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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Anand Lal Shimpi - Friday, July 14, 2006 - link
Corrected, it was a misprint.Take care,
Anand
Zorba - Friday, July 14, 2006 - link
Why is the article talking about how Intel is killing AMD on power consumption when AMD is on the top for both idle and load? If you are doing a performance/watt ratio you need to show that on the graph. This page (page 7) just makes the how article look completely baised.Calin - Friday, July 14, 2006 - link
Because the EE SFF processors were hard to obtain by Anandtech even for testing purposes. I'm not sure they are available in retail market any more than Conroe isAnand Lal Shimpi - Friday, July 14, 2006 - link
The Core 2 Extreme X6800 has a performance per watt score of 0.3575 in WME9 compared to 0.2757 for the X2 3800+ EE SFF. I'll put together a performance per watt graph now and see if I can stick it in there.Take care,
Anand
Anand Lal Shimpi - Friday, July 14, 2006 - link
I included the performance per watt scores I mentioned above in the review now, hopefully that will make things a little more clear.Take care,
Anand
JarredWalton - Friday, July 14, 2006 - link
I don't see the chart, Anand - I hope I didn't accidentally overwrite your change. Sorry!MrKaz - Friday, July 14, 2006 - link
Don't put it because it's a biased chart,Why based on WM9 benchmark? Why not one of the others?
Why put it now, if you never put it when A64 was killing the P4s?
coldpower27 - Friday, July 14, 2006 - link
Because AMD didn't real make a big deal about the performance per watt intiative back in the day. They focused on their price/performance instead.MrKaz - Friday, July 14, 2006 - link
So?Just because Intel focuses now on that Anandtech must be obliged to put it?
So for you where was the price/performance (A64 vs P4) charts on Anandtech reviews?
coldpower27 - Friday, July 14, 2006 - link
Yeah, due to their making people aware of it, it has now become a issue.It was only after Prescott, that we became more aware that thermals were starting to get out of control and paid more attention to wattage numbers.
Price/Performance is not as hard to calculate.