4 ms·

Intel has the fastest processors but it doesn't have the best value for the money, in the entry level and mid level consumer market (sub-$300 range). Concrete

by mrb 10y ago

Intel has the fastest processors but it doesn't have the best value for the money, in the entry level and mid level consumer market (sub-$300 range). Concrete example: I recently built a Linux video transcoding machine to reencode H.264 BluRay movies to smaller H.264 files [1]. A $110 AMD FX-8300 is able to reencode an average BluRay movie around 47-50 fps, while you would need to spend more than twice that amount of money to match this performance with Intel (the performance of the FX-8300 at this tasks falls between a $200 Intel i5-4590 and a $250 Xeon E3-1231 v3). [1] Using: avconv -i input.mkv -threads auto -s hd720 -c:v libx264 -c:a libmp3lame -sn -b:v 1400k -b:a 128k -ac 2 output.mkv

tracker1 10y ago
There's also the power cost, depending on how much you're running that... went from an 8350 to an i7-4790K early last year, the power cost difference is pretty significant.
- Symmetry 10y ago
  Even if the AMD chip runs 100 watts hotter and you're encoding constantly all year that's still only $100, small compared to the chip price difference. In datacenters where you have to think about density, cooling, etc then power efficiency gets more important but not so much for consumers except in terms of fan noise.
  - tracker1 10y ago
    But over two years, what would the extra $200 get you in terms of CPU options?
    - bubuga 10y ago
      > But over two years, what would the extra $200 get you in terms of CPU options? It gets you to do the math. The $100 estimate was based on a scenario where the AMD product ran 100W hotter and ran all year long with a heavy workload. In reality, the comparable offer from Intel runs only 10W hotter, and a normal workload, at best, only costs some cents per year. After all those years saving money going with the best and cheaper offering from AMD, the money you save gets you more cash to upgrade your computer. Because economic matter.
cm2187 10y ago
But with quicksync you can probably get a multiple of that.
- vetinari 10y ago
  Quicksync is fine for real-time communication or streaming, not for files where you want maximal visual quality with minimal bits used.
  - cm2187 10y ago
    It has this bad reputation but in my experience it gives a very decent quality. I may not have stretched the compression ratio too. But at the age of 8TB consumer hard drives...
    - jsmthrowaway 10y ago
      It gives a completely and quantifiably awful quality for storage, archival, and typical media center purposes. Transcoding at high efficiency is not what Quick Sync is for. It is for streaming, where it is quite fine. This is known. I'm not repeating cargo cult science; I benchmarked it because I didn't believe it either (which is good! be suspicious!) and it would have been quite handy for a startup I was developing. But alas. Looks like dogshit or costs too many bits. Be careful not to confuse "looks fine to me" with quantifiable.
      - cm2187 10y ago
        I guess people have different degrees of tolerance. But I am looking at anandtech's samples: http://www.anandtech.com/show/7007/intels-haswell-an-htpc-perspective/8 http://www.anandtech.com/show/7007/intels-haswell-an-htpc-pe... and I honestly can't see the difference between the QuickSync and regular H264 samples. I am sure there are some tiny subtleties that I miss and perhaps my screen is not good enough to render the difference, but if we are talking about that level of degradation, and unless you are really a purist, the 10x performance gain is really worth it.

by mrb 10y ago

tracker1 10y ago

There's also the power cost, depending on how much you're running that... went from an 8350 to an i7-4790K early last year, the power cost difference is pretty significant.

Symmetry 10y ago
Even if the AMD chip runs 100 watts hotter and you're encoding constantly all year that's still only $100, small compared to the chip price difference. In datacenters where you have to think about density, cooling, etc then power efficiency gets more important but not so much for consumers except in terms of fan noise.
- tracker1 10y ago
  But over two years, what would the extra $200 get you in terms of CPU options?
  - bubuga 10y ago
    > But over two years, what would the extra $200 get you in terms of CPU options? It gets you to do the math. The $100 estimate was based on a scenario where the AMD product ran 100W hotter and ran all year long with a heavy workload. In reality, the comparable offer from Intel runs only 10W hotter, and a normal workload, at best, only costs some cents per year. After all those years saving money going with the best and cheaper offering from AMD, the money you save gets you more cash to upgrade your computer. Because economic matter.

cm2187 10y ago

But with quicksync you can probably get a multiple of that.

vetinari 10y ago
Quicksync is fine for real-time communication or streaming, not for files where you want maximal visual quality with minimal bits used.
- cm2187 10y ago
  It has this bad reputation but in my experience it gives a very decent quality. I may not have stretched the compression ratio too. But at the age of 8TB consumer hard drives...
  - jsmthrowaway 10y ago
    It gives a completely and quantifiably awful quality for storage, archival, and typical media center purposes. Transcoding at high efficiency is not what Quick Sync is for. It is for streaming, where it is quite fine. This is known. I'm not repeating cargo cult science; I benchmarked it because I didn't believe it either (which is good! be suspicious!) and it would have been quite handy for a startup I was developing. But alas. Looks like dogshit or costs too many bits. Be careful not to confuse "looks fine to me" with quantifiable.
    - cm2187 10y ago
      I guess people have different degrees of tolerance. But I am looking at anandtech's samples: http://www.anandtech.com/show/7007/intels-haswell-an-htpc-perspective/8 http://www.anandtech.com/show/7007/intels-haswell-an-htpc-pe... and I honestly can't see the difference between the QuickSync and regular H264 samples. I am sure there are some tiny subtleties that I miss and perhaps my screen is not good enough to render the difference, but if we are talking about that level of degradation, and unless you are really a purist, the 10x performance gain is really worth it.