach wrote on 4/24/2009, 5:22 AM

We've known for awhile now that AMD and SCS has had a relationship. I cam across the following article, while it shares what most of us already know, its nice to see it in the news.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/AMD-Delivers-the-Ultimate-bw-15019621.html?.v=1

I've always been a fan of the AMD chips and truelly believe that the two rivals pretty much leap frog each other in technology advancements. I think its fair to say AMD is a less expensive platform. (Don't know if acquiring ATI was a smart move or not)

Does anyone know of any tests comparing Vegas functionality from a AMD / Intel point of view?

Are some people's problems (the loud complainers) due to an Intel platform? I personally had a problem hang on me with long renders, but by changing the RAM in it took care of my problem.

Just some thoughts I had.

Chad

Comments

Christian de Godzinsky wrote on 4/24/2009, 5:57 AM

I never understood why SCS and AMD have been sharing the bed? Before, and even still...What is the gain? Why not also invite Intel and have a "threesome"?

Is there a historical reason for this "partnership"? What is the outcome of it - if any"? Is there a penalty for us "intellians"... ;) ??

Is this also the reason why SCS has probably still not fully implemented the powerful SSE4 (intel CPU) instructions - to really speed up - all rendering??? Or this this AMD-connection even preventing it from happening?

I really would appreciate info from someone - inside "enough" - to finally shed some light on this subject... obviously without breaching andy NDA's or similar... Would be highly appreciated.

Happy weekend,

Christian

John_Cline wrote on 4/24/2009, 6:04 AM

As far as I know, the only connection between SCS and AMD is that AMD sponsors part of the annual SCS NAB party. It's a relatively inexpensive way for AMD to advertise their processors in front of group of people that tend to buy much faster machines than your typical computer user. The fact of the matter is that current Intel processors will run circles around whatever AMD has at the moment. This has been the case for quite some time.

TheHappyFriar wrote on 4/24/2009, 6:06 AM

and AMD + Intel never co-sponsor things. They normally never even have reps at the same things for promotional reasons.

Hulk wrote on 4/24/2009, 7:52 AM

There really hasn't been much "leap frogging" with AMD and Intel over the last 25 or so years. Except for the Athlon64/P4 Intel has been in the lead the whole time.

Even now Phenom II is about as fast as Core 2 with Vegas at the same clock speed. Of course i7 is faster yet.

AMD has been hammered into submission since the release of Core 2. Intel will soon be transitioning to 32nm while AMD is still perfect 45nm process technology.

It's not that I don't like AMD, I do and I think Phenom II is a decent chip, especially for the price and should be considered for a Vegas rig if you don't need the fastest out there.

It's just that I've gotta call 'em like I see 'em and Intel is on a roll with their "tick tock" timeline.

AMD is supposed to fight back with 12 core Opterons in 2010 and 16 core in 2011 but they are server parts really. But they could be used for workstation of course. Hopefully we'll see better multicore optimization out of Vegas Pro by then, especially when previewing or all but 2 of those cores will just sit there idling when previewing anyway!

- Mark

TheHappyFriar wrote on 4/24/2009, 8:56 AM

I wouldn't say intel was anything worth talking about until the Pentium. I had cyrix chips that went circles around faster intels, but cost a lot less.

But recently intel's had faster stuff. And like you said, $$ per frame, amd still wins out, but they don't have the fastest. It's like my tarus vs a f1 car. F1 = faster by far but tarus gives much better mpg.

Hulk wrote on 4/24/2009, 10:27 AM

@OP

It is difficult to find good benchmarks with Vegas but here is one for BD disc creation: http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3551&p=13

This part compares pretty well with the C2D Quads in this bench. If you are considering these two processors for Vegas Pro then it looks like you can get more bang for the buck with Phenom II. That is if you are not overclocking.

But you will notice the i7 at 2.66GHz DESTROYS the Phenom II at 3.2GHz. When you figure in a $40 price difference AND the fact that 2.3-3.5GHz is an easy overclock on the i7 I think the better bang for the buck by far is i7. Motherboard prices have come down and so has DDR3 RAM so that isn't so much of an issue.

@Happy,

Intel still has the better bang for the buck I think with i7 since the 920 is a very affordable part. Well let's say for video editing where I think most people can spend $250 for a CPU. Below that price point AMD is indeed very competitive.

I seem to remember the Cyrix 486 class processors being terrible with math processing compared to the Intel 486DX chips. In addition they ran much slower frequency-wise. Go ahead and look back at a specific point in time and see how fast, or slow rather, the Cyrix was in comparision to what Intel had available. Many people will often compare the Intel 486 part with a Cyrix or AMD part that was released 6 MONTHS TO A YEAR after Intel stopped developing 486's and had moved to Pentiums!

For example, you could buy a 486 66DX2 Intel part on April 10, 1992. What comparable Cyrix/AMD part was available on that date? I'll tell you, ti was a CX486SLC running at 25MHz with no math coprocessor!

Those Cyrix parts were dirt cheap but they were also crappy performers compared to the Intel parts.