HP Blackbird 002: Back in Black
by Jarred Walton on September 12, 2007 12:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Systems
General Application Performance
We don't have any current performance results from any other computers besides the Blackbird 002, so rather than a bunch of charts we thought we would just quickly summarize things in a table. These are applications that are generally very responsive to increases in CPU performance - 3D rendering and video encoding. All other factors like memory speed, bus speed, and any other components are the same in both test configurations, so this will give you a good idea of exactly what a 57% overclock to a Core 2 Quad processor can get you. We don't expect any of these applications to actually increase performance linearly with CPU clock speed, but they might come close.
The above applications represent some of the poster children for quad-core processors and increased CPU clock speeds. ITunes is only able to utilize two processor cores right now for MP3 encoding, but it still responds well to increased clock speeds and improves by 55%. Cinebench R10 manages a 54% speed up, while Windows Media Encoder shows a slightly smaller 52% performance boost. DivX improves the least, increasing total performance by 40%. Considering the large amount of memory bandwidth that's needed in that particular benchmark, we would imagine the front side bus and memory are handicapping performance. Keep in mind that other than Cinebench, none of these applications come anywhere near keeping the CPU at 100% use across all four cores. DivX 6.6 averages around 60% and Windows Media Encoder is around 75%.
One video encoding benchmark that we really wanted to include is QuickTime H.264 encoding. We have seen on other systems that the latest 7.2 version of QuickTime does much better at H.264 encoding, in terms of the time it takes as well as CPU utilization. Unfortunately, we were unable to get QuickTime to work properly on the Blackbird 002. CPU utilization hovered at around 35%, and we invariably encountered an error saying the QuickTime movie export stopped responding about 15-20% through the conversion process. (We also had one blue screen when attempting to start an H.264 encode.) This was not a problem with the overclocked processor, however, as we encounter the same error when running the CPU at 2.33 GHz. Our best guess is that this is somehow related to the motherboard BIOS, but whatever the cause we have to chalk this up as one more quirk with the prototype Blackbird we were sent.
Update: It seems we were wrong about QuickTime. It's not the Blackbird, the BIOS, or anything else; the problem is QuickTime and Vista not getting along well. (This also explains some odd results I've noticed on other systems over the past couple weeks.) Right now, QuickTime appears to be completely broken on Vista, at least with certain movie types. Our test movies won't even play properly on any system we've tested, and the encoding results are erratic. If anyone has a good alternative that is relatively easy to set up, drop me a line! (x264 encoding would be great, but I would really like a straightforward process that doesn't involve a bunch of extra steps - i.e. Gordian Knot is more complex than I generally care to deal with.)
We don't have any current performance results from any other computers besides the Blackbird 002, so rather than a bunch of charts we thought we would just quickly summarize things in a table. These are applications that are generally very responsive to increases in CPU performance - 3D rendering and video encoding. All other factors like memory speed, bus speed, and any other components are the same in both test configurations, so this will give you a good idea of exactly what a 57% overclock to a Core 2 Quad processor can get you. We don't expect any of these applications to actually increase performance linearly with CPU clock speed, but they might come close.
| Application Performance Comparison | |||
| HP Blackbird 002 | HP Blackbird "Q6650" | %Increase from Overclock |
|
| Cinebench R10 XCPU | 13035 | 8457 | 54.13% |
| DivX 6.6 (Seconds) | 46 | 64.5 | 40.22% |
| Windows Media Encoder 9 | 31 | 47 | 51.61% |
| iTunes 7.4.1 MP3 (Seconds) | 24.5 | 38 | 55.10% |
The above applications represent some of the poster children for quad-core processors and increased CPU clock speeds. ITunes is only able to utilize two processor cores right now for MP3 encoding, but it still responds well to increased clock speeds and improves by 55%. Cinebench R10 manages a 54% speed up, while Windows Media Encoder shows a slightly smaller 52% performance boost. DivX improves the least, increasing total performance by 40%. Considering the large amount of memory bandwidth that's needed in that particular benchmark, we would imagine the front side bus and memory are handicapping performance. Keep in mind that other than Cinebench, none of these applications come anywhere near keeping the CPU at 100% use across all four cores. DivX 6.6 averages around 60% and Windows Media Encoder is around 75%.
One video encoding benchmark that we really wanted to include is QuickTime H.264 encoding. We have seen on other systems that the latest 7.2 version of QuickTime does much better at H.264 encoding, in terms of the time it takes as well as CPU utilization. Unfortunately, we were unable to get QuickTime to work properly on the Blackbird 002. CPU utilization hovered at around 35%, and we invariably encountered an error saying the QuickTime movie export stopped responding about 15-20% through the conversion process. (We also had one blue screen when attempting to start an H.264 encode.) This was not a problem with the overclocked processor, however, as we encounter the same error when running the CPU at 2.33 GHz. Our best guess is that this is somehow related to the motherboard BIOS, but whatever the cause we have to chalk this up as one more quirk with the prototype Blackbird we were sent.
Update: It seems we were wrong about QuickTime. It's not the Blackbird, the BIOS, or anything else; the problem is QuickTime and Vista not getting along well. (This also explains some odd results I've noticed on other systems over the past couple weeks.) Right now, QuickTime appears to be completely broken on Vista, at least with certain movie types. Our test movies won't even play properly on any system we've tested, and the encoding results are erratic. If anyone has a good alternative that is relatively easy to set up, drop me a line! (x264 encoding would be great, but I would really like a straightforward process that doesn't involve a bunch of extra steps - i.e. Gordian Knot is more complex than I generally care to deal with.)
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0roo0roo - Sunday, September 16, 2007 - link
"eh, different strokes for different folks. falcon is more of the old type of boutique of mostly standard store bought items tweaked a bit that simply can't compete with this level of craftsmanship. the new case with its quality is quite nice, no shaving off metal thickness to save money there! just solid sweet aluminum. theres no way you could design a case like that yourself easily, let alone for that price. you'll just end up with a standard pc, save a little money but it won't match what hp is selling.
not all bad, if some brat tries to steal it they'll probably get a hernia while trying to run away lol:) as for the price, boutique computers cost a lot, just check out voodoopc or any other, they are high end stuff for people that want a high end pc that is top of the line and comes with tech support. not everyone enjoys the hassel of ordering 15 boxes of components through the mail then trying to slap it together and hope you don't have to rma anything.