athlon 64 4000 and p4 EE article.

[manning1]

interesting article...
http://www6.tomshardware.com/cpu/20041019/index.html

 

[Polaris20]

With the exception of the Pentium M, Intel is on a downward spiral. No one cares about their BTX standard, the 775 stuff is a flop, and they are the most inefficient chipmaker out there.

Their top performing chip hasn't been a 2.6Ghz for a long time. Yet they get their ass handed to them by a........2.6Ghz chip from AMD.

Even the Pentium M benchmarks slower clock cycle for clock cycle when compared to my Barton AMD, and that's with half the cache of the Pentium M.

 

[manning1]

i made a prediction on here awhile back that moores law wont hold.
there is an interesting article about this on the same site and nanotechnology. the problem to my mind is new manufacturing processes are needed to push raw processor power up.
i'm very interested to see how amd conquer the issues of the gates
in the current technology cycle. i think maybe we have plateaued in this round of processor wars. and will see more processors used like the dual opteron approach.

 

[Bulls Hit]

However if you look at the audio & video benchmark results, excluding the overpriced FX and EE chips, the humble P4 3.6Ghz is the best performer.

Unless you're willing to pay stupid prices, it's pretty clear - you want a serious games machine, buy amd. If you want to do audio/video stuff, buy Intel

 

[distortedrumble]

isnt the 3.6ghz like 450? i think the amd 64s can still be effectivve.....and for the price of the p4....the amd64 would have to do

 

[Bulls Hit]

isnt the 3.6ghz like 450? i think the amd 64s can still be effectivve.....and for the price of the p4....the amd64 would have to do

Yeah sorry, s/be the 3.4Ghz. $269. Same price point as the Athlon 64 3500+

 

[Teacher]

However if you look at the audio & video benchmark results, excluding the overpriced FX and EE chips, the humble P4 3.6Ghz is the best performer.

Unless you're willing to pay stupid prices, it's pretty clear - you want a serious games machine, buy amd. If you want to do audio/video stuff, buy Intel

I'd think the superior FPU on the AMD would count for something for realtime track play back and plug-in count since all native programs are 32 bit float

 

[manning1]

i agree teacher. i have programs i wrote here to number crunch.
and ive found the amd pounds serious butt. particularly doing math routines which is a major component of audio recording.
even the amd sempron is impressive.
a sempron plus 10k drives will kick butt as well imho.

 

[Bulls Hit]

I'd think the superior FPU on the AMD would count for something for realtime track play back and plug-in count since all native programs are 32 bit float

But that's just conjecture. If you look at the actual SiSoft Sandra multimedia benchmarks for the the 3.4 P4 vs the amd 64 3500+, you get 37519 P4 vs 22571 amd for integer mmx instructions, and 26215 P4 vs. 20981 amd floating point instructions.

Of all those tests, the amd 64 3500+ beats the P4 3.4 on
Winrar compression
Quake 3 32 bit frame rates
Wolfenstein frame rates
DirectX 8
DirectX 9
3D graphics
Wstream Copy

The p4 3.4 beats the amd 64 3500+ on
Sisoft sandra MMX
Sisoft Sandra floating point
Sisoft Sandra Dhrystone cpu bench
Sisoft Sandar Whetstone cpu bench
MS Windows media encoder
Lame MP3 encoder
3D StudioMax rendering
Video MPEG 2 conversion
Video pinnacle creation
Video XVID encoding
Video MPEG 4 encoding
Quake 3 16 bit frame rate
Wstream Triad
Wstream Add
Wstream Scale

There's no argument that the P4 architecture is at the end of the road, while the amd 64 is still ramping up.

However at this point in time, if I was putting a DAW together based on the results above, without wishing to pay the stupid prices of the high end chips, I would choose a P4 over an amd 64.

Admittedly I am biased in that I also believe an intel chip/intel chipset combination provides an inherently more stable foundation for a DAW than an amd chip/via or sis or nforce chipset. At this point in time.

 

[Teacher]

Whats your setup

how many tracks and plug-ins can you get @ 24/44.1 before your computer starts to strain.

Thanks

 

[Bulls Hit]

I've got a P4 2.8 running at 3.4.

