dual xeon or 64 bit Athlon?
 

I want to built a new pc. I have been advised by my friend that the new 64 bit athlons are this and that and so great. yet i c that most of the dell edit systems and so on are built on dual xeon processor. for a nice fast reliable not so consty machine which one Is really better?

I finally took the plunge and bought a complete system, instead of building my own. I was getting tired of having to troubleshoot the system for my editor when it would get quirky and whatnot. Now I'll be instructing him to take it back to the store to get it serviced. :) It ended up being a Dual Core Pentium, which seems to be replacing the XEON systems. I was going to go with AMD but the software I use does not support any specific features of the AMD chipset.

If you are doubtful which chipset is right for you, find someone that uses the same software as you and ask them what they own. Also, make sure they are not having any problems. Any devices, sound cards, video cards, are important to take into acount, too.

Dell only sells Intel, probably because they have a deal with Intel which forbids them from selling AMD. I believe Intel is in a lawsuit over this right now.

2- What you should get kind of depends on what software you want to run, what formats you want to handle, etc.

If you can build your own computer and are looking for good bang for the buck, you might want to see if you can get a deal on a Dell Inspiron 9100 (i.e. go to dell.com if you're US, go to small business, click outrageous deals). It's cheaper than building your own I believe (as long as you add upgrades yourself).

These threads cover this issue pretty well:

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=46857
http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=47861

Bottom line: The intel pentium d or Extreme Edition (such as the Dell Gen 5 XPS) is best bang for buck at the moment but the Athlons, while more costly, are more powerful. In a few months, AMD's prices will probably be perfect nut if you need something right now, buy a dell.

Toms Hardware site has a recent review of Dual Athlons. Some of the benchmarks are video (baased on Pinnacle Studio 9 Plus and Divx encoding). Interesting!

http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/2005...2_3800-09.html

The thing about benchmarks though is:
A- The vast majority of them don't relate to what you do. Personally, I don't use PS9Plus and find that divX is lower quality than WME. And I don't encode that much Windows Media that I'd care too much about small differences in speed.

Useful benchmarks would be ones like for Avid, FCP, Vegas, Premiere Pro, etc.

B- Even on supposedly the same benchmarks (on one that matters, like MPEG2 encoding with the Main Concept encoder), hardware sites get different results.

Benchmarks apply to the configuration being benchmarked, but they do provide useful information, if not absloute information that applies to other systems. As the gas mileage sitckers warn, your results may be differnt.