Celeron processors and video caputure.

[The Soundman]

Hey all,

I'm considering building a dedicated video caputure box for recording signals from cable and satilitte feeds. Among the hardware I'm considering is a 2.5 Ghz Celeron processor, ATI All In Wonder 9600 card with 128 MB Video memory onboard, and 512 MB of pc3200 DDR and a 400 Mhz FSB motherboard by aopen.

My biggest concern is weather a Celeron processor will perform to standards or should I get a full blown pentuim processor for it's bigger cache? I'm attempting to do this on a budget and as this is going to be a dedicated system with nothing but the OS and capture card software installed, I figured I may have finally found a use for intel's "cheap" processor choice.

Any comments are appreciated!

Thanks all.

[f575gtc]

I curently have a 2.2GHz Celeron 400MHz FSB a 9600XT (built-in video capture) and 764MB pc 2100 and I have no problem capturing video.

[TallCool1]

I'm considering building a dedicated video caputure box for recording signals from cable and satilitte feeds. Among the hardware I'm considering is a 2.5 Ghz Celeron processor, ATI All In Wonder 9600 card with 128 MB Video memory onboard, and 512 MB of pc3200 DDR and a 400 Mhz FSB motherboard by aopen.

Are you specifically tied to an Intel platform? AMD offers considerably more bang-for-the-buck than either the badly-crippled (cache-starved) Celeron or the P4. You can use the money you save to purchase better audio/video capture hardware or fancier software.

[mbturner]

I say the heck with PC when it come to video and go with MAC. I know, hold on ppl, don't plot my death yet. MAC is far better than PC when it comes to anything graphic. BUt, if you don't go mac I would use the P4 with Hyper Threading.

[AROD]

uh I need help.... How do I download "OPENGL" inorder to play medal of honor and other games on an older computer??? when I try to play it the error reads...." cannot load OPENGL subsystem... PLEASE HELP....:sad:

[The Soundman]

Are you specifically tied to an Intel platform? AMD offers considerably more bang-for-the-buck than either the badly-crippled (cache-starved) Celeron or the P4. You can use the money you save to purchase better audio/video capture hardware or fancier software.

I appreciate the input.

I was thinking Celeron as You can go 800 FSB as opposed to 333 max with the AMD line so I can make to most of the 400Mhz DDR and keep everything in sync. I may check my price list for an AMD solution yet. I have an 850 Duron system now, but I don't think I can do full MPEG 2 capture with it.

I say the heck with PC when it come to video and go with MAC. I know, hold on ppl, don't plot my death yet. MAC is far better than PC when it comes to anything graphic. BUt, if you don't go mac I would use the P4 with Hyper Threading.

I do apreciate the fact that MAC is the name for Audio and Video work. My problem as a PC user is that I just don't know my way around MAC enough and my understanding up to this point has been MAC = BIG$$$ which I'd like to avoid spending if possable.

By all means, keep the feedback comming! :confused:

And feel free to vote in the poll if you haven't already.

Thanks again.

[TallCool1]

I was thinking Celeron as You can go 800 FSB as opposed to 333 max with the AMD line so I can make to most of the 400Mhz DDR and keep everything in sync. I may check my price list for an AMD solution yet. I have an 850 Duron system now, but I don't think I can do full MPEG 2 capture with it.

As I pointed out in another thread, the 800 MHz and 533 MHz front-side bus speeds that Intel advertises are more than a bit misleading. These are quad-pumped busses -- two interleaved DDRAM channels. With the AMD family, the nForce chipsets do this.

Don't be fooled -- even a 800-MHz-bus Celeron is no match for ANY AMD processor. That's like saying a go-kart motor can spin 10,000 RPM -- so what? The Celeron's limited cache, when combined with the long pipeline of the P4 architecture, is deadly to performance. Nobody should ever buy a Celeron, for any reason, no matter what.

The differences between the Mac and PC platforms when used with graphics and video applications is narrowing fast, especially with the new AMD-64 systems and the Linux 2.6 kernel.

[twilli227]

quote:
Nobody should ever buy a Celeron, for any reason, no matter what.

That is a bit extreme. I have used celerons for some time and I have not had any problems with them. Remeber, most people use their computers to write reports, e-mail, and surf the net. Celerons will do that with no problems.
The Soundman, I don't think you will have any problems with either intel or amd. It will probably come down to pricing for you.

[TallCool1]

quote:
Nobody should ever buy a Celeron, for any reason, no matter what.

That is a bit extreme. I have used celerons for some time and I have not had any problems with them. Remember, most people use their computers to write reports, e-mail, and surf the net. Celerons will do that with no problems.

But streaming video is what we are discussing here, and that's absolutely the worst possible use for the Celeron.

The Celeron processor was developed for one reason only: marketing-by-numbers (clock speed). There is no customer benefit to it whatsoever. Its in-built limitations make it a poor choice for any purpose. You can research the benchmarks yourself -- a slower P4 will outperform a faster Celeron by a wide margin. You can cherry-pick benchmarks to show some advantage, but in balanced real-world use, there's no comparison. Why spend more for less performance?

[The Soundman]

I realize that I slightly botched when I said that the celeron processor I was considering had and 800Mhz FSB. It's actually only 400. :o

I did a price up based on a Athlon processor with a 333 Mhz FSB speed and 512k cache and it appears to be about the same as the celeron solution I was considering. I'm still open to comments here so by all means keep talking and thanks again everyone.

[ZeekeDaGeek]

I think AMD is the best "bang for your buck".
Pentiums are nice, but you're paying a premium for the name.
That's my two cents.