Discussion which desktop CPU is most computing effective on 65W

[greencpu]

Is there any CPU computing efficiency versus power consumption test tables? I can't find any.
I use Windows 10 and video editing, when single encoding task may take 5-15 hours, which itself isn't a problem.
When upgrading computer I'd choose a more contemporary CPU which doesn't require massive heating but still is computing effective.
Question might be which desktop CPU is most computing effective on 65W?
Is there any such comparison tests?

 

[KompuKare]

Is there any CPU computing efficiency versus power consumption test tables? I can't find any.
I use Windows 10 and video editing, when single encoding task may take 5-15 hours, which itself isn't a problem.
When upgrading computer I'd choose a more contemporary CPU which doesn't require massive heating but still is computing effective.
Question might be which desktop CPU is most computing effective on 65W?
Is there any such comparison tests?

Probably a Ryzen 7950X 3D with the TPU set down to 65W.

Techpowerup have the figures in their review but some of them are only in their chart:

AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D Review - Best of Both Worlds

The Ryzen 9 7950X3D is the spearhead of the AMD Zen 4 X3D lineup. In our performance review we test AMD's new 16-core flagship with dozens of applications and 14 games at up to 4K, to see whether AMD can take the performance crown from Intel, how power consumption is affected, and what can be...

www.techpowerup.com

and unlike the figures later the above have not been adjusted for performance.
If you are only interested in CineBench multi-threaded, those they do publish:

I actually took their numbers in and charted them but only against the 13900K and using a "how much power would Intel require for each test":

But if are only interested in a few metrics, you can easily take, for example, TPU's Media Encoding results and their power figures from the first chart:

AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D Review - Best of Both Worlds

The Ryzen 9 7950X3D is the spearhead of the AMD Zen 4 X3D lineup. In our performance review we test AMD's new 16-core flagship with dozens of applications and 14 games at up to 4K, to see whether AMD can take the performance crown from Intel, how power consumption is affected, and what can be...

www.techpowerup.com

Other sites have covered this too, but I suspect that Zen4 + 3D cache would be pretty unbeatable even though encoding is something Intel's E cores should be good at.

 

[Kocicak]

Here are the tests of power constrained CPUs, you can see, that both 7950X from AMD and 13900K from Intel are very efficient while power limited, I actually tested the 13900K limited to 65W which is included there, this limit is the true power the CPU was consuming.

Intel CPUs have the advantage of very low power consumption in light load.

Discussion - PES | Assessing Power and Performance Efficiency of x86 CPU architectures

Dear Community, so this is my first thread here as a long-time lurker - but I felt the desire to share a small hobby-project of mine from the last couple of months with you... Performance Efficiency Suite - What is it about? Most Reviewers solely focus on what they consider to be the most...

forums.anandtech.com

 

[greencpu]

Thanks it takes a while to understand how to measure and how to understand results.
I have always considered AMD a gamer CPU and I have been keen in Intel. Right now I have spare i7-11700 and i9 12900K.
And last cpu cooling requirements raised a question - do I really need a 230W CPU power for overnight h265 video encoding.
So I'm looking for most power/computing efficient CPU preferably from Intel.

 

[In2Photos]

Thanks it takes a while to understand how to measure and how to understand results.
I have always considered AMD a gamer CPU and I have been keen in Intel. Right now I have spare i7-11700 and i9 12900K.
And last cpu cooling requirements raised a question - do I really need a 230W CPU power for h265 video encoding.
So I'm looking for most power/computing efficient CPU preferably from Intel.

If you're limiting any CPU to 65W you can cool it with even a stock box cooler. But most high end CPUs won't come with one. Therefore, any decent air cooler would be fine.

 

[Heartbreaker]

Thanks it takes a while to understand how to measure and how to understand results.
I have always considered AMD a gamer CPU and I have been keen in Intel. Right now I have spare i7-11700 and i9 12900K.
And last cpu cooling requirements raised a question - do I really need a 230W CPU power for h265 video encoding.
So I'm looking for most power/computing efficient CPU preferably from Intel.

