Question about CPU/MB for encoding machine

[Pizza_Time]

Hello! The machine that was recommended to us for encoding video/audio was a Dell poweredge server with Dual Xeon X5680s, but it's priced out to about $6000 which is way too much. I was given a $3000 limit to build a custom machine.

I've been piecing together parts, but my main question is, should be going with a single Xeon X5680($1600 part), or should I go with an i7-990x, Corsair H50, and overclock it? I'm just looking for max audio/video encoding speed here. I'll get the Xeon if it's the fastest, but what I don't like is that all the motherboards I want support the lga1366 socket, but they don't say they support Xeons.

 

[dustNbone]

Exactly what kind of encoding? I ask because different encoders benefit differently from CPU power, memory bandwidth, some even can encode using GPUs (CUDA or similar). GPU encoding will give you much more bang for buck, you can rack in 3 nice video cards and smoke the crap out of any Xeon, if you have the software stack for it.

 

[Pizza_Time]

Exactly what kind of encoding? I ask because different encoders benefit differently from CPU power, memory bandwidth, some even can encode using GPUs (CUDA or similar). GPU encoding will give you much more bang for buck, you can rack in 3 nice video cards and smoke the crap out of any Xeon, if you have the software stack for it.

Mainly encoding F4V/FLV files, but also into MP3s as well