Date: Sat, 9 Jul 2005 02:58:18 -0500 From: Vulpes Velox <v.velox@vvelox.net> To: Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog@FreeBSD.org> Cc: multimedia@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: Best processor for multimedia? Message-ID: <20050709025818.3471585a@vixen42.vulpes> In-Reply-To: <20050708053845.GL19707@wantadilla.lemis.com> References: <20050708053845.GL19707@wantadilla.lemis.com>
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On Fri, 8 Jul 2005 15:08:45 +0930 Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog@FreeBSD.org> wrote: > I'm thinking of building a new, quite fast system for multimedia, > notably displaying MPEGs. I'm currently using mplayer on an Athlon > 1700, and from time to time there are hiccoughs. Processors are > cheap now, and it would be trivial to get a "3000" rating processor > relatively cheaply. > > The question is, which one? The current choices seem to be: > > - P4 > - Celeron > - Athlon > - Sempron > - Athlon 64 > > From previous mail on this list, it seems that Athlon 64 is probably > not the best choice for reasons of compatibility. Obviously the > fastest Athlon (32) will be faster than a correspondingly rated > Sempron, and similarly a P4 will be faster than a corresponding > Celeron. But by how much? Ignoring things like Xeons and P4 > Extremes, I find roughly the following pricing (here in Australia, > pre tax): > > Intel Celeron D 335 - 2.8GHz CPCELD335 $134.00 > AMD Sempron 3100+ Box Soc754 CPAS3100 $157.00 > AMD Athlon XP 3000+ BOX BARTON CPAXPB3000 $184.00 > Intel P4 3.40GHz PRESCOTT 1MB CPP43.40HT-PS $409.00 > Intel P4-660 (3.6GHz)LGA775pin CPP4-660 $841.00 > > That's a pretty big price range. What's important for multimedia? > My understanding is that software MPEG processing needs a lot of > CPU, and the processors here are roughly comparable (OK, the P4s > may be somewhat faster). But what about the other differences? How > important is cache? If I take the AMD offerings, am I better off > with the (cheaper) Sempron with a slightly faster clock, or with > the Athlon XP with more cache? How does the Celeron compare with > either? Also, is it worth paying the significantly higher prices > for the P4? A 450MHz P2 I use to have would handle any thing with little complaining. If you just want playback, nearly any thing should work. My suggestion is just to ignore Intel for heat and just being sub-par in general... that and their annoying advertising... A nice amount of ram, a storage medium with a reasonable speed, a good video card, and DDR I've found to be more important. Check out the the man page for tuning(7) as well. My suggestion would to be look through the man file for mplayer. Turn on stuff like frame dropping.
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