I'm thinking about upgrading my system and I got curious about AMD processors seeing the high prices of Intel processors that never seem to go down too much. I checked a couple of websites that have x264 encoding benchmarks and the AMD Phenom II X6 1090T Black Edition Thuban 3.2GHz seems to be below only two of the Intel Extreme Edition processors, both selling for $1000, while the AMD is selling for $310. The Intel CPU that has the closest performance to the AMD but a little below, is the i7 960, and it sells for $570, so that's a $260 difference for an Intel processor that may win in other benchmarks but this is the most important benchmark to me since it's what takes me the most time in my aging Q6700.
Have any of you had good or bad experiences with AMD processors? I always bought Intel but I'm afraid I might be a victim of nonsense marketing the kind that Apple does, with the false notion that Macs are better for graphics, when you can build a hell of a beast PC for the same price of an underpowered iMac, and Photoshop and Illustrator are going to fly compared to the iMac. So I want to give the AMD CPU a try. Obviously there's always going to be something better, but in benchmarks from techarp.com on x264 encoding the AMD gives 30.53 fps at stock speed while mine gives 17.27 fps, also at stock speed. Obviously they must be using rather low quality settings or encoding to 720p because when I encode to x264 I get about 4.30 fps, but I use rather high quality settings, without them being the highest, and I normally encode to 1080i.
I would like to know if any of you has a notion of how well or bad Vegas runs under AMD Phenom CPUs. I think the 1090T has been released recently, but maybe some of you have the 4 core Phenoms. Do they perform well and reliably? Do they make AVCHD editing more tolerable in Vegas, especially in multi-camera? Most important, is Vegas stable under these CPUs? I don't know enough about computer science to know if the difference between AMD and Intel CPUs is invisible to applications, or if applications have to be programmed for both types, and if they succeed at that.
Thanks for any input.
Have any of you had good or bad experiences with AMD processors? I always bought Intel but I'm afraid I might be a victim of nonsense marketing the kind that Apple does, with the false notion that Macs are better for graphics, when you can build a hell of a beast PC for the same price of an underpowered iMac, and Photoshop and Illustrator are going to fly compared to the iMac. So I want to give the AMD CPU a try. Obviously there's always going to be something better, but in benchmarks from techarp.com on x264 encoding the AMD gives 30.53 fps at stock speed while mine gives 17.27 fps, also at stock speed. Obviously they must be using rather low quality settings or encoding to 720p because when I encode to x264 I get about 4.30 fps, but I use rather high quality settings, without them being the highest, and I normally encode to 1080i.
I would like to know if any of you has a notion of how well or bad Vegas runs under AMD Phenom CPUs. I think the 1090T has been released recently, but maybe some of you have the 4 core Phenoms. Do they perform well and reliably? Do they make AVCHD editing more tolerable in Vegas, especially in multi-camera? Most important, is Vegas stable under these CPUs? I don't know enough about computer science to know if the difference between AMD and Intel CPUs is invisible to applications, or if applications have to be programmed for both types, and if they succeed at that.
Thanks for any input.