They recomend an FX as the Athlon mins. Should of double checked that (but those are expensive!)

And yeah, the AMD's have a slow clock speed, but Intel is noe pretty much stuck where they are, so in a year the "AMD has a slower clock speed" excuse won't hold water much.

I'd do what Spot asked. See if you can trade it in for an opteron. Or, if you have a 939pin CPU/MB, get an FX (it will cost you though).

The nice thing about the opterons is that in a single CPU setup they aren't much more expensive then a 939pin 64/FX. And you can put 1 CPU in a duel board. I upgraded from an AMD XP 1800 to an AMD64-3000 & found out AFTER I did that for an extra $50 I could of got an Opteron 240. :(

oh well!

I was thinking about upgrading to an Athlon 64 3200+ or 3500+, but now I am confused. You gyus think that Opteron would be a better choice? Thanks in advance.

I believe there's some simple hacks you can find on the net to convert your Athlon 64 to an FX, and won't cost you nothing. At least that's what I've been told, I'll be doing more research once I purchase my Athlon 64.

Depends on what you've got. If you already have a AMD 64 cpu, then it will cost a LOT more then just a CPU upgrade (you need a new MB, CPU, and possibly ram).

But, if you're doing what I did (a whole new MB,CPU, Mem) then it might not be a bad idea.

Just an FYI, the really good opteron's are expensive & right now only Linux/Unix will fully utilitize them. Win64 should be out this year though (it's on my "get" list with vegas 6! :) )

I'd avoid Opteron. It's a transitional, specialized architecture -- the future of AMD is the 939 socket, with dual core chips coming out soon. The first tests show an 80% increase in speed over a single core chip -- and with socket 939 mobos around, you can buy a "cheap" single core chip now and throw a dual core in later. Or...wait for an MP 939 mobo and drop two dual cores in it! :D

- jim

I would myself certainely make further testing before involving in an other time and money costly upgrade process. The Cineform plugin is young and the support rep use a "probably" in his assertion about Athlon proc. performance, so your problem *could* be elsewhere... than in hardware. Also, did the asserted difference between AMD and Intel performance in this regard ever been objectively quantified?

The only exchange option I have is to swap the A64 +3700 for a Pentuim P4 550, 3.4GH on a LGA775 motherboard with the Intel 915P chipset.

Have to decide by the morning - shall i do it?

Thanks,

Mike

I take it this is a free exchange?

I'd tell them that IF they give you that, give you $$$ back. Newegg.com has that P4 chip ~$80 cheaper the the AMD. Or tell them you wan the 560.

And before that, I'd call the cineform guys & ask them for some benchmarks. Get PROOF that the Intel chip will perform better then your AMD.

I agree with Friar. While the Intel will certainly work, you're not getting a good deal on the package.
The Cineform guys will give you good info, call and talk to Thad. David Newman recommended a 252 system we had built for a broadcaster, but they're the Opteron, and screamin' fast. And expensive. That's the top end that Cineform recommended to us, and the other side would be the P4.

The P4 system is $200 cheaper than the athlon I have. The store I bought from, MicroCenter does not offer an Opteron or a dual processor system. MAYBE I could get a refund but dual Opterons or Xeons from another source is going to be another grand anyway and I did not want that at this time. I need keep some cash for the Veags Vegas party!

Have you considered building a system yourself? That's what I do. It's not always the cheapest (companies can give you better deals) but I pick EXACTLY what I want.

If you only have a choice between that AMD 3700 & a P4, see what you can get for the same price as the AMD.

For the price of the Opteron CPU's, it's a shame the FX's aren't any cheaper then they are.

My ONLY choice is stay with the Athlon or exchange for the P4 550 3.4GHx. I know all this stuff I just asked to a choice between the two for HD EDITING IN VEGAS.

You might want to go with the system the "big guy" uses for demostrations.
I think it's dual processors, 8 gig ram, 4 stack SCSI raid, Sony P234 monitor, yada yada yada. You have to go with the flow.

JJK

If that's the only choice, and cineform says it'll work, then that's what you have to do. I assume it's a "time is money" issue. It sounds as though you need the system right now and just getting the money back isn't an option due to time. So make the trade.

FWIW, no Intel system available right now will support dual cores in the future. The athlon64-skt939 evidently will support DC. Even so, I wouldn't count my chickens before they're hatched.

Rob Mack

So what have you decided? To buy or not to buy a new Atlhon 64? By the way, isn't the hypertransport technology the same as dual core???? I've seen someone saying that can hack a 64 to become an FX...How can you do that? Thanks in advance ;)

There seems to be some confusion here regarding the difference between an A64 socket 939 and the FX part.