Then you want the largest amount of cores, and then power limit them.

For highly parallel tasks it's more efficient, to use more cores running at a lower clock rate, than fewer at higher clock rates.

But since you already have a i9-12900K. Just power limit that to something you are comfortable with.

 

[KompuKare]

I actually linked to the wrong page on the TPU review as the 7950X3D vs 13900K was the next page:

AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D Review - Best of Both Worlds

The Ryzen 9 7950X3D is the spearhead of the AMD Zen 4 X3D lineup. In our performance review we test AMD's new 16-core flagship with dozens of applications and 14 games at up to 4K, to see whether AMD can take the performance crown from Intel, how power consumption is affected, and what can be...

www.techpowerup.com

and the efficiency difference at H.265 was huge:

While the chart only has bars and no hard figures, I make that 95W vs 260W giving this ratio:

While think that even if the Intel was run at far more sane frequencies and power limits*, they would have a hard time matching the Ryzen.

@Kocicak does, of course, bring a very valid point. How a given CPU behaves when pushed to the limit can have little bearing on how it behaves when forced to run at 65W. However, looking at server workloads Intel are way way behind; if AMD had the volume and if server buyers weren't so conservative then from Intel's perf/watt perspective Intel's and AMD's server marketshare would be reversed with Intel on 20% and AMD on 80%.

On the other hand, why not just take @guidryp's suggestion: limit your i9-12900K in the BIOS to a hard 65W and be done with it.

* The irony, of course, is that Intel run their top i9 SKU so hard for pretty much only one reason: to appeal to gamers and to top the gaming charts even at tremendous cost in inefficiency. Intel had been the gamers choice pretty much from 2006 until Zen3 launched despite the OP's impression.

 

[Kocicak]

I believe that the integrated graphics UHD 770 in Intel CPUs can be used for significantly improving some video encoding, but I am not sure if it can help with the formats OP want to use.

 

[Markfw]

Thanks it takes a while to understand how to measure and how to understand results.
I have always considered AMD a gamer CPU and I have been keen in Intel. Right now I have spare i7-11700 and i9 12900K.
And last cpu cooling requirements raised a question - do I really need a 230W CPU power for overnight h265 video encoding.
So I'm looking for most power/computing efficient CPU preferably from Intel.

You won't get near as powerful or efficient cpu from Intel at 65 watts. AMD 7000 series can all be set to 65 watt, and at that level, even if you set the Intel to 65 watts, you will have a more powerful cpu for what you want to do. With a name like greencpu, AMD is the only way to go.

Here is a comparison of the 7950x at 65 watts compared to your 12900k at 230 watts.

 

[greencpu]

Thanks sharing your thoughts.
When CPU's silicon wafer gets thinner and less power consumption expected with each generation I expected significant CPU computing effectiveness increase at same power consumption. When I obtained i9-12900K into my possession and realized it's cooling requirements, it was shocked. I understand 230W real time virtual world rotating on screen but not 230W h265 video conversion.
65W is just a symbol, as many Intel CPU specification states this number.
I expected more computing efficiency with each new CPU generation stating this 65W

 

[TheELF]

With the 13900k locked at 65W the 7950x is about 12% more efficient, both at 142W makes it 13% more efficient.
But if you will use your PC at lower loads as well then the 7950x uses about 18% more in idle and 11% more in single core.

Core i9-13900K, i7-13700K & i5-13600K: Gaming-Könige im Test: Leistungsaufnahme und Effizienz

Intel Raptor Lake im Test: Leistungsaufnahme und Effizienz / Leistungsaufnahme in Anwendungen ab Werk / Der Verbrauch steigt

www.computerbase.de

 

[greencpu]

Quite impressive table below: AMD 95W against Intel 260W.
I abandoned AMD some 25 years ago, when there was floating point computing error, which caused wrong sum on customer Excel created invoice and a box of "burnt" AMD CPU's when more popular Intel CPU "burnt" box remained empty. As AMD still exists 25 years later I understand that things must have changed a lot.
Nowadays AMD buyers I have met are all gamers but Intel ratio 259% against AMD 100% is remarkable.

