[THG]Core i7-4770K: Haswell's Performance-Previewed

[TheRyuu]

I could have sworn video processing was floating point intensive... hence the speedup from OpenCL.

They're nearly entirely integer. This is why AVX wasn't as useful as it could have been (had it included what we now know as AVX2). The three operand calling convention of AVX did help (although only on Intel processors I believe).

Video encoding is almost all integer. The speedup from GPU usage is due to the amount of parallel computations that are available.

Also note that all current implementations of non-CPU encoding sacrifice a lot of quality in order to accommodate GPU architectures.

The most logical thing to offload to the GPU would be motion compensation. Stuff like CABAC encoding is inherently single threaded and not suited to GPU's, so you'll never have an encoder which will run entirely on the GPU.

GPU's are very good at doing vast number of things in parallel (thousands of threads) so even trying to offload the motion compensation you run into the problem of simply not being able to use the GPU's resources in a way which would make it worth offloading in the first place.

 

[OneOfTheseDays]

I'm not sure why anyone expected Haswell to be a performance beast. The name of the game here is power consumption. This is all about the mobile space and getting mass adoption of ultrabooks and tablets.

 

[njdevilsfan87]

Looks like my 2700k is in for the long haul. Haswell isn't bad, but it isn't nearly enough to get me upgrading, unless it does something crazy like 5.5ghz regularly.

 

[buklau]

If these can clock easily to 5ghz on air cooling, then I'll get one.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

5Ghz on air won't sound nearly as cool as when SB did it.

 

[Piroko]

The most logical thing to offload to the GPU would be motion compensation. Stuff like CABAC encoding is inherently single threaded and not suited to GPU's, so you'll never have an encoder which will run entirely on the GPU.

GPU's are very good at doing vast number of things in parallel (thousands of threads) so even trying to offload the motion compensation you run into the problem of simply not being able to use the GPU's resources in a way which would make it worth offloading in the first place.

You could add fixed function hardware though to deal with Cabac. Modern GPUs have a lot of fixed function blocks added to them already, there is little reason to not go that path. This may also be wanted to speed up the upcoming HEVC to acceptable levels.

HEVC in general might see even more hardware encoding/decoding which will in turn make AVX2 a bit less important. I noticed that a lot of software is trying to move away from single thread high dependency algorithms in favor of higher throughput ones. A few years ago general consensus was that many workloads were not suited for parallelisation, but those workloads seem to get altered to the point where parallelization is feasible.

 

[itsmydamnation]

5Ghz on air won't sound nearly as cool as when SB did it.

if it can hit 5.0 to 5.2ghz on good air then with the IPC and core width upgrades for someone like me on a Nelahem based I7 then it actually becomes a good solid worthwhile upgrade. somewhere around 40-45% single thread perf.

 

[Idontcare]

If these can clock easily to 5ghz on air cooling, then I'll get one.

I doubt there will be anything easy about getting to 5GHz on Haswell.

Considering where the priority lies with Haswell, all about scaling to low-power, if anything I'll be amazed if Haswell is capable of OC'ing as high as IB does (which itself is lackluster in light of SB OC'ing).

 

[Pilum]

Not necessarily. Video transcoding can be done in int and float format, the common denominator being that it's low precision (for higher performance). Float might even be better for the job iirc, but don't nail me on it.

One of the x264 developers stated that they will not support AVX1 because it's useless for their purposes. They have startet work on adding support for AVX2. Case closed?

Of course there may be other encoders which do use FP, but given that x264 basically is the CPU encoder, I think that wouldn't matter much.

 

[Pilum]

I could have sworn video processing was floating point intensive... hence the speedup from OpenCL.

Completely unrelated. OpenCL is a parallel programming language which happens to run on GPUs as well as CPUs, that's all. It handles all kinds of data types, including integers, booleans, etc.

 

[TidusZ]

The last release to get excited about was sandybridge... I wish I had of known that and got a 2500k way back then instead of waiting for ivy bridge, but at least I don't regret not waiting for haswell.


I've never bought a laptop, smartphone, tablet, etc and I will not buy a new processor until they design something significant instead of focusing on power savings. It's sad to see computers being held back by these shitty mobile computing devices that I couldn't care less about.

