CPU Recommendation for Video Editing / Adobe CS5 work

[SteveBlack]

Hi

I am currently trying to build a system that would primarily be used for video editing, content creation etc. Gaming is not at all important, I know the system can play games reasonably if at all I need.

I intend to enable the Mercury Engine by adding a GTX 460.

I am currently toying between the following

AMD Phenom II X6 1055T
AMD Phenom II X6 1090T
Intel i7-870 Lynnfield 2.93GHz 8MB L3 Cache LGA 1156

I have read several reviews and it seem for multicore ready apps, AMD would be a better choice. But in a multi threaded applicatios like PP CS5, will the 8 cores (with HT) of Intel be less effective than 6 physical cores of AMD?

Also what are the considerations between the two AMDs? Is $100 price difference between the two, which are almost identical except for clock speed and OC multiplier, justified? I intend to OC mildly on stock. So without the fully unlocked clock multiplier of the 1090T, 1055T will not overclock? My idea of OC is to take a 3.2 to 3.8 at the max.

Or the Intel when OCed will be a better solution overall with more memory bandwidth.

Also what are the cost implications of going AMD/Intel DDR3 solutions? Which will be more?

Thank you in advance.

 

[SteveBlack]

BTW, it will be one month more before I will do the purchase. So if an immediate new release that will change the current situation is due, please enlighten me on that as well. Thank you.

 

[PlasmaBomb]

If you can hold off till January.. Sandy bridge?

 

[PlasmaBomb]

Comparison

Intel i7 870 vs AMD x6 1090T
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/107?vs=146

Intel i7 870 vs AMD x6 1055T
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/107?vs=147

AMD x6 1090T vs AMD x6 1055T
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/146?vs=147

 

[SteveBlack]

Thanks PlasmaBomb for pointing out me to the comparison link.

So between i7 870 and Phenom II X6 1090T, the only parameters the Phenom wins are

x264 HD Encoding 1st pass 8.38%
x264 HD Encoding 2nd pass 1.79%
Cinebench R10 Multi thread 7.43%
POV Ray 3.7 - SMP Benchmark 4.33%
x264 HD Benchmark - 2nd pass 1.00%

Rest all are in favor of the Intel. So will the above tests have serious bearing on the Premier Pro CS5 working with AVCHD (h264) files?

Also will the AMD Phenom II X6 1055T not OC?

 

[beginner99]

Personally I would wait for Sandy Bridge. Will probably be around 20% faster than the current i7 for the same price and hence also faster than the Phenom II.
And once Applications adopt AVX (goggle for info) which is especially helpful in video editing, that might even be a lot more.

 

[SteveBlack]

Ok between AMD Phenom II X6 1055T & AMD Phenom II X6 1090T, the 1090T leads by an average 10%, which goes up to 13-14% in video creation tests. So for about 35% less price, the 1055T is a better value on stock speeds.

 

[SteveBlack]

Thanks beginner99.

I do not think I can wait 4 months to get Sandy Bridge and then few more months before the prices cool down. It would make sense if it was something which will be available in a month or so.

 

[PlasmaBomb]

Thanks PlasmaBomb for pointing out me to the comparison link.

So between i7 870 and Phenom II X6 1090T, the only parameters the Phenom wins are

x264 HD Encoding 1st pass 8.38%
x264 HD Encoding 2nd pass 1.79%
Cinebench R10 Multi thread 7.43%
POV Ray 3.7 - SMP Benchmark 4.33%
x264 HD Benchmark - 2nd pass 1.00%

Rest all are in favor of the Intel. So will the above tests have serious bearing on the Premier Pro CS5 working with AVCHD (h264) files?

Also will the AMD Phenom II X6 1055T not OC?

The Phenom II X6 1055T might get close to 4 GHz... the I7 870 should get 4 GHz, maybe 4.2 GHz...

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/amd-phenom-ii-x6-1055t-overclocking_8.html

^ How a 1055T performs at 4.0GHz in CS5, feel free to check the rest of the article too.

 

[nenforcer]

Despite the slight performance losses to the Intel chips the AMD platform is more future proof, as well.

Sandy Bridge will require a new motherboard / socket (1155?) while the next gen AMD processors (Bulldozer) are initially suppose to come in a AM3 socket just like the Phenom ][ X6.

 

[WaitingForNehalem]

Despite the slight performance losses to the Intel chips the AMD platform is more future proof, as well.

Sandy Bridge will require a new motherboard / socket (1155?) while the next gen AMD processors (Bulldozer) are initially suppose to come in a AM3 socket just like the Phenom ][ X6.

No, it has been known for a while now that Bulldozer processors will require socket AM3+ and will not be backwards compatible with AM3.

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2101113

 

[Cogman]

Personally I would wait for Sandy Bridge. Will probably be around 20% faster than the current i7 for the same price and hence also faster than the Phenom II.
And once Applications adopt AVX (goggle for info) which is especially helpful in video editing, that might even be a lot more.

Interestingly enough. AVX might not be as helpful as hoped. Apparently it is not going to provide integer FMA instructions... which, is what a lot of encoders use for speed (Floats aren't used as much because they are generally slower then integer operations). Where the benefit will come in is the ability to use 256bit registers with SSE instructions.

New instructions are helpful, but they usually aren't silver bullets. The biggest issue is that programmers are usually slow to adopt new instructions as with the new instructions comes the hassle of detecting the availability of those instructions.

 

[extra]

phenom 1055/1090t or an i7 920 + an nvidia 470 or 480 for cuda acceleration.

 

[Cogman]

phenom 1055/1090t or an i7 920 + an nvidia 470 or 480 for cuda acceleration.

