Intel's Core 2 Extreme & Core 2 Duo: The Empire Strikes Back
by Anand Lal Shimpi on July 14, 2006 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Encoding Performance using DivX 6.1, WME9, Quicktime (H.264) & iTunes
Multimedia encoding is typically a very good CPU benchmark, with performance that scales very nearly linearly with faster CPU clock speeds. Video testing was conducted using three popular codecs and applications: Xmpeg 5.03 with DivX 6.1, Windows Media Encoder with WMV9, and QuickTime 7.1 with H.264. The complexity of the encoding process increases as we move from DivX to WMV9, and H.264 encoding is in a league of its own in terms of the amount of CPU time required.
In something of a change, both the Core 2 Extreme and that E6300 manage roughly a 25% margin of victory over their AMD counterparts in the DivX test. The E6300 very nearly matches the X2 5000+ here. The X6800 maintains the 25% lead in WMV9, while the E6300 lead over the X2 3800+ drops to 8.5%, roughly equaling the 4200+. Finally, in H.264 encoding, the Core 2 Extreme claims one of its largest victories coming in 36% faster than the Athlon FX-62; the E6300 also manages a large 21% performance lead over the X2 3800+ and falls between the 4600+ and 5000+ in performance.
Moving over to audio encoding performance, we used Apple's iTunes 6 application to encode a single 307 MB Wav file into a 192kbps MP3. Audio encoding is still very CPU intensive, but of course the faster encoding times make the differences less noticeable in practical use. At the top and bottom price points, Intel leads again: 5% at the low-end, and 15% at the extreme performance segment. Unless you frequently encode really large amounts of audio files, however, it's unlikely you're going to notice Intel's 2-4 second lead.
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bob661 - Friday, July 14, 2006 - link
But they're not available today. Why is that?So Intel is launching this twice? What is going on today? Technology preview?
Questar - Friday, July 14, 2006 - link
Sold out?
RTFA. The NDA lifted today. Launch is on the 27th.
bob661 - Friday, July 14, 2006 - link
If they were sold out they would still show on Newegg and ZZF.I RFTA! That's how I was able to correlate the lack of product to the availability of benchmarks. Products leak all of the time and NDA's are held in place. This maybe a creative way of paper launching but it's still a paper launch.
Questar - Friday, July 14, 2006 - link
Yeah, because that's the only two places you buy a CPU from.
Sheesh.
Questar - Friday, July 14, 2006 - link
bob and MrKaz, forever the fanboy.Please explain to me why Intel having the better cpu upsets you so?
MrKaz - Monday, July 17, 2006 - link
And you?It can be better than Cyrix, IBM, Sun, ... I don’t care.
But you seem to care more than me.
If you don’t, why do you complain?
This is not for me because my maximum 100€ for processor.
It’s cheap (compared to others Intel past released brand new CPU) but not cheap enough.
bob661 - Friday, July 14, 2006 - link
I'm not a fanboi. I just hate hypocrites. If you read another post of mine in this section (use the scroll button Luke) you will see me praise the performance of the Conroe. I plan on buying one for my wife. I'll probably get a K8L if it turns out to be even or faster than Conroe otherwise I'll get a Conroe for myself.bob661 - Friday, July 14, 2006 - link
Here's the post I made. Sound like a fanboi to you?forPPP - Friday, July 14, 2006 - link
Why buying more expensive and slower Core 2 Extreme (X6800, 2.93 GHz) ? There is cheaper Woodcrest at 3.0 GHz !Are there no motherboard with unbuffered memory support for Woodcrest ?
coldpower27 - Friday, July 14, 2006 - link
Nope Intel doesn't allow their Server processor to be used for desktop stuff as it's LGA771 socket.