 

[Markfw]

Quite impressive table below: AMD 95W against Intel 260W.
I abandoned AMD some 25 years ago, when there was floating point computing error, which caused wrong sum on customer Excel created invoice and a box of "burnt" AMD CPU's when more popular Intel CPU "burnt" box remained empty. As AMD still exists 25 years later I understand that things must have changed a lot.
Nowadays AMD buyers I have met are all gamers but Intel ratio 259% against AMD 100% is remarkable.

To be honest though, you can "down-watt" both to 65 watts, but at that wattage AMD will still be faster.

 

[Heartbreaker]

Is there any CPU computing efficiency versus power consumption test tables? I can't find any.
I use Windows 10 and video editing, when single encoding task may take 5-15 hours, which itself isn't a problem.
When upgrading computer I'd choose a more contemporary CPU which doesn't require massive heating but still is computing effective.
Question might be which desktop CPU is most computing effective on 65W?
Is there any such comparison tests?

It seems so wasteful to waste CPU cycles on Video encoding. Dedicated HW should be the way to go for Video Encoding.

It's too bad Quick Sync doesn't do a better job at H265. It's extremely fast and sips power.

But there is no real setting to encode slower and better quality.

I wonder if NVENC is much better.

 

[mmaenpaa]

I am not sure how relevant h.264 encoding figures are to h.265 encoding.

But at least in this Anandtech article on h.264 encoding @65W 7950X is about 40% faster than 13900k

Core i9-13900K & Ryzen 9 7950X Scaling Performance: CPU Short Form - A Lighter Touch: Exploring CPU Power Scaling On Core i9-13900K and Ryzen 9 7950X (anandtech.com)

	13900k	7950x	7950X faster %
1080p	167,1	235,4	40,87373
4K	43,6	61,3	40,59633

 

[greencpu]

AMD is excellent to get maximum.
Ryzen 9 7950X and Intel i9-12900K both require impressive cooling for system max performance.
I received this i9 occasionally and only later get alerted it's power/cooling requirements mismatch with my purposes.
In fact I'd be happy staying 20-30% below max performance CPU's and actually I thought that there might be somewhere in a mid scale a best performance vs power usage break point.
I'd guess that when doing the same task with same time some CPU's may consume significantly more power. (If not compensated with newer CPU better power managment between cores etc..)
I understand that it's impossible to measure exactly applications speed and there is no exact numbers.
But when wafer gets thinner it should consume less power, is this benefit just used to add more transistors (cores) to achieve more CPU power?
And this CPU design process is always linear without any glitches?
CPU lower voltage could make possible to design CPU's for less power consumption.
Where there exist laptop CPU's these are designed to sacrifice CPU performance versus battery consumption.

 

[Markfw]

AMD is excellent to get maximum.
Ryzen 9 7950X and Intel i9-12900K both require impressive cooling for system max performance.
I received this i9 occasionally and only later get alerted it's power/cooling requirements mismatch with my purposes.
In fact I'd be happy staying 20-30% below max performance CPU's and actually I thought that there might be somewhere in a mid scale a best performance vs power usage break point.
I'd guess that when doing the same task with same time some CPU's may consume significantly more power. (If not compensated with newer CPU better power managment between cores etc..)
I understand that it's impossible to measure exactly applications speed and there is no exact numbers.
But when wafer gets thinner it should consume less power, is this benefit just used to add more transistors (cores) to achieve more CPU power?
And this CPU design process is always linear without any glitches?
CPU lower voltage could make possible to design CPU's for less power consumption.
Where there exist laptop CPU's these are designed to sacrifice CPU performance versus battery consumption.

