Video encoding PC

[WOZ]

A mate of mine needs a new PC speccing and im unsure what cpu mobo combo to recommend him.

He doesn't use his PC for gaming (apart from footy manager) so all he wants is a reasonably priced media encoding beast. What would be better an amd 64 system or one based on an intel dual core system? Im a bit out of touch with the scene at the minute so any words of wisdom would be greatly thanked.

he wants to spend around 500 quid, including:

Case
PSU
Mobo
CPU
RAM
GPU
and O/S

I was thinking of *** antec performance case cos its bundled with the trupower 480w PSU which i remember being fairly decent. the GPU doesnt have to be anythiung special at all.

Cheers

 

[tomos]

still think intel are better for video encoding (dual core), but my dual core AMDs are no slouches either

personally, whichever is the cheapest dual core system he can get

 

[chex]

no

AMD X2 is the best for encoding right now, given, of course, dual threaded sotware such as the mainconcept encoder.

 

[ajgoodfellow]

Intel have always traditionally been better for encoding but the current crop of X2 processors are faster than the Intel processors

The Intel 800 series is dreadful and it should have never seen the light of day. The Intel 900 series is better but still not quite as the AMD X2 processors

 

[easyrider]

An opteron or x2 with 1mb cache per core.This will help the encoding process.
The single core intels were faster than the single core AMD chips at encoding but this has all changed now with the dual core AMD's.

The 900 series is a sideways step and cannot touch the X2 or dual core opterons for performance.

I would get a opty 165 or 170 and clock it to fx 60 speeds and beyyyyyyyyyoooooooooonnnnnnnnnddddddddd!!!!!!!!!!

 

[StevenG]

im looking for a system to convert videos to dvd and so forth, would i be better with an opty 165 or x2 4200??? round a similar price range???

 

[ACESHIGH]

go for the opty 165

 

[ajgoodfellow]

Agree - the 1MB cache really helps in this case