Quote: The most CPU intensive part when video editing has typically been the rendering process. Eugene

In my experience, the CPU speed has to match the GPU one, to be able to "feed" it the required data fast enough. If the CPU is slow, the GPU will not be used at 100%, it will "wait" for the CPU data.
There is some other processing going on, besides the pure video encoding, and those tasks are done by CPU, so yes a faster CPU will help if you do anything else but encoding... Transitions, effects, stuff like that.

Theoretically PassMark score for i7-920 is 5000. For W3690 is 9700. A new Slylake i7-6700 will yield a score of 9950 for a lot more money.

Quote: I'm still researching and now SoNic67 has added another possibility that you might also be interested in. I certainly am.

Hmm, not sure. Golftown is identical with Nehalem (i7-920), except that was build with smaller, more efficent transistors. That's why Intel where able to keep the power requirements the same when they increased the cores count and frequency.
BTW W3690 is Gulftown too (32nm versus 45nm) and it's a good, safe one. The only difference is that the X ones can be used in a dual CPU system too, W ones cannot. It's like $250 on eBay, much cheaper that replacing the whole platform. Add a GTX960 and you are done.

PS: Stepping is not important, it is an Intel internal code for the masks that they used on a certain CPU.

SoNic67

QUOTE:

In my experience, the CPU speed has to match the GPU one, to be able to "feed" it the required data fast enough. If the CPU is slow, the GPU will not be used at 100%, it will "wait" for the CPU data.



...................

How can that be if CPU usage is 30% ??

................

Quote:
There is some other processing going on, besides the pure video encoding, and those tasks are done by CPU, so yes a faster CPU will help if you do anything else but encoding... Transitions, effects, stuff

..................



Again under normal use, especially 4K, shadow files are used, they are SD. Again I see no pressing need, any i7 920 etc will do fine with power to spare.

When editing I am the bottleneck not the CPU.



Eugene 73s, WA6JZN ex DL9GC
CYBERLINK PLEASE ADD UHD BLU RAY BURNING SOFTWARE
PD14,
Win10,64bit.CPU i7 6700,16GB ,C= 480 GB SSD ,GPU GTX1060 6GB 1 fan. Plus 3 int, 4 ext HDD's for video etc.LG WH16NS40 reads UHD.
4K 24" ViewSonic monitor.Camera Sony FDR-A

Quote: SoNic67

QUOTE:

In my experience, the CPU speed has to match the GPU one, to be able to "feed" it the required data fast enough. If the CPU is slow, the GPU will not be used at 100%, it will "wait" for the CPU data.



...................

How can that be if CPU usage is 30% ??

................

Quote:
There is some other processing going on, besides the pure video encoding, and those tasks are done by CPU, so yes a faster CPU will help if you do anything else but encoding... Transitions, effects, stuff

..................



Again under normal use, especially 4K, shadow files are used, they are SD. Again I see no pressing need, any i7 920 etc will do fine with power to spare.

When editing I am the bottleneck not the CPU.



Eugene

Drop 10 of the Kite Surfing.wmv into the timeline and Produce to your favorite 4K setting, post CPU load, GPU load, Elasped time and exact format and container used for a data point to see. Several others have 960's on a variety of CPU platforms, maybe we will see how they stack up.

Jeff

Thank you, Eugene & SoNic67, for helping me make up my mind. I have now ordered a Xeon W3690, 2GB Asus GTX 960, and Samsung 250GB 850 EVO SSD. All for GBP388.

It was the addition of the Xeon that did it. Yes, a new PC would have been nice, but I already have a nice PC in a Coolermaster Storm Sniper black case with 4xusb2/1xFirewire/1xeSata front ports, a Corsair HX750W PSU (that still has 1 yr left on the warranty), my Noctua CPU cooler, 12GB of RAM and 3TB storage over 4HDDs, plus my 24x DVD+/-RW drive. 6yrs ago I invested a great amount of time and research into building it out of individual hand-picked components. Why throw that out? There's still life in the old dog.

