AMD or Intel

jaket

jaket

Well-known member
I have been an Intel guy since the original Pentium.
I need to upgrade my computer, I have

Core 2 Duo 2.13Ghz
4 gigs DDR2 800

I have been looking at the i5/i7 and have been trying them out at work, they handle the HD footage a ton better, specifically the XDCAM 4:2:2 50Mbps flavor.

I'm limited on money right now and want to know if it would be worth it to go with an AMD system and save a little money?

Thanks
 
from what ive heard the i7 processors are very good for editing hd footage, but the amd
is almost half the price and are good.
id say go with amd unless you can drop cash on a i7 quad core 2.8ghz.
 
i have both a Q6600 intel quad core and an AMD Phenom 9600 quad core; both comps have identical RAM (4GB) and twin ATI 5770 1GB graphics cards; both are stock clocked; intel at 2.4Ghz, AMD at 2.3Ghz. The difference in speed is nonexistent, but the AMD stuff was about 30% less. Same reason i went with ATI cards; same performance, 30% price difference.

Right now the same thing is going on with Phenom II x4 vs Core i7. Frankly i would wait a tiny bit longer, wait for Core i9 to hit, and PII x6 as well, and pick up a now discounted screaming 4 core solution.
 
AMD has not had anything to compete with Intel for at least the last several years. Consequently, AMD is "bottom feeding" off of the budget users.
 
Intel CPUs are slightly better. And a whole lot more expensive. All other things being equal, you get a lot more for the money with AMD.

The real difference comes in the motherboard chipsets on AMD mobos vs. Intel mobos. For that reason, I'd go with Intel.
 
If you get a board with socket 1366 you can skip the i7 and drop in one of the quad Xeon cpus. Thats what I did. I can be rendering a HD project..Open Vegas again and Edit raw AVCHD files with no lag at the same time.
 
David has a good point, and i have heard great things about the i7's... but according to John's thinking, I'm just an AMD bottom-eating budget user.
Bottom line IMO, a nice i7 will cost you a few extra bucks. If you have that, then go for it. If not, you won't be sacrificing much to go AMD like I have for years.
 
If you are on a budget you might want to get the 1156 i7 Vs. the 1366 i7. The 1156 motherbaords can be bought for under $100.00. I have bought the parts for a 1156 i7 from newegg.com. You could always get the Quad Core i5 for $200.00 instead of the i7 at $280.00. Any Quad Core would be better than what you have now.
 
Thanks for all the suggestions. I almost went i7, but the problem I ran into was in order to go i7 I needed to buy a new motherboard and ram. So I ended up getting a core 2 quad and used the hardware I already had.

It's making a world of difference on my playback.
I also went to Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit and that has helped a bunch with rendering issues I was having due to low memory.

I was about to pull the trigger and go AMD, but it ended up being the same story as going i7, I had to buy more hardware to work with that processor.
 
frosh said:
David has a good point, and i have heard great things about the i7's... but according to John's thinking, I'm just an AMD bottom-eating budget user.
Bottom line IMO, a nice i7 will cost you a few extra bucks. If you have that, then go for it. If not, you won't be sacrificing much to go AMD like I have for years.
Click to expand...

You're either stupid or rich if you buy the bleeding edge hardware, AMD or Intel. Intel's got enough performance advantage at the very high end to have a few CPUs that are slow well off the "commodity curve" (eg, your performance increases linearly with price as "commodity" levels; once you leave that, you're paying increasingly more for increasingly smaller jumps in performance.

For example.. I have an Intel Q9550 processor. When released, this ran about $1000, way off the commodity curve. Six months later, I bought it for $200... see, this new i7 had come out and occupied that "performance at any price" slot.

It's also useful to look at what might benefit video more than anyone else. For example, if I were upgrading this month, I'd take a really good look at AMD's x6 processors. Video rendering is still going to scale pretty linearly based on the number of CPUs... but it's not going to help gamers or other users quite as much. These came out pretty cheap, too.

So ok, AMD's competitive at the top of the commodity curve... that's hardly the same as "bottom feeding". AMD's ATi division, at least this week, seems to have the fastest GPU boards around, though less support for native GPU computing so far (they're concentrating on Open CL support; nVidia's doing Open CL, but they're concentrating on CUDA right now, since CUDA has the traction for the moment).
 
I build custom editing computers as a side business, and I've always felt there are two prices you pay when selecting an MB a CPU - the price of the original, and the price of your next upgrade. If you buy a 1366 MB with x58 chipset, you get USB3 and Sata 3, both of which provide enhanced storage IO. In video, that means a lot in coming years. Sure, you'll pay more for the MB and an i7 CPU, but you'll get an extra year or two out of it, and probably one CPU upgrade in a couple of years.

I never buy the cutting edge CPU, so I'd typically recommend i7 930 ($299). I also overclock mild-moderately depending on the customer. The thorough testing procedures I use ensures a stable system that provides good value and near top level performance.

Such a system costs only 10-20% more and leaves room for easy upgrades as prices fall on today's best components.

BTW, make sure your spouse get an upgrade via hand-me-down whenever possible. Makes the upgrade path smoother if you know what I mean. :)
 
AMD for life!
I build all my own systems and have used AMD exclusively for the last 10 years. Noting against Intel but AMD has been 100% reliable for me over the years. In all seriousness the top of the line Intel’s are faster but like others have said you PAY for it dearly.

I was considering upgrading my CPU to this little gem.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103727
AMD Phenom II X4 965
Black Edition Deneb
3.4GHz 4 x 512KB
L2 Cache 6MB
L3 Cache Socket AM3
125W Quad-Core Processor
Only $179!!!!

Whatever you decide remember, the CPU is only a small part of how your system will perform for video editing, CPU, memory, hard drive ETC all play a roll in the overall performance. One bottle neck is all it takes to ruin performance. Basically don’t buy the top Intel CPU but skimp on the rest to save money, better off getting the cheaper AMD but better components IMHO.

Anyway good luck.
 
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