I NEED TO FIND THE ** ATI X1800 XT ** RIGHT AWAY, SHIPPED FEDEX NEXT DAY! AT ANY COST!

[xtknight]

The video card will not help with uncompressed AVIs, period, nor a Quadro, nor will a fast 2D card, unless the 2D card you're using can't handle 1600x1200@xxHz. You need a hard disk with short access time and defragged (the AVI should be contiguous), and fast memory. Uncompressed AVIs should barely use the CPU at all. Why are people telling him he needs this insanely fast dualcore CPU for this??

Originally posted by: videoclone
My Dual AthlonX2 3800+ at 2400Ghz, 2400FSB HT Link and 2GB of dual DDR Will obliterate this machine his listed and still have cost less HAHA ?. I guess it serves him right for ignoring us.

And the dual AMD X2 won't help him in the least with uncompressed video either.

avoid the 6800 cards as they have a broken video encoder.

The 6600s don't have it either. For the X1600XT it has yet to be released.

A Quadro would be the most ideal card as its very function is to give 100% of its power to applications and NOT! 3D gaming so the drivers are tweaked for apps.

A Quadro strives for accurate AA and it's used for 3D all the time. It's no better than a Radeon 7500 for 'applications'.

Originally posted by: xMax
and what if i run the animation(s) from a ramdisk, which pretty much doesnt use a hard drive at all, and as i have already witnessed, runs the bloody thing at least 3 to 4 times smoother than a hard disk. no hickups, no freezes. well... obviously there was, but thats because my current computer is 5 years old and just doesnt have what it takes.

Here is the glaringly obvious information it's not a CPU speed problem. RAM is a lot faster today than it was 5 years ago.

I just felt like clearing some things up here, hopefully in a non-aggressive tone. Anyhow a drive of this caliber is what you'll want (if that's big enough):
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822141141

Happy Thanksgiving. :beer:

 

[otispunkmeyer]

Originally posted by: Ripper294
I am only 15 and learning but you have me really confused . Buy a X1800XL and O/C it to 625

you may have a hard time doing that lol

also OP the x1300 has a massive 4 pipes this z1800xt your on about has a biblical 16 pipelines

so thats 4 @ 600
or 16@625..........i think u'll see which ones faster

 

[Mik3y]

you just need fast ram and a fast hard drive. forget having the need for a fast gpu or cpu. what's a fast gpu going to do for you? also for your information, 500mhz does not mean it is faster than 400mhz. frequency is not relevant anymore when comparing 2 entirely different cores with different architectures. this is why a 2.4ghz amd cpu can outperform an intel 3.8ghz cpu. in terms of bandwidth, think of it like a freeway wtih more lanes. this allows for more cars go move from one end to teh other faster.

 

[MegaWorks]

You say you live in Montreal, call these guys up cipc-info.

 

[tvdang7]

just wait im getting a few wtihin the week maybe we can work something out........but shipping to canada is kinda risky for me :/

 

[xMax]

The way it works with forums is to take the common denominator. In this case, with all the gather info, there are a few things that are for certain.

fastest hard drive i can get. 15k rpm makes sense.
fastest RAM! (compatible with my system of course)
fastest motherboard anyways, so thats done.
fastest intel chip, the P4 EE at 3.73 1066 or the P4 3.8 (2mg L2 cache) 800.

all thats left is the graphics card. well, if this were a puzzle, then what card would fit my system.

i mean, if i have enough money, which i do, and not that much, but enoug, then the only guaranteed solution is to take the ultimate of every component coming from every top company.

the beauty with this solution is that it just basically simplifies life. no, i will not neccessarily be getting just the right computer, maybe this or that from that company would be slightly better. but gennerally speaking, i cant possibly go wrong with going after the best from the best companies.

of course, im not a workstation user or involved with servers, so all that stuff is out of the question. So its the pursuit for the fastest desktop PC.

Max

 

[mrzed]

OK, what you really need is sustained transfer rates from your hard drive. This is the ONE situation where running 2 drives in RAID0 makes a lot of sense. The fastest transfer rates are for the NEWEST 15K SCSI drives, but I suspect 2 big fast 7200RPM drives in RAID0 will be sufficient, and much much cheaper. Ignore the posts recommending a Raptor 10K SATA drive. The newest big 7200RPM SATA drives are faster in transfer rates, and cost much less /Gb.

The important thing is to get the newest generation of drives, if you stick with SATA - almost anything over 400Gb will be of the latest generation. check out storagereview.com for more information on the best choices.