Eugene & SoNic67, you made very good points and I took note.

Hopefully it will all be here by this time next week. The part I'm not looking forward to is reinstalling all my software and tweaking it.

Desktop vs Laptop? Horses for courses.

TonyL Self build Xeon W3690, 12GB RAM, 850EVO SSD, Asus 2GB GTX960, Win10H 64bit, PD14
iMac 27" Retina 5K i5, 24GB RAM, Radeon M295X 4GB, Bootcamp Win10H 64bit

Quote: Thank you, Eugene & SoNic67, for helping me make up my mind. I have now ordered a Xeon W3690, 2GB Asus GTX 960, and Samsung 250GB 850 EVO SSD. All for GBP388.

Just make sure you update your MB BIOS to the version compatible with the W3690 before removing removing your current 920. If you have a older version of BIOS and don't do that, more often than not, you wont POST.

Jeff

I've been using laptops all my life, no desktops at all, and I think at least for me it is better to get a new laptop and to buy new desktop components as they are released. My laptops have been around a little more than $1000 with an i7 Processor and an Nvidia GTx50, the first was a 650, the other I have is dual 750 with SLI enabled. It works very great and can handle 4K files easily but it seems PD has issues so shadow files has to be enabled while other software handles those files perfectly. Rendering is pretty fast as well. I think for the money, a laptop is the best way to go. I think in a year or two I'll upgrade the current laptop when HEVC BD discs are released, that has been the only problem so far, that my hardware doesn't have HEVC hardware encoder so it's slow but it's manageable, not really that bad, I just do those renders at night. Main Machine: Jetway NF9G-QM77, Intel i7-3610QM, Nvidia Geforce GTX 1060 3GB, 128gb SSD, Windows 10 Pro
Secondary Machine: Lenovo Y510p, Intel i7-4700MQ 2.4Ghz, 2x nVidia GT750M, 500GB SSHD, Windows 10 Education
visit http://moisescardona.video

Thanks for your suggestion, Jeff, it's a fair point that I'd already checked out before purchase of the Xeon. I've been running with the applicable BIOS since 7 May, 2010.

Moises, whatever works best for anyone, whose to knock it. Thank heaven we don't all want the same thing. It would be a boring world. As I said, horses for courses.

TonyL Self build Xeon W3690, 12GB RAM, 850EVO SSD, Asus 2GB GTX960, Win10H 64bit, PD14
iMac 27" Retina 5K i5, 24GB RAM, Radeon M295X 4GB, Bootcamp Win10H 64bit

No way a laptop can match the performance of a desktop for the same money.
In my experience they will run hot, throttle down the CPU and GPU frequency to reduce the temperature, you pay for a screen that is ridiculously small, even at "full HD" you cannot really see everything clearly...
At $500-600 you can get a dual CPU (12/24HT cores) Xenon with 24GB of RAM plus SSD, HDD in raid (T7500 for example), plus a video card that is not crippled and is up-gradable in time. See here one example: http://www.ebay.com/itm/DELL-PRECISION-T7500-2x-XEON-X5650-2-66GHZ-SIX-CORE-CPUS-24GB-250GB-WIN-7-FX1800-/381373008473?hash=item58cb9a4a59:g:7ikAAOSwjVVV2MCR

Right now I'm even considering getting the new Surface Book, which has a Skylake CPU which means it has H265 HEVC hardware encoder, but the price is what is not letting me get it at the moment, waiting to see some competitors with similar or better specs at a better price (right now looking at the i7 version, 512GB and 16GB RAM)/

http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msusa/en_US/pdp/productID.325716000?icid=en_US_SurfaceBk_cat_modG_100615 Main Machine: Jetway NF9G-QM77, Intel i7-3610QM, Nvidia Geforce GTX 1060 3GB, 128gb SSD, Windows 10 Pro
Secondary Machine: Lenovo Y510p, Intel i7-4700MQ 2.4Ghz, 2x nVidia GT750M, 500GB SSHD, Windows 10 Education
visit http://moisescardona.video

Quote: wait a sec... who got the brand spanking new ASUS laptop with GTX 965M...

