
Most of the transcoding apps in our benchmark suite are pure measures of CPU performance, optimized for threading though they may be. MainConcept 2.0 consequently fails to give us anything interesting to look at.
Now, you’re probably wondering why we didn’t just throw in some Quick Sync-enabled software to put up against Nvidia’s CUDA-accelerated card. Unfortunately, although Intel claims that its Xeon E3 parts feature full Quick Sync support, we couldn’t get the feature working. We gave the latest version of CyberLink’s MediaEspresso 6.5 a shot and discovered that only hardware-accelerated decode works. The encode functionality isn’t recognized at all.
The result isn’t terrible—our transcode job finishes in 38 second instead of the 22 seconds we saw in our Sandy Bridge review (and that’s still better than CUDA- or APP-accelerated GPU-based alternatives). However, it’s fair to say that if you’re going to be doing transcode work, the Core i7-2600K’s desktop-oriented feature set is currently better-supported than Xeon’s more professional list of capabilities.

HandBrake is similarly CPU-constrained, and shows all three configurations performing similarly.

Per Wikipedia: “In cinematography, match moving is a visual-effects technique that allows the insertion of computer graphics into live-action footage with correct position, scale, orientation, and motion relative to the photographed objects in the shot. The term is used loosely to refer to several different ways of extracting motion information from a motion picture, particularly camera movement. Match moving is related to rotoscoping and photogrammetry. It is sometimes referred to as motion tracking.”
The first step in match moving is identifying and tracking features—and that’s what our MatchMover 2011 benchmark does, using custom footage taken by Jon Carroll on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame.
We’ve established that this app is lightly threaded, if at all. It really seems to like the Sandy Bridge architecture, though. Compare the above graph to the one in Intel Xeon 5600-Series: Can Your PC Use 24 Processors?, where a 2P Xeon 5600-based setup takes more than seven minutes to complete the same task.
- Intel's Xeon E3 Processors Look Familiar
- Intel’s Xeon E3-1200-Series Family
- Platforms: The C200 Chipsets
- Graphics: Meet HD Graphics P3000
- Test Setup And Benchmarks
- Benchmark Results: SPECapc And SPECopc Testing
- Benchmark Results: Adobe CS5 Suite
- Benchmark Results: Media
- Benchmark Results: Rendering
- Benchmark Results: Productivity
- Power Consumption
- Conclusion
Sandy Bridge-E, LGA 2011 X79, Q4 2011.
I've worked with many small businesses, and every one that used a desktop chip for a server or a discount chip (Celeron, Duron, etc) for their desktop computers all performed very poorly. Some seemed to hang on by the sheer will of the owner, and in a couple cases, when the owner got sick for more than a week, the businesses folded like lawn chairs.
I've also seen an Engineering shop of ~30 engineers invest nicely into a real server and real workstations, and had me set up their entire network with SBS. their business ramped up so fast and well that they had to hire several more engineers and outgrew SBS (limited to 50 users at the time) within the next 2 years, and I had to go back and rebuild their domain with full enterprise level software, and add another server specifically for email. the owner said the investment in that SBS system was the best thing he'd invested in the business since he hired his first engineer.
Business owners who do not invest in their IT infrastructure fail at business. It's pretty plain and simple. While investing in good IT gear and software doesn't mean you'll ramp up your business to unheard of heights, it does give you a major leg up on the competition.
Thats a very bold statement, not all companies require top of the range computer equipment
I think you're wrong. I spend most of my day at work making and compiling code. For me the HD graphics work really well and getting anything more powerful than that, as evidenced from the tests, would be a waste of money. I also don't think I'm in the 10% group.
Are you going to do a follow-up to compare to current Xeons?
how many folks compile codes the size of which require a Xeon? im pretty sure your in the 10% group, IMHO for the majority of cases if your not pairing the Xeon with a discreet GFX card then chances are Xeon would be overkill
Geek,
Intel says the Xeons support Quick Sync (at least that's the case on the ark.intel.com site). However, I suspect that current apps do not recognize the Xeons, and consequently cannot yet take advantage of the hardware. Perhaps it'll be enabled in upcoming app revisions. Until then, I still recommend the desktop CPUs if Quick Sync is important to you.
Chris
Then the market will get more interesting, to be sure! We still need to see them do this on the desktop, though. I'd be surprised if they didn't end up releasing a FirePro-branded integrated solution at some point!
You're very welcome Huron, and thanks for the feedback.
Which Xeons would you like to see compared? And in which workloads? I'm happy to field ideas on this if it's something you can use!
Best,
Chris
LGA1155
LGA1156
LGA1366
LGA2011
LGA1356