If you do run RAID0, and have the budget, consider getting a third 500Gb drive for backup if you can afford it and the data is important to you.

 

[KristopherKubicki]

Check it:

http://labs.anandtech.com/search.php?q=x1800xt

Kristopher

 

[Chocolate Pi]

fastest intel chip, the P4 EE at 3.73 1066 or the P4 3.8 (2mg L2 cache) 800.

What you need is not an Intel chip. You need an AMD dual core, mainly because that will provide the most stable system that will not slow the video feed down as anything goes on in the background. It will be all around faster too, and produce less heat so there is less chance of overheating.

Alright?

 

[Pete]

I thought an AMD Opteron 165 was a pretty good deal for a dual-core A64, provided you OC it.

You're going to want dual-core for media encoding and decoding, no? And I thought the recent reviews showed that dual-core CPUs outperform single-core ones, and A64s outperformed P4s. At least, that's the case with encoding, which I imagine is more intensive than decoding.

If you're pursuing the "fastest desktop PC," all the reviews I've read suggest a P4 is not the way to go for many/most situations.

As for getting the fastest video card for decoding, I dunno if they help with uncompressed video. All the hullabaloo is over their hardware decoding or encoding, not straightforward playback (which is probably limited by the CPU/RAM/HD). I have no real reference save this B3D comparison of CPU usage playing back a "1080i" WMV file, which shows no real difference b/w a X800XT (500/1000) and X1800XT (625/1500). Even if it's just 1920x540p, you can see all the cards hit 50% _max_ CPU usage while decoding. I suspect an uncompressed AVI file won't be limited by the video card, as it probably won't do anything but display what the CPU hands to it, but that's just a guess.

 

[xtknight]

Originally posted by: Pete
I suspect an uncompressed AVI file won't be limited by the video card, as it probably won't do anything but display what the CPU hands to it, but that's just a guess.

You'd be absolutely right about that.

 

[xMax]

lets say that all the requirements for a high res uncompressed AVi animation playback rest on the motherboard, cpu, and ram. if such is the case, then imagine a scenario where i put the cheapest possible pci-e video card and then the top of the line pci-e card, like an ati x1800 xt. So in this case, they will either deliver the information in the exact same way or they will be different. if they are the same, then i can get any card out there. if they are different, then what parts or features of the card caused the difference.

 

[yhelothar]

Originally posted by: Pete
I thought an AMD Opteron 165 was a pretty good deal for a dual-core A64, provided you OC it.

You're going to want dual-core for media encoding and decoding, no? And I thought the recent reviews showed that dual-core CPUs outperform single-core ones, and A64s outperformed P4s. At least, that's the case with encoding, which I imagine is more intensive than decoding.

If you're pursuing the "fastest desktop PC," all the reviews I've read suggest a P4 is not the way to go for many/most situations.

As for getting the fastest video card for decoding, I dunno if they help with uncompressed video. All the hullabaloo is over their hardware decoding or encoding, not straightforward playback (which is probably limited by the CPU/RAM/HD). I have no real reference save this B3D comparison of CPU usage playing back a "1080i" WMV file, which shows no real difference b/w a X800XT (500/1000) and X1800XT (625/1500). Even if it's just 1920x540p, you can see all the cards hit 50% _max_ CPU usage while decoding. I suspect an uncompressed AVI file won't be limited by the video card, as it probably won't do anything but display what the CPU hands to it, but that's just a guess.

I think you're just talking to a wall here. He seems totally bought into intel here, ignoring everyone's advice on every case. :roll:

 

[xMax]

Virtualgames0....i have a question for you. im assuming your a male.+

If you were standing at the edge of a high ocean cliff on dark evening with as cold killer holding a gun to your head, and were asked

"Who makes the best microprocessors on the planet; Intel or AMD?"

What would you honestly say. Assuming the wrong answer will get you shot, and the right answer will not.


Of course, maybe the top single core AMD chip is better than intels, which i highly doubt. But the only guaranteed way for me to get a system that will work under the extremely short amount of time im in is to take the best product from the best (reference) company. If i start doing research and asking this and that, as i have tried, then i quickly find myself lost with information overload and incorrect information. its like opening a can of worms.

how in gods name can i possibly go after a dual core processor when all i need it is to run windows media player and when my animation is uncompressed. Can you explain that to me there bobo.

I bought my system today, i will post it soon. I have to do something else right now. But the processor i got is

P4 3.73ghz 1066ghz.

This is the fastest single core chip on the market right now.