GGRussell!

how's your ASUS doing with PD14???

Haven't upgraded to PD14. Was using trial for awhile. The Asus still isn't as fast rendering video as my i7 4770k, but not that far behind.



Latest MSI GT72S Dominator Pro G-219

Intel Skylake Core i7-6820HK (2.7-3.6 GHz)

NVIDIA® GeForceTM GTX 980M (8.0GB) GDDR5 PCI-Express (Maxwell)

$2549US



I'm sure would work well as a video editor machine. Intel i7 4770k, 16GB, GTX1060 3GB, Two 240GB SSD, 4TB HD, Sony HDR-TD20V 3D camcorder, Sony SLT-A65VK for still images, Windows 10 Pro, 64bit
Gary Russell -- TN USA

Double post sorry. 73s, WA6JZN ex DL9GC
CYBERLINK PLEASE ADD UHD BLU RAY BURNING SOFTWARE
PD14,
Win10,64bit.CPU i7 6700,16GB ,C= 480 GB SSD ,GPU GTX1060 6GB 1 fan. Plus 3 int, 4 ext HDD's for video etc.LG WH16NS40 reads UHD.
4K 24" ViewSonic monitor.Camera Sony FDR-A

The encoding time test is a GREAT idea Jeff!! No guess work here and everybody can do the same exact test.

Using 10 ea kite surfing as suggested ,total length 1.42

Encoding 4K MKV 265 HEVC, 37 Mb, 30FPS. Encoding time 2.02 min, GPU video engine 80%, CPU 35% 6.3 GB memory used.Video 460MB


Play back MPC64, GPU 26%, CPU 6%.

-------------

Encoding to 4K 264 MP4, 49Mb, 30FPS encoding time 2.02 min, GPU video engine 43%, CPU 39%,4.6 GB memory, Video 626MB.


Play back MPC64, GPU 29%, CPU 6%

I was surprised to see the 960 GPU video engine running at 80% during HEVC encoding, not much room left there.
Encoding is almost in real time, video only no transitions etc.

My jaws are still on the floor when I look at these numbers in regard to HEVC. W/O the 960 it would have taken at least 1Hour 30 minutes to encode the same 1.42 min in PD14 HPQ mode.

Encoded video looks as good as the original.



Looking forward to see other forum members numbers.

Eugene 73s, WA6JZN ex DL9GC
CYBERLINK PLEASE ADD UHD BLU RAY BURNING SOFTWARE
PD14,
Win10,64bit.CPU i7 6700,16GB ,C= 480 GB SSD ,GPU GTX1060 6GB 1 fan. Plus 3 int, 4 ext HDD's for video etc.LG WH16NS40 reads UHD.
4K 24" ViewSonic monitor.Camera Sony FDR-A

Jeff & Eugene,

I'm sure it will be of interest to some here to see how their machines compare and I'd like to add my figures when I've done my new build, however, being a new boy here and new to PD I feel a little in the dark.

Jeff suggested, "Drop 10 of the Kite Surfing.wmv into the timeline and Produce to your favorite 4K setting, post CPU load, GPU load, Elasped time and exact format and container used for a data point to see".

I eventually realised that the .wmv is a PD sample clip (I don't show them). As yet I have no need to work in 4K (no 4K TV) therefore I don't have a favourite 4K setting - does this exclude me?. As to the performance figures, do you get them from PD or by some other means, and if by other means what, and is it freely available to anyone that wants to get involved?

I had a look at Passmark as the possible source of the figures but I'm not keen to pay for something I'll very rarely use. I see it has a free trial period of course.

