It’s a Cascade of 14nm CPUs: AnandTech’s Intel Core i9-10980XE Review
by Dr. Ian Cutress on November 25, 2019 9:00 AM ESTCPU Performance: Encoding Tests
With the rise of streaming, vlogs, and video content as a whole, encoding and transcoding tests are becoming ever more important. Not only are more home users and gamers needing to convert video files into something more manageable, for streaming or archival purposes, but the servers that manage the output also manage around data and log files with compression and decompression. Our encoding tasks are focused around these important scenarios, with input from the community for the best implementation of real-world testing.
All of our benchmark results can also be found in our benchmark engine, Bench.
Handbrake 1.1.0: Streaming and Archival Video Transcoding
A popular open source tool, Handbrake is the anything-to-anything video conversion software that a number of people use as a reference point. The danger is always on version numbers and optimization, for example the latest versions of the software can take advantage of AVX-512 and OpenCL to accelerate certain types of transcoding and algorithms. The version we use here is a pure CPU play, with common transcoding variations.
We have split Handbrake up into several tests, using a Logitech C920 1080p60 native webcam recording (essentially a streamer recording), and convert them into two types of streaming formats and one for archival. The output settings used are:
- 720p60 at 6000 kbps constant bit rate, fast setting, high profile
- 1080p60 at 3500 kbps constant bit rate, faster setting, main profile
- 1080p60 HEVC at 3500 kbps variable bit rate, fast setting, main profile
7-zip v1805: Popular Open-Source Encoding Engine
Out of our compression/decompression tool tests, 7-zip is the most requested and comes with a built-in benchmark. For our test suite, we’ve pulled the latest version of the software and we run the benchmark from the command line, reporting the compression, decompression, and a combined score.
It is noted in this benchmark that the latest multi-die processors have very bi-modal performance between compression and decompression, performing well in one and badly in the other. There are also discussions around how the Windows Scheduler is implementing every thread. As we get more results, it will be interesting to see how this plays out.
Please note, if you plan to share out the Compression graph, please include the Decompression one. Otherwise you’re only presenting half a picture.
WinRAR 5.60b3: Archiving Tool
My compression tool of choice is often WinRAR, having been one of the first tools a number of my generation used over two decades ago. The interface has not changed much, although the integration with Windows right click commands is always a plus. It has no in-built test, so we run a compression over a set directory containing over thirty 60-second video files and 2000 small web-based files at a normal compression rate.
WinRAR is variable threaded but also susceptible to caching, so in our test we run it 10 times and take the average of the last five, leaving the test purely for raw CPU compute performance.
AES Encryption: File Security
A number of platforms, particularly mobile devices, are now offering encryption by default with file systems in order to protect the contents. Windows based devices have these options as well, often applied by BitLocker or third-party software. In our AES encryption test, we used the discontinued TrueCrypt for its built-in benchmark, which tests several encryption algorithms directly in memory.
The data we take for this test is the combined AES encrypt/decrypt performance, measured in gigabytes per second. The software does use AES commands for processors that offer hardware selection, however not AVX-512.
More than a slight regression here in our AES testing - this is probably the most severe of all our tests for how the security fixes have affected performance.
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nt300 - Tuesday, November 26, 2019 - link
Do not thank Intel for anything CPU related. They've been milking consumers for many years, confusing people with several different sockets, chipsets, price points etc., this processor not compatible with that socket and so on. They've caused an industry mess with very expensive CPUs and miniscule IPC increases.Who to thank? AMD for launching ZEN and catching Intel by the surprise.
evernessince - Tuesday, November 26, 2019 - link
While your at bringing up irrelevant points from over 7 years ago, might as well thank AMD for X64 as well. Are you going to fellate Intel for everything they've done in the past?Korguz - Tuesday, November 26, 2019 - link
evernessince dont forget the on die memory controller that intel also copied from amd :-)not irrelevant points, they are valid points.. it kinda proves intel likes to milk people for all they are worth, while stagnating the cpu industry, and over charging for their cpus as well. come on, the top sku for 10xxx cpus is 1k less then the cpu it is replacing, and it cant even do that for the most part, may as well just stick with the 9xxx cpus....
Xyler94 - Wednesday, November 27, 2019 - link
While technically Intel was first to 64bit X86, AMD beat intel to X86-64bit, meaning it was both x86(32bit) and x86(64bit) compatible. Intel tried to go 64bit only, but it backfired on them hard, and so they scrambled to do both 32 and 64 bit, but AMD beat them to the punch, so much so Intel had to license that from AMD, and is the sole reason it's still known today as AMD-64Qasar - Wednesday, November 27, 2019 - link
Xyler94 i remember reading that good old microsoft didnt want to have to code windows for 2 different x86-64 instruction sets, so they made intel drop theirs and adopt AMDs instead, as they had already started programming windows for amd64...Samus - Wednesday, November 27, 2019 - link
You realize the only reason Intel lowered the mainstream bracket to the $300 level was competition from AMD's Black Edition CPU's. And after Ivy Bridge, they shot right back up to $400.So stop pretending Intel doesn't price their products based on competition from AMD. That's just ridiculous.
Beaver M. - Monday, November 25, 2019 - link
Yeah well, lower prices are nice and all, but the product isnt that good.Its still the Skylake architecture, still ancient 14 nm, still has dozens of security flaws.
ksec - Tuesday, November 26, 2019 - link
Thanking AMD for Intel's Price Cut and then continue to buy Intel?JlHADJOE - Tuesday, November 26, 2019 - link
Now W3175X needs to drop down to $2000 for the 32-core TR3 to have any kind of competition.UglyFrank - Monday, November 25, 2019 - link
This could make a great workstation processor for me but AMD is still much compelling.