i have no clue where Deagle got that quote on, must of been another thread dont worry about it.

 

Sorry, I don't check this forum every 10 seconds. (atleast not anymore ) I'm cured now.

To answer your question, wedley: your knowledge of computers seems to be somewhat superficial.

brtceson asked what would run encoding well. You suggested he get a really good video card to do that and some RAM. A common misconception of those who don't really know: anything video related = faster video card. An ATI or an Nvidia consumer AGP card isn't going to do anything for video encoding. Video encoding is done by the CPU which runs the DVD, MP3, MPEG, etc compression. Video cards are called display adapters. Encoding doesn't display anything except the GUI. If you had a good memory you'd be able to remember all the hotkeys for the compression software and do your DVD compression without a videocard. Infact it would run faster because the CPU wouldn't have to deal with the video driver (yeah, I know a PC won't run without a display adapter (yeah, I know some mobos have onboard video)). Upgrade RAM? Anyone who understands what RAM is knows that adding more RAM makes aps run faster.

brtceson, while running more streamlined OSs might make things faster in general, it's not always true. I can guess that Linux would run DVD encoding faster because it's very low on CPU resource use, but I don't know for sure; probably... Windows 2000 and Windows XP are similar. To know for sure you'd have to read up on a lot of benchmarks. Don't just look at one because a benchmark will be different almost every time you run it; computers are complex. All you can do is look at the tendencies. There's probably tons of benchmarks comparing Windows 2000 to Windows XP in DVD encoding, with lots of different CPUs. Some manufacturers also like to send the reviewers perfect versions of their hardware and not an average copy off the production line (when I say some, I mean all). Some reviewers like to lie as well as the benefits from giving good reviews is obvious.

Actually, more recent video cards, like in the past 4 years, are designed to take what was once done by the CPU and do the calculations itself, freeing up the CPU to do other tasks, like encoding. Yes a good videocard will make encoding faster, and it can be assumed that in the past 4 years they've made videocards more efficient in doing this, but, now we're just splitting hairs. If encoding were your biggest priority, then, the hundreds of dollars spent on upgrading a videocard from, say, a 9600 to a 9800 Radeon, would be ridiculous, considering you could just get a CPU which would be maybe a thousand fold more advantageous. It's not even for sure that going from a 9600 to a 9800 would make encoding faster. It might even make things slower, because the drivers might be handled differently.

Also, I did a little more reading on Longhorn, and it's still in Alpha, and it's still slated for 2006. Between now and then they'll probably make thousands of revisions which will make today's Alpha drastically different from the final release version. Why would anyone want to plan 2 years ahead when buying a PC anyway? Chances are in 2 years time it'll be time to buy a new one.

I'll say it again in different words: The arguement between AMD and Intel is stupid. It's just about as stupid as domestic vs. import and large displacement vs. VTEC.

They're all just technologies. They're all different. All the software they run are all different, and the writers of the software really don't have all the knowledge to completely optimize. Before Microsoft was dragged into court, software developers had a hard time getting any info to optimize and especially integrate for and into Windows. The same goes for Intel and AMD. I'm sure if you got a million software and computer engineers working on Half-Life 2, then it would be properly optimized for a specific card with a specific GPU running a specific OS with specific RAM and a specific CPU and a specific mobo etc... they'd have to reverse engineer everything first though. There's no way a hardware manufacturer will be able to optimize for all programs, either technologically or financially. They all make sacrifices in different places. Just buy what does the job. Punish the company that builds the inferior product by not buying it. If you're really ethical, then buy from the company that's trying harder to give you the better deal. I get the impression this goes on quite a bit with reviewers to promote competition between companies which would otherwise be a lock.

I don't agree that everyone should buy a PC and not a MAC. That would be foolish. If you run Photoshop and like programs, and don't care about anything else, the a MAC will smack any PC. If you want to run games and tons of freeware etc.., then, a PC is probably your best bet.

Coke vs. Pepsi : Coke has more sugar; Pepsi has more caffeine. They both taste different and have different ingredients, but they both make people hyper.

 

same here :thumbup:


wow youre long-winded thanx for the response

 

Thanks very much for such a thoughtful response. I am sure it helped many novice users to understand better.

I wonder, though, if you'd mind too awfully telling me where you got the information I quoted, above? Either here or email.

You see, I am not a part of any alpha team.

 

LOL... What did you buy?

If anybody has any comments, advice or warnings about the Intel 875P that I bought as a base to start on (Dell PowerEdge), I'd love to hear them.

 

didnt buy anything.. yet.....:rick:

 

Haha... Yeah, it's a bit long, but, I just didn't want some dummy coming back splitting hairs for a response. I could have posted it in 10 different posts responding to 10 different people or I could have just finished it right there.


I read most of it on review sites like tomshardware, anandtech, sharkyextreme, as well as the Microsoft website itself.

I believe Alpha is the first stage of development of software where it actually runs (albeit still with bugs).

 

LOL...

Evidently, I wasn't as obvious as I thought I was. I'll send a PM.

 

yeah, but with microsoft you have to remember. their final release is usually technically the open beta.

 

correct, and thx for clarifying that for me deagle, i forgot that more power computers for video encoding or editing are better wit dual cpus.
my friend has dual 2.6's and its pretty good, installs things in a jiffy.