The Dark Knight: Intel's Core i7
by Anand Lal Shimpi & Gary Key on November 3, 2008 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Video and Media Encoding Performance
Nehalem is happiest in 3D rendering applications, but video encoding is a close second place. Our first video encoding test is Tech ARP's x264 HD benchmark, which does a test encode of a 720p source file using the x264 codec. We're reporting results from the 0.59.819 version of x264.
Here Nehalem can "only" deliver a 17% performance advantage over Penryn, but once again the $284 i7-920 is faster than the $1400 QX9770.
Our DivX test is the same DivX / XMpeg 5.03 test we've run for the past couple of years now, the 1080p source file is encoded using the unconstrained DivX profile, quality/performance is set balanced at 5 and enhanced multithreading is enabled:
You know the drill, Intel introduces a new architecture and obsoletes its old one - the i7-920 is looking mighty tempting...
The WME test gives us a little dose of reality, the i7-920 is only as fast as the QX9770 here:
Although this isn't a video encoding test I wanted to include a lighter workload to illustrate a situation where Nehalem is no faster than its predecessor. The iTunes benchmark is a simple WAV to MP3 encode and Nehalem isn't able to dominate here:
Penryn pulls slightly ahead at the top end but at 2.66GHz it falls slightly behind. In both cases the point is that you'll be faster with a QX9770 than an i7-920, and you'll be no faster with a Nehalem vs. Penryn.
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fzkl - Monday, November 3, 2008 - link
"Where Nehalem really succeeds however is in anything involving video encoding or 3D rendering"We have new CPU that does Video encoding and 3D Rendering really well while at the same time the GPU manufacturers are offloading these applications to the GPU.
The CPU Vs GPU debate heats up more.
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Griswold - Tuesday, November 4, 2008 - link
Wheres the product that offloads encoding to GPUs - all of them, from both makers - as a publicly available product? I havent seen that yet. Of course, we havent seen Core i7 in the wild yet either, but I bet it will be many moons before there is that single encoding suite that is ready for primetime regardless of the card that is sitting in your machine. On the other hand, I can encode my stuff right now with my current Intel or AMD products and will just move them over to the upcoming products without having to think about it.Huge difference. The debate isnt really a debate yet, if you're doing more than just talking about it.
haukionkannel - Monday, November 3, 2008 - link
Well if both CPU and GPU are better for video encoding, the better! Even now the rendering takes forever.So there is not any problem if GPU helps allready good 3d render CPU. Everything that gives more speed is just bonus!