When I run 32 plugins (the max GT3 will allow) I get about 28 tracks @ 24/88.2. It depends on the plugin mix. If I run a few instances of some of the heavy ones like Drumagog or Voxvengo Span, it will max out sooner - maybe only 22-24 tracks.

My next project I'm going to do at 24/44.1 & see how many extra tracks I can get

 

[Teacher]

You are saying that the S/W you use limits you to 32 plug-ins? and your computer starts to strain? or just your S/W limits you to 32 plug-ins but your computer has head room for more.

what plug-ins do you use?

are you using IDE or SATA drive? and the bus speed of your ram?

I'ma Check how many plugs I got going on,on one of my 96khz projects

but on my Athlon 64 3400+ SATA in RAID 0 config and 1gig of 3200 ddram@ 24/44.1 (and its not fully optimize I still use it for webbrowsing and gaming)using Samplitude 7

I get about 60 tracks and 60 plugins with about 10% available cpu this is with cpu hog plug-ins like waves, sonic timeworks, PSP, sonalksis, voxengo etc.

Definitly enough for my needs at the moment.

 

[Polaris20]

Yeah sorry, s/be the 3.4Ghz. $269. Same price point as the Athlon 64 3500+

And the 3500+ is still faster than the 3.4Ghz, in most tests. It also doesn't generate as much heat.

 

[Bulls Hit]

And the 3500+ is still faster than the 3.4Ghz, in most tests. It also doesn't generate as much heat.

Did you read the test results from toms?

Of the 21 tests they did, head to head between those 2 chips, the amd was better on 7, the P4 was faster on 14.

But you're right, the amd runs cooler

 

[Bulls Hit]

You are saying that the S/W you use limits you to 32 plug-ins? and your computer starts to strain? or just your S/W limits you to 32 plug-ins but your computer has head room for more.

what plug-ins do you use?

are you using IDE or SATA drive? and the bus speed of your ram?

I'ma Check how many plugs I got going on,on one of my 96khz projects

but on my Athlon 64 3400+ SATA in RAID 0 config and 1gig of 3200 ddram@ 24/44.1 (and its not fully optimize I still use it for webbrowsing and gaming)using Samplitude 7

I get about 60 tracks and 60 plugins with about 10% available cpu this is with cpu hog plug-ins like waves, sonic timeworks, PSP, sonalksis, voxengo etc.

Definitly enough for my needs at the moment.

Yeah Cakewalk GT3 has a limit of 32 plugins. Looking at my projects , 31 is the most tracks I've run with 32 plugs, and 2 512byte buffers.

My setup is very similar to yours - 1GB PC3200 ram, 800Mhz fsb, 2 Sata drives, no Raid though.

I mainly use just the regular Cakewalk plugins. The ones that do me in are Drumagog, Amplitube, and voxvengo span.

60 tracks from your rig is bloody good though. It would be interesting to see how many you'd get at 88.2

 

[Teacher]

96khz

This project has 56 tracks

29 are vocal tracks which last anywhere from 30 seconds to 10 seconds(basically all 56 tracks aren't playing at the same time most is probably 35 at the same time)

7 aux sends and 5 submixes

14 instrumental tracks

1 dither track

40 plugs though 15 of them were samplitudes stock eq which uses like almost no cpu but still sounds pretty good.

with CPU%@ 75

 

[manning1]

bh. much as i respect your posts, i'm afraid i'm with teacher.
recording is a ton of math routines. and this is where the 64 excels.
you can only appreciate is processing power by doing real world recording tests. right now - i'm considering amd 64 laptop.

 

[Teacher]

hey i never said AMD was better then intel or vice versa...but between our 2 systems they are pretty equal it seems, unless Bulls Hits computer is maxed out at his current config which uses less resource hungry plug-ins

 

[Polaris20]

Did you read the test results from toms?

Of the 21 tests they did, head to head between those 2 chips, the amd was better on 7, the P4 was faster on 14.

But you're right, the amd runs cooler

I am more interested in the tests being run by the folks over at the Digi board, and other audio sites.
Toms is great, but not entirely accurate for a mulitrack audio + synth standpoint.