Maximum PC

Can you guys do me a favour and render a video for me and post how long it takes your current system to do it? Posting your systems specs would be helpful too.

To keep things standardized can you use Window Movie Maker and the "Wildlife.wmv" file that is preloaded in Windows 7. (Libraries\Videos\Sample Videos)

All I need you to do is open the file and then tell WMM to save it in the "For High Definition Display" format and record how long it takes to render.

I do a lot of video editing and this "real world" test will give me an indictaion of what are the better processors for this kind of task.

Thanks.

Unless you're using Windows Movie Maker to render the videos this really won't give you an accurate indication. Better to find reviews using the software that you actualy use to edit / render the videos.

Some programs perform better with more threads while others perform better with more CPU speed. You can see this by comparing the i7 3770K (8 threads @ 3.5GHz stock speed) & i7-3930K (12 threads @ 3.2GHz stock speed) using the link kleinkinstein supplied.

The benchmarks listed on that site are artificial benchmarks as is most of the comparisons that I've seen.

That's why I asked for a specific scenario.

Oh well.

Perhaps we can use the file you mentioned in the program that you use for the task... assuming of course that we have or can get the same program.

I use several depending on the level of complexity all the way from WMM to Adobe After Effects.

Using WMM would be a baseline for comparison.

Artificial benchmarks are useful for a ball park estimate of what the processor's media rendering capabilities are. Besides that, you're asking for a specific scenario (Windows Movie Maker, with whatever codec and settings Microsoft uses, with a movie that's already been processed). The time it takes to render a movie depends on a lot of factors, including what you're rendering in the first place.

I also don't see any rhyme or reason why you're asking for this. Are you planning on getting a new system?

Prelim results with the "Wildlife" file: Not the greatest hardware.

Opteron 3280 - 8 threads @ 2.4GHz (AM3+ CPU)
8GB DDR3-1333 11,11,11,27
Windows Movie Maker = 1 minute 10 seconds
Adobe Premiere Pro CS6 encoding to Blu-Ray 1080p 23.9fps MPEG2 30Mbit/s = 43 seconds

AMD Phenom II X6-1055t - 6 threads @ 3.15GHz (AM3 CPU)
8GB DDR3-1800 9,9,9,24
Windows Movie Maker = 24 seconds

Wouldn't make a lot of difference over the 1055t in this particular test, but on a 45 minute 1080i video encoded to Blu-Ray it would definitely make a huge difference

Thanks.

It's interesting to see the balance needed between # of cores and the GHz they run at.

I have a four core CPU @ the same 2.4GHz and it renders the same video in 1 minute 30 seconds.

Just for an equal IPC comparison, I disabled 1 core per FP on my Opteron so that it's now operating at 1 core per 1 FP instead of 2 cores per 1 FP then re-ran the test. Time with 4 threads @ 2.4GHz = 1 minutes 35 seconds. If you're only doing 1min 30sec on your current rig, any current generation i5 or i7 will be one hell of an upgrade for you. Even the 'low end' i5-3350 should match or beat my overclocked 1055t.

Thought I'd also share the results from the new processor...
27.5 seconds
i7-3930K @ 4Ghz
Movie Maker only averaged 43% CPU usage & only used 9 of the 12 threads on the 3930k, but on the Phenom it's averaging 93% CPU usage & using all 6 available cores, so in theory, with 100% utilizaiton of all 12 cores on the 3930k??? 12 seconds???

Just reinstalled Premier Pro CS6 & ran that again with the Default MPEG2 Blu-Ray setting in Premier Pro CS6:
Previous run: Adobe Premiere Pro CS6 encoding to Blu-Ray 1080p 23.9fps MPEG2 30Mbit/s = 43 seconds on the Opteron 3280 8-threads @ 2.4GHz.
This run: Adobe Premiere Pro CS6 encoding to Blu-Ray 1080p 23.9fps MPEG2 30Mbit/s = 9.6 seconds on the 3930K 12-threads @ 4.4GHz 100% CPU usage.

So do you think that the 3930K's cores are more efficient than the Phenom's so they end up not needing 100% to do the rendering? Or is something else at play?

Considering the 3930K took longer, don't think it's efficiency related, but any thoughts I might have towards that end would be pure speculation. However, if I were in a speculating mood, I might speculate that Microsoft Movie Maker a) doesn't scale well past 6 cores b) has issues with X79 chipset or LGA 2011 processors c)disk access speed to low to utilize more than 8 cores effectively.

I can check out two of those: first I can setup a RAM drive for the file save to eliminate any possible write speed limitation. If that doesn't let Movie Maker run on all 12 cores, then I can disable HT so that there's only 6 cores for Microsoft Movie Maker to use & see if I then get similar results to the 1055t. If the first doesn't work & the second does then the issue is with Movie Maker itself i.e. poor scaling as core count increases. If neither works, then its likely a communication problem between Movie Maker & chipset or CPU, maybe a previously undetected bug in any of the 3.

I appreciate the thought but don't go to that kind of trouble for this.

For a comparison I ran the same test on my brother's 8 core AMD 8120 and the higest any of the cores got was around 85%. But all 8 were being used.

Did some playing around anyway due to curiosity... Save to ram drive got all 12 threads going, but still at only about 43% utilization. Dropping Hyper Threading actually resulted in a faster time of 24.7 seconds and an average utilization of about 72%.

If it wasn't for the blazing performance & 100% utilization for the entire clip render in Premier Pro, I might think that there's a driver conflict somewhere, & that could still be the case, but right now, it kind of makes it look like some sort of conflict between Movie Maker & the hardware.

Thanks.