The particular page you reference is probably not real applicable to most editiors as they state: "In Cyberlink PowerDirector we export one project of 1 minute to 1080p H.264 video. In this test we enabled GPU acceleration that can help in rendering certain effects."

For GPU acceleration set in PD preferences to have a significant effect, one needs a timeline that utilizes accelerated effects. For most editors I'd think this is a very small part of an overall timeline duration. Their previous test of just CPU rendering is of some interest even though a Fx is still applied: "In Cyberlink PowerDirector we export one project of 1 minute to 1080p H.264 video. In this test all acceleration has been disabled." What Fx was applied affects performance as well and often causes the limiting performance effect in the chart.

If you plot those timed results as a function of CPU capability (I used Passmark.com results) you get the basic results that CPU encode performance is really just a function of CPU capability as shown in attached pic of their extensive CPU tests.

I had poised a very similar thread here: http://forum.cyberlink.com/forum/posts/list/49452.page#259960 as many forum contributors continually bashed a i5 for being week but it's really not the case. Some are, some are not, really depends on what CPU you purchase. PD CPU encode performance really just a function of CPU capability, be it AMD or Intel.

For PD editing experience, simply procure the highest CPU capability that's in your price point.

Jeff

"For PD editing experience, simply procure the highest CPU capability that's in your price point. "

Thanks, Jeff! That certainly boils many pages of forum posts down to one sentence and greatly simplifies the search for a good PD editing system. Regards,
Dan
Power Director 21-Ultimate
v 21.0.3111.0
XPS-8940, Win-10 64-bit,
Intel Core i9-10900 processor
(10 core, 20M Cache),
32GB DDR4 RAM, 2TB M.2 PCIe NVME SSD, 2TB 7200 RPM SATA HDD,
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER 8GB GDDR6

That is a very interesting graph showing large diminishing returns in encode times for passmark cpu ratings between 14000 and 16000. The intel xeons are the best here: http://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html . Thank you Jeff for posting the graph.

Quote: That is a very interesting graph showing large dimishing returns in encode times for passmark cpu ratings between 14000 and 16000. The intel xeons are the best here: http://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html . Thank you Jeff for posting the graph.

Don't read that into the chart, as mentioned, the graph has a limiting performance because there test still has an FX applied. It then becomes not a real measure of CPU encode performance but a measure of the Fx code efficiency, and every effect in PD is vastly different.

Jeff

I definitely see that, at some point, the CPU or GPU are fast enough that something else in the system becomes the bottleneck.

I suspect that, at that time, some latencies in processing become visible and for really fast CPU or GPU, PD is not able to use them anymore at 100%.

Quote: I definitely see that, at some point, the CPU or GPU are fast enough that something else in the system becomes the bottleneck.

I suspect that, at that time, some latencies in processing become visible and for really fast CPU or GPU, PD is not able to use them anymore at 100%.

In this case they said the output profile was 1080p, very basic. As such, any box with a Passmark CPU rating of 16000 can CPU encode much faster than a 60sec timeline in 70sec, that's not even 1:1. Any box of that capability can easily do 2-3x realtime. Hence the wrong conclusion to draw from the graph, it's simply FX limited in it's throughput. Use a different FX, get a different result. Use no FX, one will get a much straighter line.

I think the real point of there testing was to compare iGPU hardware acceleration between Intel and AMD for the two test scores they compiled. Not hardware encoding, just hardware acceleration. As such, one can really only do that test comparison with a accelerated FX timeline.

Jeff

Thanks Jeff
Re: "I had poised a very similar thread here: http://forum.cyberlink.com/forum/posts/list/49452.page#259960 as many forum contributors continually bashed a i5 for being week but it's really not the case. Some are, some are not, really depends on what CPU you purchase. PD CPU encode performance really just a function of CPU capability, be it AMD or Intel. "

I've been considering upgrading my i5 4690 which I've had since I started with PDR12. I've added an SSD, 16gb ram, and moved to Win 10. Most of my editing is HD and I use Magic+PD for 4k realtime editing. No GPU card only Intel Graphics.
Works fine for me. Smooth editing and reasonable render times. More power won't improve the hours I spend editing. Not too worried about render times - gives me a chance to take a break.


Would love to have latest top end i7 and GPU because I love toys but have decided to spend the bucks on latest DJI Mavic Pro 4k drone!!

Al Power Director 13&14 Ultimate, Photo Director 6, Audio Dir, Pwr2Go 10
Win 10 64, Intel MB DH87MC, Intel i5-4670 CPU @ 3.40GHz, 16Gb DDR3 1600, 128Gb SSD, 2x1Tb WDBlue 7200rpmSATA6, Intel 4600 GPU, Gigabyte G1 GTX960 4GB, LG BluRay Writer

Thanks in abundance dear friends! Thanks for taking your time to answer my question!!



Have a wonderful year ahead!