Intel Dual Core Performance Preview Part I: First Encounter
by Anand Lal Shimpi on April 4, 2005 2:44 PM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Encoding Performance
These new dual core CPUs are supposed to usher in a new era of media rich application usage models. They are supposed to enable us to do things that we were never able to do before. Let's find out if that's true or not...
First, we start off with iTunes to test MP3 encoding performance. We took a 12MB .wav file of our own creation and encoded it to a 192kbps MP3 file, measuring how long it took to encode the file.
Once again, we see that the Pentium Extreme Edition 840 is able to offer equal performance to the 3.73EE at 29 seconds. What's truly interesting is that the Pentium D running at 3.2GHz actually offers better performance than the Extreme Edition. We can only assume that 4 threads in iTunes begins to reduce performance, with 2 concurrent threads being the optimal point.
But once again, the performance gains aren't impressive. So far, dual core isn't looking too good.
DivX Encoding Performance
Our DivX tests from previous CPU reviews have shown a pretty sizeable improvement due to Hyper Threading, so we expected a similarly impressive gain due to dual core:
...and we were not disappointed. The Pentium Extreme Edition 840 offered more than a 20% increase in performance in our DivX encoding task when compared to the 3.73GHz single core P4 Extreme Edition.
We also see another example of four threads offering no performance improvement over being able to execute two concurrently, as the Pentium D running at 3.2GHz offers equal performance to the 840.
XviD Encoding Performance
The XviD tests show no real improvement due to dual core, but also don't seem to show much of an improvement due to Hyper Threading either. This just goes to show you that not all encoding tasks will show tremendous benefits.
Windows Media Video 9 Encoding Performance
Once again, we see extremely strong performance from the new dual core chips, offering around a 30% performance improvement at 85% of the clock speed of the current king of the hill.
So, overall encoding performance is pretty strong on the dual core chips from Intel. Let's have a look at one more multi-threaded application before we get to the more interesting tests.
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haveblue128 - Wednesday, July 6, 2005 - link
Only downside but I think a majorleague heat solution should make everything sweethaveblue128 - Wednesday, July 6, 2005 - link
Oh Please give us a break. If you want to be a purist, go live in the woods without clothes. I say that multitasking makes my day a breeze.Whats your dilemma??
haveblue128 - Wednesday, July 6, 2005 - link
Wow-I just purchased a new sys with an Intel Dual CPU setup. As a multitasking monster on my machine, I was always having crashes in the past.I think that is gone with George Bush in 2008. THe good news is the dual core pair is already hear and ready to run. Give them a try-no downside, albeit a good bit of heat. That is something I will need to work on, but....
peufeu - Monday, May 9, 2005 - link
I forgot to mention... gentoo linux ;)peufeu - Monday, May 9, 2005 - link
Dual CPUs to compensate for the inept MS Windows.Interesting.
I'm torturing a webserver I just wrote, on my laptop. It's in Python. Right now it's serving about 2000 requests per second with 1000 concurrent connections.
I don't even notice it's running. The CPU gauge is at 100%, so what ? Nothing special. As reactive as usual. It doesn't swap. The harddisk even put itself in standby....
Go, bill, go !
shady28 - Sunday, April 17, 2005 - link
Making special tests just for these processors seems a bit contrived to me. In particular, comparing dual core processors to a Pentium 4 with HT disabled, in a multithreading/multitasking benchmark, is just plane lame.
I would have been a lot more interested in seeing how dual core compares in multitasking vs dual opterons or dual Xeons. Right now it looks like dual core is slower at doing one task at a time, suprisingly not that much faster at doing two tasks at a time than HT Pentium 4s. The only exceptions were the off the wall tests done at the end.
Since these new 'benchmarks' are made to simulate 'real life use', does that mean that all Anand's previous reviews were bogus?
JimGunn - Wednesday, April 13, 2005 - link
I think I will want one of these for my next video editing & encoding workstation. Will come in handy for HDV post I am sure!BoBOh - Monday, April 11, 2005 - link
Where are the code compile tests. We're not all gamers, some are software developers! :)BoB
warath - Friday, April 8, 2005 - link
I can't wait to see 64-bit dual cores! :)WoodenPupa - Thursday, April 7, 2005 - link
Well, I'm not a tech whiz like everyone else here, but here's my 2 centavos...I can attest to the fact that every machine I ever buy, I bring it to its knees. I usually wait several generations before I upgrade in order to get a more profound effect. Yet that strategy doesn't seem to matter because no matter how fast my computer is, I find that my NORMAL computing habits end up crushing the CPU and everything else.
I use Cool Edit Pro and some other audio programs, and I am also a chess player, and like to anyalyze games in the background with Fritz or Chessbase, both of which allow for gigantic hash tables. So as a typical case I like to do wave transforms and chess analysis as background items while I compose e-mails or use Word for more serious writing. Naturally I like to listen to music at the same time, but usually I have to give that up. Needless to say, all of this stuff cripples my computer---I'm due for an upgrade, I know---my box is a 2.53 GHz P4, 1 GB of Rambus 800 (no groaning, please), a GF4 ti 4600, 120 GB HD, I'm not even sure what the cache on that is, I don't think it's 8 or 5 MB---feels more like 2.
I usually end up quitting the Chess program or the Mp3 player---once in a while I can do all of this stuff concurrently if the wave transforms on cool edit aren't too complex, and I minimize the hash tables on the chess program.
Ideally I want everything to be instantaneous, but...:) Anyway, from what it sounds like, I need a dual or even quad processor setup. Because even with all the above mentioned programs running, I can think of more I would like to add. I'm a monster multitasker and really like to kick a computer right in the face, to show it who's boss. I'm tired of winning, though---I'd love it if one day the computer just scoffed at everything I threw at it. Sadly, I don't think it'll happen in my lifetime.
Should I upgrade to a dual core, or should I save and get a true multi-CPU Mobo like a quad Xeon??