[mythtv-users] AMD or Intel?

[Brad Templeton]

On Sat, Jan 15, 2005 at 12:47:06PM -0600, Loren H. Burlingame wrote:
> Wow, someone drank the Intel cool-aide.
> 
> I personally go with AMD because you get more bang for the buck (TM).

All my systems are AMD -- _except_ my video deocding Mythtv box.

There is no cool-aid here.    AMD and Intel systems are different.
AMD wins on certain problems, Intel wins on others.   AMD uses
slower clocks, which means less heat, which is great on the broad set
of problems where the AMD outperforms.    On some problems though,
Intel's faster clock and faster FSB really do mean something.

Video decoding and encoding appear to be one of the problems where
Intel wins handily.

My P4-3ghz system when playing HDTV runs at 60% idle.   When playing
SDTV it runs at as much as 95% idle.   No xvmc.

My Athlon XP-3000 system when playing HDTV runs at 25% idle but
sometimes dips down close to zero.

So if playing HDTV is your goal, there is not even any question about
which of these two processors to get.   Indeed, though while I have
not done it, you might even want to pick a slower Intel chip (say
a 2.6hgz) over an AMD-3000 (2.1ghz)

However, the AMD-3000 would outperform the Intel 2.6ghz in other
applications, so if you want those, you might choose AMD.

We await reports of the CPU utilization for folks on Athlon-64
processors, in both 32 bit mode and 64 bit mode.   This is hard
to predict.  The A64 uses an even _slower_ clock for the same
"number."

When it comes to mpeg, the size of your clock does matter.