Does the Intel-Mac commercial make you want to switch to AMD CPUs? (1 Viewer)

[Will_B]

The commercial, to me, reminds me of those commercials for cotton. You know, the ones that say how cotton is good, and therefore one should buy clothes made of cotton.

I don't think anyone outside of investors or people working in technology fields would really give this commercial for Intel any notice. Sure, regular folks will buy whatever processor is fastest if choosing between two laptops that are priced similarly -- but they don't care about the brand.

Indeed, I wonder how many people know which of the following two words is the brand and which is the line: Intel Pentium. Probably more than half would get it right, but not a whole lot more.

 

[Ken Chan]

That clearly doesn't jibe with results from other tests, like this one or this one in which the AMD 64 is often slower than P4. It is not 70% faster. Have you benchmarked the desktop to see how it compares to expected values for other Pentiums? Sandra has these.

 

[Scott L]

Ken Chan I'm glad someone smart can come in and help straighten this out. P4's aren't dogs by any means when it comes to video.

Only reason I bought my P4 2.8c years ago was because it was the fastest at encoding video for around the $300 mark. AMD of course, was better at everything else.

Check out AVS where many other users report the same thing; video intensive programs such as FFDSHOW simply benefit the most from more clock cycles.

So Carlo as much as you don't want to hear it, something's either wrong with your setup or the program you're using is poorly written. Videora seems to be in its initial development stages, making videos strictly for gaming systems/ipod no less, which may lead one to think the program is still a baby compared to something like Vdub, Gordian Knot, or anything similar.

And I'm gonna throw in the obligatory 'My next CPU is going to be a 3800+ X2' statement here to prove I'm not biased. Convinced? o_0

 

[Carlo_M]

Yeah that was sort of my point, it was others saying that all that other stuff may come in to play and that the P4 should be as good/faster.

Ken,

Those two benchmarks you point to are not H.264 encoding tests (not the same as standard mpeg4), so I'm not sure they are entirely relevant to my experience.

And who knows, perhaps Videora is optimized for AMD, I have no idea. I do know the results: AMD is nearly 2x faster when I want to encode DVD files into H.264 M4V files for use on my iPod.

 

[Christ Reynolds]

i cant speak for others, but ive had experience with machines similar in specifications and observed similar performance.

CJ

 

[Rommel_L]

It's actually a gutsy statement from Mac. It's one way of admitting they cannot compete with a Intel-based system (hardware-wise) and instead refocusing their efforts on competing with MS for a piece of the OS pie...

 

[Ed Moxley]

I hated hearing that macs are going to Intel chips. I think it's a big mistake. It's gonna take away the "Unique-ness" that has always been mac's. To me, it will no longer be a mac. It will be some sort of Frankenstein machine, using unnatural parts.

Apple has been trying to do away with macs for awhile, IMHO. They started this, when they came out with OSX. I hate OSX! It did away with the user friendliness that macs have always been known for. Made it much harder to troubleshoot, and to even find stuff on the machine (like a pc, with OSX, the mac now burys stuff so deep).
I also think it will cause the mac to start having problems that the pc has always been known for (compatability, stability, etc.), although, with XP, pcs have gotten better.

To me, a pc with XP, is easier to use now, than a mac with OSX. That's why I now use a custom built pc. I haven't even touched our iMac in a year and a half..............

 

[Mark Paquette]

I will probably never buy a Mac regardless of whose processors they use. There are just too many things that don't support Mac OS. But why can't PC makers come up with cool hardware designs like Apple does? Why can't we get a PC version of the I-Mac or Mac Mini?

 

[Ken Chan]

Perhaps not entirely, but they're all MPEG-4 variants. Your results seem so far out of whack. In fact, why not try to duplicate those tests? With a few (OK, several) hours' effort, you can determine whether it's the hardware or the software that's at fault.

 

[Mike Fassler]

to be honest I never have and never will own an intel processor, for one AMD is cheaper, for 2 they are faster and more optimized,And I will also never buy a mac.I do have a Ipod nano thou. If I owned or had the need for a laptop then Id prolly change my mind as that is really where intel seems to excel really well.

 

[Carlo_M]

Well, seeing as to how I don't own more than those two PCs, unless you're willing to buy me more PCs I don't see how that can be done. Unless you're talking about doing the tests several times on each computer I own, in which case I have already done that. I've transcoded quite a few Simpsons, Family Guy and even The 40 Year Old Virgin onto my iPod. I've used both to do it simultaneously. The results are in (for me).

FWIW, I have a P4 2.8 Dell dimension at work that uses RDRAM (about 1.5 years old) and it also transcodes at about 1:1 (one second of video every second). So my admittedly anecdotal evidence shows that 2 P4 systems at 2.8 and 3.0 GHz transcodes at approximately 1:1 while my AMD64 3200 (2.0Ghz) laptop (not even a desktop model) transcodes at approx 1.7:1 (it's not quite 2 seconds of video every second, but it's closer to that than it is to 1:1, so I'm estimating).

But heck, Videora is freeware. If someone really has issues with what I'm saying, go ahead and download it yourself.