Maybe I am not clear.... With a 65 watt 7950x (after setting it to ECO mode) you don't need more than a $30 cooler, maybe $40.

 

[greencpu]

Thanks for pointing clearly this AMD 65W option.
I put Ryzen 9 7950X onto my wishlist.
Ryzen 9 7950X looks a great option except (approx €600) price tag and also it doesn't feel reasonable to build system with under dimensioned cooler and heatsink, as I have micro ATX case with some self made extras, which I don't want to abandon. And despite this, I have 2 Intel B660 mobos.

 

[Markfw]

Thanks for pointing clearly this AMD 65W option.
I put Ryzen 9 7950X onto my wishlist.
Ryzen 9 7950X looks a great option except (approx €600) price tag and also it doesn't feel reasonable to build system with under dimensioned cooler and heatsink, as I have micro ATX case with some self made extras, which I don't want to abandon. And despite this, I have 2 Intel B660 mobos.

This cooler works on all my 7950x's and they are set to 142 watt ECO, so you need less. But I got the first one for $50 ! And there are a lot of $30-$40 coolers that will work just fine at 65 watt ECO mode.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09CSXS3X4?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details

This one for $35 says 220 watt, but I would not use that at over 150 watt, but just to give you and idea

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09PCWK7SP?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details&th=1

 

[VirtualLarry]

Keep whatever CPU, and get an ARC 380 GPU for $129 from ASRock, and encode / transcode to AV1?

 

[TheELF]

Keep whatever CPU, and get an ARC 380 GPU for $129 from ASRock, and encode / transcode to AV1?

His 12th and 11th gen iGPUs already supports HEVC (h265) encoding in hardware as well as in shaders.

Media Capabilities Supported by Intel Hardware

Learn about media capabilities of various generations of Intel hardware.

www.intel.com

 

[Geegeeoh]

It seems so wasteful to waste CPU cycles on Video encoding. Dedicated HW should be the way to go for Video Encoding.

It's too bad Quick Sync doesn't do a better job at H265. It's extremely fast and sips power.

But there is no real setting to encode slower and better quality.

I wonder if NVENC is much better.

Dedicate HW doesn't come close to CPU in terms of quality/bitrate.
So if you care about storage, you have to go with CPU encoding.

 

[Just Benching]

Is there any CPU computing efficiency versus power consumption test tables? I can't find any.
I use Windows 10 and video editing, when single encoding task may take 5-15 hours, which itself isn't a problem.
When upgrading computer I'd choose a more contemporary CPU which doesn't require massive heating but still is computing effective.
Question might be which desktop CPU is most computing effective on 65W?
Is there any such comparison tests?

The 7950x is more efficient at heavy hour long MultiThreading tasks,but they suck at mixed workloads. If your tasks are using the cpu at 100% utilization, zen 4 is better. If they don't, Intel is better

 

[mmaenpaa]

The 7950x is more efficient at heavy hour long MultiThreading tasks,but they suck at mixed workloads. If your tasks are using the cpu at 100% utilization, zen 4 is better. If they don't, Intel is better

I find this "suck at mixed workloads" very interesting. Do you mean they are *way* slower or *way* less efficient at mixed workloads? Can you give an example where 7950x sucks compared to 13900K?

 

[Just Benching]

I find this "suck at mixed workloads" very interesting. Do you mean they are *way* slower or *way* less efficient at mixed workloads? Can you give an example where 7950x sucks compared to 13900K?

Well if you set them at same wattage they will be much slower therefore much less efficient.

Examples? Sure, browsing the internet while working on excel sheets with some videos playing on the back, Intel does that at 8 to 15w, amd takes 50.

The whole Adobe suite, like premiere photoshop and the likes, those tasks use 3 to 6 cores roundabout, and there Intel is king in efficiency. Technotice, a YouTube channel that specifically makes videos testing tasks for content creators made a comparison video, Intel wiped the floor with amd in those tasks.

Basically, anything that doesn't max out your cores - even idle - Intel >>> amd.