The ONLY difference between a FX chip and a A64 socket 939 chip aside from the clockspeed of the specific part is the fact that the FX chip is multiplier unlocked. Period. That's it.

This is in stark contract to the A64 socket 754 chip which did NOT have the dual on-chip memory controller capability of the FX, and now the socket 939 A64.

So unless you must have the fastest current AMD offering, FX55 at 2.6GHz and an unlocked clock multiplier, you can save a lot of money by going with a A64 socket 939 at 2.2 or 2.4GHz and overclock it a bit.

As DSE stated, if CFHD is highly multithreaded then a dual opteron system or waiting for a dual core Athlon system would be a good bet.

It is rumored that the dual core Athlon chips will be socket 939 compatible on many motherboards with a bios update. This means that a single core socket 939 AMD system *may* be upgradeable to a dual core A64 part in the near future.

From CineForm's statement I would assume the P4 performs better for possibly two reasons:
Strong SSEIII optimizing in the CFHD (makes good use of high P4 clockspeed)
Strong hyperthreading optimization in the CFHD

Keep in mind that the fpu of the A64 is superior to the P4, that what leads me to the above assumptions. Which of course could be incorrect.

Point two will be taken care of by a dual Opteron or dual core A64. I don't remember if the newer A64's will incorporate SSEIII instructions.

When the time is right I'll update my benchmark site to reflect this new hardware and software.

- Mark

"The ONLY difference between a FX chip and a A64 socket 939 chip aside from the clockspeed of the specific part is the fact that the FX chip is multiplier unlocked. Period. That's it."

Hulk, thanks for the info, this is what I heard and was alluding to in my post. In addition to that I heard it's possible to convert an A64 to an FX by a method that unlocks the multiplier. I haven't dug into the exact details on how to do this, just heard it's something about temporarily shorting 2 pins on the chip, but this may be wrong.

Rednroll,

Yes, there was a "pencil" trick possible on certain cores that would unlock the multiplier. I don't remember the exact details.

One nice thing about the A64 on-board memory controller is that overclocking the FSB while reducing the FSB:Memory ratio, to keep your memory running in spec, doesn't hurt performance much as all compared to the P4 which does not have an on-board memory controller.

So, the issue of unlocking the multiplier for overclocking A64 chips isn't really a huge issue if you have either 1. Good overclocking RAM (if you want to crank it up with 1:1 FSB:memory ratio), or 2 a mobo that allows memory ratio settings.

In addition, tests show that lower memory speeds and lower latencies appear to show better performance in many applications compared to higher memory speeds with higher latency settings.

Here's a great thread with all of the data:

http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.aspx?catid=28&threadid=1475190&enterthread=y

It's hard to argue with these results.

- Mark

Thanks for the term that it's called Hulk, this helped out in my google search results in finding more info. Here's some information here regarding the pencil trick.

http://www.pcmech.com/show/processors/132/3

It seems like this might be worth doing if you got a good zoom viewer to work with. Comparing the prices of the FX 2.4GHz with 1meg L2 vs the A64 2.4Ghz with 1Meg L2 processor, I found the FX comes in at $725 with a comparible A64 at $540. You can buy a lot of pencil lead with those kinds of savings. Then compare that to an A64 2.4Ghz with 512K L2 and 128K L1 coming in at $370, it makes you feel kind of ripped off buying the FX version when alls that is physically different is completing a circuit between 2 points.

As Hulk says, he has hit on my probelm in a nutshell - I have the A64 on the 757 which I know does not have the dual chip controller - I just could not afford right now the 939 motherboard. I thought the 757 A64 would still outperform the P4 based on benchmarks I had seen but now I realize for what we do it can not.
As Cineform say the P4 is in spec and the A64 is not and as I do not want to pay more than $1500 now I will go with the swap to the P4. I MAY be able to return the A64 for a full refund in which case I could wait a while for the dual cores. My only inpatience is I have an FX1and want to use it. I have been native editing but it is a pain and limited.

I have a similar situation - a dual AMD 2000+ with a Tyan Thunder Motherboard.

Does anyone know the best place to find out what replacement CPUs may fit - I've been told up tp 2.8, but that's only just enough for HDV, so I have to decide whether to upgrade or look for a new PCX when I can afford it.

In the meantime, I'm getting used to editing at 8 fps!!!

Rendering efficiency, or amount of rendering accomplished per clock cycle, is basically the same for DV with either the socket 754 or socket 939 A64, both are very very good. In addition, for $220 you can get an A64 3400+ that runs 2.4GHz stock. Even not overclocked that is a lot of bang for the buck.

Since I haven't tested CineForm CFHD performance I can't comment on that.

- Mark