Maybe in 10 years I'll buy a new desktop and it will be twice as fast as my current and I'll save $15/year on my power bill. yep

 

[Pilum]

Even the OpenCL handbrake?

I haven't tried it, I downloaded it though

Er, this one? Seems to be pretty much useless for what I imagine Handbrake is mainly used for: transcoding DVD/Bluray to single files for your home network.

OpenCL is used for: decoding... but not for DVD/Bluray.
OpenCL is used for: Cropping/Scaling... but how often do you use that when transcoding movies?

The only interesting thing is x264 lookahead acceleration, which is "Maybe Coming in the Future".

Let's hope for decent AVX2 support, maybe that'll turn out to be actually useful.

 

[Piroko]

One of the x264 developers stated that they will not support AVX1 because it's useless for their purposes. They have startet work on adding support for AVX2. Case closed?

Probably the lead developer, a bit of an odd person imho. Still, current desktop CPUs have more integer resources than fp, so I'd think his decision is based on well educated guesses of expected performance.

 

[vampirr]

Haswell... If Intel still sticks with Core2Duo based architecture and just keep tweaking everytime they hit the goddamn wall and always shrinking it down and being slackers...

More and more people are going to Linux(Ubuntu, etc...), AMD's processors beat Intel considerably since its a really more modern processor. I am switching to Linux based OS'es thanks to Valve and Gabe Newell, get more frames on the same rig

AMD is behind in nm but with Steamroller the gap will be 6nm and I hope they decide to make a new socket to allow radical improvements...

 

[BallaTheFeared]

Haswell... If Intel still sticks with Core2Duo based architecture and just keep tweaking everytime they hit the goddamn wall and always shrinking it down and being slackers...

More and more people are going to Linux(Ubuntu, etc...), AMD's processors beat Intel considerably since its a really more modern processor. I am switching to Linux based OS'es thanks to Valve and Gabe Newell, get more frames on the same rig

AMD is behind in nm but with Steamroller the gap will be 6nm and I hope they decide to make a new socket to allow radical improvements...

Ok :thumbsup:

 

[samboy]

Looks like my 2700k is in for the long haul. Haswell isn't bad, but it isn't nearly enough to get me upgrading, unless it does something crazy like 5.5ghz regularly.

What he said........ (except with a 2600k)

 

[UNhooked]

So what's the general consensus? Upgrade from SB - maybe? Upgrade from IB - Not really?

 

[crashtech]

So what's the general consensus? Upgrade from SB - maybe? Upgrade from IB - Not really?

There isn't a consensus. Upgrade if you really want/need to, otherwise wait and see. From IB especially, the case does not look too compelling at all, yet.

 

[Grim281]

I am still debating whether or not I am upgrading from an i7 920 oc'd to 3.8

 

[Makaveli]

Ok :thumbsup:

lol that is what I was gonna say :whiste::whiste::whiste::whiste:

 

[pantsaregood]

Why is everyone so unimpressed with Haswell? It improves performance 10-15% in general situations, as expected, and when AVX2 is applicable, it happens to be very nice.

A leap forward like that of Pentium 4 to Core 2 isn't going to happen again any time soon. That wasn't even a particularly large leap forward - Athlon 64 and Core weren't very far behind Core 2, Pentium 4 and Pentium D (the names remembered from that era) just happened to be particularly unimpressive.

 

[Vesku]

Shame Intel won't be porting the design gains back to 32nm in a souped-up Sandybridge. Get the IPC improvements on a more OC friendly node, if only.

 

[scannall]

I am still debating whether or not I am upgrading from an i7 920 oc'd to 3.8

I have a 920 as well, at 4.0. My thought is that I will upgrade to Haswell while my 920 system still has some resale value.

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

My i7 920 4.xxGhz is still doing great with the UE3 engine. I've also considered upgrading but it seems like a folly move so far.

 

[crashtech]

Why is everyone so unimpressed with Haswell?

Because everyone has been chanting, "Wait for Haswell," and this has resulted in overly inflated expectations.