MAX

 

[mwmorph]

Originally posted by: xMax
Virtualgames0....i have a question for you. im assuming your a male.+

If you were standing at the edge of a high ocean cliff on dark evening with as cold killer holding a gun to your head, and were asked

"Who makes the best microprocessors on the planet; Intel or AMD?"

What would you honestly say. Assuming the wrong answer will get you shot, and the right answer will not.


Of course, maybe the top single core AMD chip is better than intels, which i highly doubt. But the only guaranteed way for me to get a system that will work under the extremely short amount of time im in is to take the best product from the best (reference) company. If i start doing research and asking this and that, as i have tried, then i quickly find myself lost with information overload and incorrect information. its like opening a can of worms.

how in gods name can i possibly go after a dual core processor when all i need it is to run windows media player and when my animation is uncompressed. Can you explain that to me there bobo.

I bought my system today, i will post it soon. I have to do something else right now. But the processor i got is

P4 3.73ghz 1066ghz.

This is the fastest single core chip on the market right now.

MAX

I'm sorry for you. AMD is truly king of the hill. 3.73 EE is worthless since the AMD64 FX57 is much faster single core. The X2 4800+ is much faster than any intel dual core/99% of intel single cores. Intel truly cannot compete. if you can return it, i would and just get a 4000+ or FX57.

Memory bandwith is where AMD shines. outstripping intel everywhere in memory bandwith tests.

This is the fastest single core chip on the market right now.

is not true. FX57 reigns king.

read this: (needs flash for graphs)
http://www.guru3d.com/article/processor/249/3/
this:
http://www.simhq.com/_technology/technology_066b.html
this:
http://www.hardwarezone.com/articles/view.php?cid=1&id=1679
this:
http://www.hardwarexl.com/index.php?opt...ent&task=view&id=262&Itemid=41<=en
this:
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/athlon64-fx57.html

see a pattern?

 

[Hikari]

Why did you even bother asking anyone?

 

[xtknight]

P4 3.73ghz 1066ghz.

Wow...a 1066GHz bus? Where'd you get that thing?

Anyhow, the AMD Athlon 64 FX-57 (San Diego) is the fastest single-core 64-bit x86 processor in the world (highest clock*IPC and all SIMD instruction sets), and I'd say it with a gun to my head.

 

[v8envy]

Ramdisk, you say? Ok, just did some calculations on uncompressed video

Let's say its' 1600x1200x32 bit, or right around 7.5 megabytes a frame. Let's assume 30 frames a second, and thusly 225 megabytes/sec. A bit over 4 seconds of video per gigabyte, then.

If you're going Intel on a desktop, you're probably going to be stuck with 4 gigs of ram on a desktop box with 32 bit windows. Give windows half a gig, so you've got 3.5 left for a ramdisk. Which means, you've got less than 20 seconds worth of ram for video.

Uh. Am I missing something here, or is your video just unbelievably short yet high quality?

This math leads us to some interesting conclusions. Disk on a PCI bus will be 2x too slow to support uncompressed avi playback (130 MB/sec-ish). CPU speed and memory latency is fairly irrelevant, as just about anything modern will support a sustained 225MB/sec once it's off the peripheral bus.

225 MB/sec sustained will also require a couple of disk spindles. I'm pretty positive you won't get this with just 2 raptors, and probably not even with 4. You'd probably need a striped RAID of 8 drives to be sure.

Of course, you could simply avoid all these problems by playing back compressed AVIs, and just using a really fast cpu like a dual core AMD previously recommended.

And Turtle, your recommendation for an overclocked X1800XL for this application is just moronic.

More likely to work recommendation: PCI express or non-PCI drive controller with 8 or more RAIDed hard drives capable of 40+ megabytes/sec sustained read rates each. Any cpu which fits into that motherboard. Any video card.

Alternative recommendation: commodity desktop hardware of choice, RAID of 2+ SATA drives, compressed video, fast CPU.

 

[CP5670]

3.73 EE? Doesn't that thing get beaten by even the older northwood 3.46 EE half the time?

 

[v8envy]

Originally posted by: Hikari
Why did you even bother asking anyone?

It's a good question. Comes in, asks for purchasing advice on the second best consumer video card on the planet, then proceeds to ignore good, sound advice relevant to his supposed problem.

Whatever. Sounds a lot like some artist types I know. I'm shocked he didn't just wind up buying a mac.

 

[videoclone]

Originally posted by: xMax
Virtualgames0....i have a question for you. im assuming your a male.+

If you were standing at the edge of a high ocean cliff on dark evening with as cold killer holding a gun to your head, and were asked

"Who makes the best microprocessors on the planet; Intel or AMD?"

