Upgrade recommendations wanted for video editing and basic use desktop

[Olster]

Hi All,

I am looking to upgrading my current PC running and old AMD CPU.

Basically I am looking at replacing the CPU, motherboard and memory, with the possibility of including a SSD for the OS (Linux Mint probably).

Mostly I will using the pc for daily browsing, emailing etc and for transcoding HD video into DVD size films.

I have obviously been looking into the Sandy Bridge vs Bulldozer debate and looking at the open benchmarking site for comparisons. It does look like the AMD FX 8150 CPU wins the transcoding battle using ffmpeg but loses the war in general against the Sandy Bridge.

What I am having difficulty in finding is what the near future holds with regards to Intel Activesync (which has good results in Windows) becoming Linux compatible, what Ivy Bridge will bring and the plans of AMD after the FX 8150.

So, in a nutshell:
What are the CPU and motherboard recommendations for Linux when it comes to daily use and video transcoding? Budget around € 300 for each component.

Bearing in mind I am interested in a machine that will last some time with possibly only a CPU upgrade in 2 or 3 years time.

[Rubberman]

Great questions! I have a 4 year old system with Intel workstation/server motherboard and dual E5450 3GHz Penryn processors. These were bleeding edge when I built the system, but the new memory/bus architecture of the Sandy Bridge and similar blows mine away. That said, I do a LOT of video transcoding with ffmpeg, and with 8 cores and 8GB of RAM it can still generate DVD-compatible mpeg2 files from just about anything PDQ. Of course, transcoding a 1080p HD video (reducing resolution to 720x480), will only convert at 30-80fps, but that's with just one thread. At least ffmpeg supports threads, and you can speed it up considerably by adding threads. With my system's memory bus bottleneck, I pretty much max out at 3-4 threads, but it will speed up the transcoding by a similar factor. IE, a 1 hour HD video will turn into a high-def dvd video in 15-20 minutes with 4 threads.

So, I guess I am saying that either architecture should do you well. My only piece of advice here is get the best quality board you can afford. I like Intel boards personally, but that's just me appreciating the quality of their engineering and attention to detail.

[Olster]

30 - 80 fps? I'm happy if I get 25 fps, then I am realtime

Do you know whether quick sync from Intel will be supported soon in Linux, because if it will be the decision is easy?

[Rubberman]

30 - 80 fps? I'm happy if I get 25 fps, then I am realtime

Do you know whether quick sync from Intel will be supported soon in Linux, because if it will be the decision is easy?

Sorry, but my "dumb hat" is on. What is "quick sync"?

[Olster]

Sorry, but my "dumb hat" is on. What is "quick sync"?

Quick sync is a built in feature of Sandy Bridge CPU's that massively speeds up the transcoding of video files.....under Windows.

Anandtech has a good article about it, unfortunately I can't post links here though.

If Linux could tap into Quick Sync then the decision as to which CPU to use would be easy

[Rubberman]

Quick sync is a built in feature of Sandy Bridge CPU's that massively speeds up the transcoding of video files.....under Windows.

Anandtech has a good article about it, unfortunately I can't post links here though.

If Linux could tap into Quick Sync then the decision as to which CPU to use would be easy

Ah! Tnx. Well, if it is built into the hardware, I have to think than some Linux boffin will enable it in Linux PDQ. Remember, we are dealing with Internet time here...

Also, Intel does a lot to support Linux, and there are a LOT of video professionals who use Linux, so this may not be such a far-fetched idea.

[Olster]

Hmmm, the reverse side of that tends to tell me that it probably would have been done already if it was easy.

Either way, it till doesn't help me in buying a motherboard and CPU today