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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ianwhthse - Friday, July 14, 2006 - link
Hmm... some more investigating.Firefox leaves space for the images, so I right-clicked and sure enough, I've got a link. "View Image" to look at a single .png, and I get a white blank screen (properties of this particular image says 446px by 654px, 0.04kb in size).
JarredWalton - Friday, July 14, 2006 - link
I'm using Firefox without trouble. Possibly some firewall setting is getting in the way? We had a few brief issues earlier tonight, but that only lasted a few minutes (and we're not sure what happened). If IE and FF both lack images, it sounds like something outside of browser. One note is that I think our image server (images.anandtech.com) blocks access to images if you don't allow the referring URL to be passed along. Meaning, if you were to get the URL of an image and paste that directly into a browser, the image would show up as a 1x1 blank file. Not sure if that affects the graphs as well or not.ianwhthse - Friday, July 14, 2006 - link
It was the referer info being blocked that was doing it, kinda annoying. Thanks a million.JarredWalton - Friday, July 14, 2006 - link
Norton is the devil, I swear. They were great when Peter Norton was actually involved, but now it's just a name, and every release gets worse IMO. Norton Internet Security 2002 (2001?) was good; 2003 became a bit worse. 2005 was garbage and I never tried it again. I don't even run software firewall/anti-virus anymore. I've got a hardware firewall, surf with Firefox, password protect my PCs, and don't open stupid email messages. That only works because I'm the only one on the network/PCs, of course. :)ianwhthse - Friday, July 14, 2006 - link
Yeah, I run an old corporate edition from maybe 2001-2002 because I can't stand the fat of the newer releases. And it's just worked well for me otherwise, I've got a newer edition sitting around in some pile of disks in some closet, but I tried it, hated it, went back.I've got a hardware firewall, software firewall, AV, surf w/Firefox, anti-Spyware, AND try not to do anything stupid -- I got'cha beat =P
ianwhthse - Friday, July 14, 2006 - link
Hmm...I see all the ads on the page (newegg, zipzoomfly, thermaltake, crucial, etc.) that seem to be flash. I also see the images for the header of the page (the Anandtech logo at the top of the page), but it's just the images in the review that are invisible.
Hmm... I told the firewall (Norton) to lower my protection, and nothing [either browser]. I'll give it a stab disabled.
*sign* Okay, charts worked w/o Norton running... (even on minimum protection, they wouldn't come up). I guess I'm off to delve into what setting is going to be doing that.
Gary Key - Friday, July 14, 2006 - link
If you are using Opera 9 or 8, did you turn on "refferer" logging under tools - quick preferences or the advanced - network option?xFlankerx - Friday, July 14, 2006 - link
Excellent article, by far the most detailed released yet. Yea, the E6400 was a rather important part since it's supposed to be equal to AMD's flagship FX-62, but its easy enough to figure out how it would perform from the other processors' performance.As for Conroe availability; 25% of Intel's total output should be more than enough. 20% of Intel's manufacturing capacity equals 100% of AMD's. If there is no shortage of AMD processors, 25% of Intel's total output should be more than enough to supply the market with enough processors?
DigiTimes also reported that Intel will be charging everyone roughly the same price for the processors. Dell might not get the processors for half-off after all.
That said, these processors are amazing. By far the greatest thing since the Athlon 64 almost 5 years ago. Fun stuff.
mikaela - Tuesday, March 16, 2010 - link
yes, well-written. i also love the images provided here. thanks i can use the info here to write my essay college essay requirementsSuraj - Friday, October 20, 2006 - link
Great article. How did they overclock the e6600? Did they use the same parts listed in "The test" ?