What would you honestly say. Assuming the wrong answer will get you shot, and the right answer will not.


Of course, maybe the top single core AMD chip is better than intels, which i highly doubt. But the only guaranteed way for me to get a system that will work under the extremely short amount of time im in is to take the best product from the best (reference) company. If i start doing research and asking this and that, as i have tried, then i quickly find myself lost with information overload and incorrect information. its like opening a can of worms.

how in gods name can i possibly go after a dual core processor when all i need it is to run windows media player and when my animation is uncompressed. Can you explain that to me there bobo.

I bought my system today, i will post it soon. I have to do something else right now. But the processor i got is

P4 3.73ghz 1066ghz.

This is the fastest single core chip on the market right now.

MAX

This is funniest post I?ve ever seen in my life ?Dude I would say AMD IS THE BEST CPU maker in the world even if I had a Zillion Sharp Razor tipped Needles ready to impale my dead corps after being shot in the head a billion times?.. Have you seriously been under a rock for the last 2 years?

AMD = Best Value, Best performance, Best Stability, Lowest heat output, Lowest voltage usage AMD = Best Gaming performance, Best Video Encoding/ Playback Well lets just skip this best thing and go right to saying they are better then INTEL IN everything desktop, workstation and server related ON THE FACE OF THIS PLANET and every single website ? magazine and any technical source of information shows this??? Just have a quick look at some of the reviews shown here at anantech of the new AMD CPU?s that Slaughter the new Intel CPU?s ? not to mention in the reviews they say the Intel CPU?s tested crashed and locked up many times during the review ?. Get a clue please! You are driving me crazy with your misinformation.

You win the award for being the most misinformed person to step foot in Anantech forums. :thumbsdown:

 

[Pete]

Originally posted by: xMax
P4 3.73ghz 1066ghz.

This is the fastest single core chip on the market right now.

It's certainly clocked and maybe even priced the highest, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's the fastest. I'll grant you that it may well be the fastest single-core system for video playback, but it's possible a dual-core system would compete well (see how the dual-core Opteron compares to the single-core P4 3.72 and FX-57 in both video encoding and editing here, and how Anandtech's tests show that P4 3.73 isn't quite king of the hill in their video creation and encoding benchmarks). And $1000 for that CPU? I'd have gone with a $800 Athlon X2 4800+, but that's taking both overall performance and price/performance ratio into consideration (not to mention local availability). Just read any recent CPU review to see how even the fastest P4 stacks up to dual-core systems in common video benchmarks.

Again, granted, I haven't seen reviews mentioning straight-up video playback (as opposed to editing/creating or encoding or even decoding), which is therefore an uncommon general video benchmark and your only criteria. Still, I suspect the CPU may not even be as much of a bottleneck as sheer attainable access bandwidth, meaning both HD read rate and CPU-RAM bandwidth. It's basically down to how fast the CPU can shovel the data from the HD to the MB to the RAM and then out thru the video card. And, in that case, the P4 3.73 appears to offer the most synthetic memory bandwidth in both PCMark05 and SiSoft SANDRA (altho Sciencemark shows the Athlons edge ahead by a less significant margin).

But if someone did hold a gun to our heads and asked for the fastest single-core CPU, with "fastest" taken to mean in general performance, I doubt most of us would answer any current retail P4. Most computing tasks don't require maximium in-order plain data reading, which is probably what playing back an uncompressed AVI entails.

I'm curious what an uncompressed 16x12 video requires in terms of bandwidth. How long is a sample film, and how big is it's corresponding file size? I'm looking to get a rough MB/sec figure.

Edit: For some reason I missed v8envy's eminently sensible post. OK, say you just want to dump a 1600x1200x32b frame eight times a second, that's about 60MB/sec. That's well within any current RAM speed, so the limiting factor is probably your HD and its interface (via its connector and the MB chip) to the CPU. Because the video is uncompressed, you basically need fat data pipes b/w the source (HD) and the output (video card). The bottleneck is the HD, as I believe even ATA-66 is specced to move more than 60MB/s (so both SATA and SCSI are well in the clear), and RAM, the North Bridge/memory controller, and AGP/PCIe are surely able to handle at least an order of magnitude more data than that, off the top of my head.

 

[xMax]

i checked all those charts and many didnt use the P4 3.73 1066mhz processor that i got, as the ones that did use the pentium chip didnt even use the top intel board that has a 1006mhz bus speed that uses the 1066mhz on the P4. So those charts are bogus. More than that, on one of the charts the P4 3.73 outperformed the top athlon on most tests, without the intel board (1066). So i just dont get your point. The idea of comparing the P4 3.73 to anything without using an intel D955 motherboard that has a 1066mhz bus speed is just pure nonsense. And i didnt see a mention of that intel board on any of the tests.

