Ok i am looking for a good budget video encoding processor. AMD or Intel. And i need some suggestions. My price is max somewhere around 220$ give or take.
I do alot of video encoding and i need a processor that can get the job done fast.

Any suggestions would be great! thanks for your help!

Oh and one other thing.....Will a AM2 or AM2+ CPU cooler work on a AM3 CPU or vice versa?

The Phenom II X4 940 is the best choice IMO.

And yes, I think AM2\AM2+ coolers will work on an AM3 CPU. Not sure, but since the slots are physically identical (aside from having a different number of pins), any AM2 cooler should work.

Ok yea i was looking at it. Is AMD gonna release any other more powerful processors this year? i am really leaning towards AMD right now.

And ok good i have been curious about that.

I doubt anything more powerful will come along that will suit your budget. This is as far as it goes IMO. You can also opt for the cheaper 920 or 810 quad-core CPUs too.

What is you opinon on the X3's? i kno thats kinda stupid. lol

get the quad they encode so fast trust rage he knows what hes talking about

For video encoding, more is always better when it comes to CPU cores. Still, among the X3s, the Phenom II CPUs are the only ones I'd recommend. The 720BE is especially a great CPU, overclockable to at least 3GHz.

If you are encoding for your ipod, zune or psp there is a program called badaboom that is Gpu accelarated, this relies on specific gpus. It is supposedly 20x faster than any cpu.

Im not sure what other file formats it supports though. (im just quoting off the back of my graphics card box )

Yea thats what i thought and i was just wondering because i have seen you can unlock the 4th core on the Phenom II X3's most of the time. I'll probably go with the Phenom II X4 though and what is this tlk about an athlon X4 i've been reading?

And i do video encoding from avi or wma to DVD format using ConvertXtoDVD and i use AnyVideoConverter Pro for my ipod movies and such but ill try that badaboom,

Thanks guys for your input!!

That varies actually with the BIOS on the board you purchase. Updated BIOS versions block this particular feature. So unless you flash the BIOS back to an older version, the method will most likely not work.

Well i kno what board to get...and acc is still active its the code they put in the processors but i have heard you have a 50/50 chance in the new 710 processors. im not gonna try it though i was just curious about that

Wait, so do you already have a processor you want to replace?
I vote X4 940 too.

no no i am building me another computer and i was wanting to kno whither to go with amd or intel.