Not sure what is meant by "for a data point to see", and is the purpose to compare hardware or 4K settings?

Sorry to complicate things but if you are asking for figures I think it helps if everyone is working to the same standards and understands what they are measuring.

TonyL Self build Xeon W3690, 12GB RAM, 850EVO SSD, Asus 2GB GTX960, Win10H 64bit, PD14
iMac 27" Retina 5K i5, 24GB RAM, Radeon M295X 4GB, Bootcamp Win10H 64bit

TonyL/others, the simple little test was suggested to Eugene as he was questioning the idea, how his CPU could be limiting the capability of his GTX960 GPU considering his CPU was only operating in the ~30% range during encoding. I simply suggested a 4K profile as that’s Eugene’s typical interest and it does present a significant challenge of elapsed wall time to encode.

Maybe this set of instructions will suffice:
1) Put 10 of the PD default media “Kite Surfing.wmv” into the timeline. If you don’t load PD default media modify your PD pref to load. Pref > Project.
2) In the PD “Produce” tab, set “Profile name” as H.265, MKV and default preset profile, HEVC 4K 4096 x 2160/30p (37Mbps)
3) In the PD “Produce” tab, set “Fast video rendering technology:” to enable “Hardware video encoder”
4) Start the Produce operation
5) Monitor GPU load of the GTX960 with free utility TechPowerUp GPU-Z, under sensor tab, the “Video Engine Load” ( https://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/SysInfo/GPU-Z/ )
6) Monitor CPU and RAM usage during the encode processes with default windows Task Manager
7) Items 5 and 6 are usually rather stable throughout the encoding process for this simple test provided if you don’t have significant “other” stuff running
8) When produce operation is complete, the “Time elapsed:” and “Produced” files size from the PD window.

Repeate above steps with item 2) of: H.264, MP4, MPEG-4 4K 4096 x 2160/30p (50Mbps)

Sample pic of results attached. From my experience what one will see is a reasonable separation of GTX960 capability, probably on the order of 50% difference or so for the exact same task on different computers.

Jeff

Great Jeff, thanks.

I wonder if this is worthy of a new thread?



Since this is about the evaluation of PC performance, it would be essential to use the same format and even formats that are not normally used by the owner. Without that the numbers would be of not much value.

4K HEVC MKV comes to mind because it is the most demanding, followed by 4K 264 XAVC.

It would be great to get some numbers from PC's w/o the 960 to see how much performance increase (if any) $200 can buy versus a faster CPU.

How about it PepsiMan,TonyL, SoNoc64,JL_JL, optodata just to name a few--------------

Jeff, I see that you joined this forum in 2006, that must have been the stone age of editing compared to today.



Eugene 73s, WA6JZN ex DL9GC
CYBERLINK PLEASE ADD UHD BLU RAY BURNING SOFTWARE
PD14,
Win10,64bit.CPU i7 6700,16GB ,C= 480 GB SSD ,GPU GTX1060 6GB 1 fan. Plus 3 int, 4 ext HDD's for video etc.LG WH16NS40 reads UHD.
4K 24" ViewSonic monitor.Camera Sony FDR-A

Quote: Great Jeff, thanks.

I wonder if this is worthy of a new thread?

Since this is about the evaluation of PC performance, it would be essential to use the same format and even formats that are not normally used by the owner. Without that the numbers would be of not much value.

4K HEVC MKV comes to mind because it is the most demanding, followed by 4K 264 XAVC.

It would be great to get some numbers from PC's w/o the 960 to see how much performance increase (if any) $200 can buy versus a faster CPU.

How about it PepsiMan,TonyL, SoNoc64,JL_JL, optodata just to name a few--------------

Jeff, I see that you joined this forum in 2006, that must have been the stone age of editing compared to today.