I also just finished looking at toms hardware review of all chips, and in this case some scenarios used the top intel motherboard (1066mhz), and in those cases the intel 3.73 was faster than all the rest. It was the only chip that had more #1 ratings on all the charts. So i just dont know where you guys are coming from.

All these charts are almost illogical. There is so many that its absurd, and of course, no chip will be the best all around. Thats impossible.

So with short time to decide, i simply say "intel or AMD", and quickly that follows with "INTEL". From there i take the top single core chip (which i need) and thats it. then i take the top motherboard that takes advantage of that chip. Then the top corsair RAM, and then the graphics card. If you have less than a couple of days to decide, than explain to me how this could be an illogical approach. I mean, what the ****, am i supposed to spend months trying to find out just exactly which processor is the best for my given situation. thats impossible! by the time i finish a new chip would come out.

As for ramdisk, i should mention that my animation is not one giant but many series that can be viewed one at a time. But i mentioned this already.

Also, im running at 8 or maybe even 4 frames per second. So i dont need insane amounts of RAM. Each frame is 5 or so megabytes, which at four frames per second is about 20 megabytes. with 2gigs of ram that gives me 100 seconds of playback. that is not illogical. once that clip is done, i then load the next. (and dont ask me why im running that slow of a frame rate. I can tell you the animatin is for me to percieve slowly so that i can upload information into my brain, and that it somehow makes sense)

but yes. why on earth did i come here if i am not listening to anybody. well... by looking at the title of my post, i can say that i came here for one simple clear reason, which is the very question that i come back to

"is it possible to find an ATI x1800 xt in north america". I believe the answer to that is NO.

MY new RIG

Intel P4 3.73ghz (1066mhz)
Intel D955xbk mobo
Corsair 2 x twin2X1024A-5400L 667r (thinking about upgrading to the TWIN2X1024-8000UL, but not sure if it helps)
ATI or Sapphire X100XL (still looking for the ATI x1800 XT)
WD 36gig 10K rpm raptor

of course with ramdisk, then the raptor is not really needed. But i got because it just makes sense to get a fast hard disk anyway.

But again, is it possible to find the ATI x1800 XT"?

thats it for now.

Max

 

[Pete]

NewEgg and eWiz both appear to have a couple models in stock for the USA, and NCIX appears to have a few for CAN.

Were you talking about the charts I linked? Those sites appear to have used the 955 and DDR2 533+.

 

[addinator]

Originally posted by: xMax

All these charts are almost illogical. There is so many that its absurd, and of course, no chip will be the best all around. Thats impossible.

So with short time to decide, i simply say "intel or AMD", and quickly that follows with "INTEL". From there i take the top single core chip (which i need) and thats it. then i take the top motherboard that takes advantage of that chip. Then the top corsair RAM, and then the graphics card. If you have less than a couple of days to decide, than explain to me how this could be an illogical approach. I mean, what the ****, am i supposed to spend months trying to find out just exactly which processor is the best for my given situation. thats impossible! by the time i finish a new chip would come out.

you may be the only person in the world to think that way.... and if you actually read what people were saying, you'd see that they made suggestions, which, with about five minutes of actual work, you'd realize were better than what you decided on. did you expect it to take you months on this forum to see what processor you needed? no, it wouldn't. in fact, it would only take a few hours (at the absolute most, if you are slightly confused) to figure out which chip is what you want. you say you like forums, well thats what a forum does. it collects lots of opinions, hard facts, and a wealth of information and puts it together for you. thats what allows you to find the best processor for your given situation in less than a few months. and i'll explain to you why it's illogical. because you seem to think that because intel is a household name (relatively) and a ton of people use it, and its mainstream, and its plastered everywhere, its better. its not. furthermore, its illogical because you came here asking for help, and the consensus (as you like to use, you said it yourself, in the lowest common demonimator comment) was amd dual core, or because you are hellbent on it, amd single core. regardless, its amd. therefore, using your own way of deciding things on forums, that would be the logical choice.

The way it works with forums is to take the common denominator

tell me again why we would think your decision is illogical? and it is certainly possible for a chip to be the best all around. if you actually understood the charts and reviews you are looking at, or had any actual conception of what a processor is, you would know that the fx-57 is the best all around single core chip available. essentially, your arguments are baseless, full of holes, and poorly written. i truly hope, that you are just doing this for fun, and getting a laugh out of it.