Date: Fri, 8 Jul 2005 00:06:47 -0700 From: Luigi Rizzo <rizzo@icir.org> To: "Greg 'groggy' Lehey" <grog@freebsd.org> Cc: multimedia@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Best processor for multimedia? Message-ID: <20050708000647.C1247@xorpc.icir.org> In-Reply-To: <20050708053845.GL19707@wantadilla.lemis.com>; from grog@freebsd.org on Fri, Jul 08, 2005 at 03:08:45PM %2B0930 References: <20050708053845.GL19707@wantadilla.lemis.com>
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On Fri, Jul 08, 2005 at 03:08:45PM +0930, Greg 'groggy' Lehey 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 apart from the obvious optimizations (such as using mplayer compiled for the specific flags for your CPU) i believe the hiccups are more likely due to CPU and disk not being available when you need, rather than raw CPU speed (above a certain level, that is). I'd try to tweak process priority and things such as HZ and kern.quantum. Also having direct access to the frame buffer helps a lot, but i think most video cards do support that now (possibly the 'expensive' cards might be a worse deal due to lack of sw support!) cheers luigi > 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? > > Greg > -- > The virus contained in this message was detected by LEMIS anti-virus. > For further details see http://www.lemis.com/grog/lemis-virus.html > > Finger grog@FreeBSD.org for PGP public key. > See complete headers for address and phone numbers.
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