Eugene

hello, everyone.

since i've volunteered so here's my stats. PD 14Ultimate 14.0.2019.0 / nVidia 347.25 / 16 GB mem / AMD 8370E @3.8 GHZ

& two video cards -> GTX 750Ti 2GB / GTX960 2GB

1. GTX 750Ti AVC HA .MP4 @49Mb/sec


2. GTX 750Ti HEVC noHA .MP4 @50Mb/sec = forever young. fore ever yooooung!


3. GTX960 AVC HA .MP4 @49Mb/sec


4. GTX960 HEVC HA .MP4 @49Mb/sec

screen shot of MPC-HCx64 1.7.6.217 ffdShow 1.3.4533



5. GTX750 Ti AVC HA

6. GTX960 AVC HA

7. GTX960 HEVC HA



enjoy.

PepsiMan 'no bridge too far'

Yashica Electro 8 LD-6 Super 8mm
Asrock TaiChi X470, AMD R7 2700X, W7P 64, MSI GTX1060 6GB, Corsair 16GB/RAM
Dell XPS L702X i7-2860QM, W7P / W10P 64, Intel HD3000/nVidia GT 550M 1GB, Micron 16GB/RAM
Samsung Galaxy Note3/NX1

part 2.

4. GTX960 HEVC HA .MP4 @49Mb/sec



screen shot of MPC-HCx64 1.7.6.217 ffdShow 1.3.4533



5. GTX750 Ti AVC HA

6. GTX960 AVC HA

7. GTX960 HEVC HA



part 3.

coming right up.



PepsiMan 'no bridge too far'

Yashica Electro 8 LD-6 Super 8mm
Asrock TaiChi X470, AMD R7 2700X, W7P 64, MSI GTX1060 6GB, Corsair 16GB/RAM
Dell XPS L702X i7-2860QM, W7P / W10P 64, Intel HD3000/nVidia GT 550M 1GB, Micron 16GB/RAM
Samsung Galaxy Note3/NX1

part 3.

7. GTX960 HEVC HA



PepsiMan 'no bridge too far'

Yashica Electro 8 LD-6 Super 8mm
Asrock TaiChi X470, AMD R7 2700X, W7P 64, MSI GTX1060 6GB, Corsair 16GB/RAM
Dell XPS L702X i7-2860QM, W7P / W10P 64, Intel HD3000/nVidia GT 550M 1GB, Micron 16GB/RAM
Samsung Galaxy Note3/NX1

Quote: part 3.

7. GTX960 HEVC HA

PepsiMan

BLUF: bottom line up front

going from GTX 750Ti 2GB to GTX960 2GB - not much in producing AVC files.

only GTX960 drinks a lot of electricity, really!



GTX960 2GB shines in HEVC encoding!



PepsiMan

p.s.
i had to switch the video cards for this episode.

physical memory usage is what JL_JL said and identical to Eugene's numbers. 4.8GB to 6.4GB. 'no bridge too far'

Yashica Electro 8 LD-6 Super 8mm
Asrock TaiChi X470, AMD R7 2700X, W7P 64, MSI GTX1060 6GB, Corsair 16GB/RAM
Dell XPS L702X i7-2860QM, W7P / W10P 64, Intel HD3000/nVidia GT 550M 1GB, Micron 16GB/RAM
Samsung Galaxy Note3/NX1

PepsiMan, looks like you missed the part of Item 2), namely 37Mbps, not 49Mbps for H.265, just the default preset in MKV container for your GTX960.

Jeff

my bad. here's item no. 2.



GTX960 HEVC MKV HA 4096x2160 @37Mb/sec & screen shot of MPC-HC.



PepsiMan 'no bridge too far'

Yashica Electro 8 LD-6 Super 8mm
Asrock TaiChi X470, AMD R7 2700X, W7P 64, MSI GTX1060 6GB, Corsair 16GB/RAM
Dell XPS L702X i7-2860QM, W7P / W10P 64, Intel HD3000/nVidia GT 550M 1GB, Micron 16GB/RAM
Samsung Galaxy Note3/NX1