CUDA isn't nearly as helpful as you might think. The adoption rates have be extremely slow pretty much everywhere. Not only that, but it isn't a silver bullet that can be applied everywhere. There are some specific image manipulations that can use it (IE warping the image) but certainly not a "Use this everywhere" sort of thing.

My bet is that we will see something like DirectCompute or OpenCL receive mass adoption long before we will see CUDA used everywhere. If for no other reason than the fact that you aren't limited by "nVidia only" video cards.

For video and photo stuff, a cheap video card is generally all you need. Your CPU does the majority of the processing.

Favor lots of ram over the fastest CPU available, and the fastest CPU available over a fast video card. Those are the areas that image processing consumes the most of.

 

[xd_1771]

The 1055T OC's very well; I run at no less than 4Ghz daily

 

[mrcmtl]

1055T can get to 3.6-3.8 with ease on a decent motherboard. 4.0 might need some advanced tweaking.
1090T will get to 4.0 with ease.

is the extra 200-400Mhz worth the 100$ depends on you. I'd say no. Might as well spend it on a better cooler.
​

 

[extra]

CUDA isn't nearly as helpful as you might think.

*Yes, it is*. CUDA helps a *lot* in premiere cs5--which is what this thread is about!

I was implying that the OP may want a 470 or 480 instead of the 460, though I'm not sure on benchmarks, but the 470/480 do have a bit more gpu-compute power.

 

[Cogman]

*Yes, it is*. CUDA helps a *lot* in premiere cs5--which is what this thread is about!

I was implying that the OP may want a 470 or 480 instead of the 460, though I'm not sure on benchmarks, but the 470/480 do have a bit more gpu-compute power.

From most of what I've read about adobe's usage of CUDA is pretty much limited to their Mercury playback engine and a few select plugins/filters.

Now, I guess if you are doing primarily encoding/decoding work, It wouldn't be a bad move (Note: GPU encoders SUCK! the best encoder out there is x264 which is entirely CPU based). However, I feel that in the next couple of years, CUDA will be far less important then it is now.

 

[taserbro]

From most of what I've read about adobe's usage of CUDA is pretty much limited to their Mercury playback engine and a few select plugins/filters.

Now, I guess if you are doing primarily encoding/decoding work, It wouldn't be a bad move (Note: GPU encoders SUCK! the best encoder out there is x264 which is entirely CPU based). However, I feel that in the next couple of years, CUDA will be far less important then it is now.

Actually he's right that cuda is much more useful than opencl in that premiere boasts lifechanging performance with mainstream cards that will work immediately while opencl alternatives are nowhere in sight; even if said alternatives were to overcome the massive head start cuda has on them, cuda cards would still be perfectly able to run those as well making them a safe bet either way. That said, be aware that not every single current fermi models are officially supported by premiere and even though forcing it to use it anyway is easily done by editing a text document variable, some users have reported visual problems with unsupported models. Afaik, the 285 and 470 are the ones you want to be perfectly safe but I haven't been checking up on that since it became irrelevant to me personally so I'd recommend to do your homework before ordering.

Secondly, while it's true GPU encoders used to have relatively poorer quality, times have changed and if you compare recent up-to-date stuff, the difference is insignificant while the performance difference has gotten even more enormous; I could encode a short segment using both methods and I'm pretty sure nobody can tell which the difference unless you are pausing every frame and even then, you've got a 50/50 chance to guessing which one's which. As far as I'm concerned, it's no longer an issue.

 

[taltamir]

Thanks PlasmaBomb for pointing out me to the comparison link.

So between i7 870 and Phenom II X6 1090T, the only parameters the Phenom wins are

x264 HD Encoding 1st pass 8.38%
x264 HD Encoding 2nd pass 1.79%
Cinebench R10 Multi thread 7.43%
POV Ray 3.7 - SMP Benchmark 4.33%
x264 HD Benchmark - 2nd pass 1.00%

Rest all are in favor of the Intel. So will the above tests have serious bearing on the Premier Pro CS5 working with AVCHD (h264) files?

Also will the AMD Phenom II X6 1055T not OC?

The phenom also wins the: Adobe Photoshop CS4 - Retouch Artists Speed Test

quite interesting. I was going to guess the intel to win... its a good thing there are benchmarks

 

[SteveBlack]

Thank you for all those who have posted with the comments.

Hmm.. I am leaning towards the X6 1055T and OC it to something like 3.6-3.8. I can spend the savings on a memory module.

I believe i7 920 is being phased out, so that may not be an option.

CUDA is important to me, from what I have read, it makes a big perceptible differences in CS5 encoding.

To quote user Demistate from dvxuser forum (not sure this is accurate)

"An Adobe engineer at NAB2010 told me that Premiere Pro's pipeline goes something like this:

File read ---> File is converted to RGB ---> scaled and rendered to screen --> Frame is served to encoder --> Encoder crunches it.

The Mercury engine accelerates the RGB conversion, scaled rendered to screen and served to encoder. While it doesn't accelerate the part where it gets crunched into h.264 or WMV, it does speed up your final encode since the GPU can do all three steps in parallel. It frees up more CPU for you to crunch those frames faster.

Mercury engine speeds up just about every aspect of your workflow except your DISK I/O and the actual crunching of the frame. But you will have more CPU to crunch frames so even that part should be faster (even if CUDA doesn't do the crunching)"

 

[SteveBlack]

The phenom also wins the: Adobe Photoshop CS4 - Retouch Artists Speed Test

quite interesting. I was going to guess the intel to win... its a good thing there are benchmarks

No the Intel wins it.

 

[taltamir]

No the Intel wins it.

oh, oops. that was "lower is better" test...