What is the Cheapest CPU with the Most Cores?

[holygamer]

As the thread title. I do a lot of video restoration and encode to h264. Currently with a dual core it can take 24 hours to encode a single 2 hour video. I've been told that I could cut that down to a quarter of that time if I had more cores.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Phenom II X6 1045T:

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/amd-p...che-95w-retail

Around £98.

FX8120:

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/amd-f...-s-125w-retail

Around £106 after the £20 AMD cashback.

[holygamer]

Thanks, that's much cheaper than I thought! So is 8 cores the maximum amount of cores that's currently available?

[scaryjim]

Without spending silly money, yes. Intel do some Xeon processors with 10 Hyperthreaded cores, so they can handle 20 threads at once, but the CPU alone is > $4500! There are also consumer processors from Intel that handle 12 threads e.g. Core i7 3930k, but even that is ~£400. If you're looking for cores on a budget, AMD is definitely the way to go.

[Willzzz]

It's not all about the cores you know.

A four core i5 will beat a FX8120 and isn't much more expensive. If you can use software that supports quicksync you will find those times go down by another factor of 4, perhaps getting the same job done in around 1 hour.

[drharvey12]

Here's an interesting article on CPU efficiency whilst running different types processors and different types of tasks. It's based on the ultra high end Intel 3960X but it's useful to see how this then compares to other AMD and Intel CPU's.

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/sandy-...w-32321-6.html

The Intel 2500K & 2600K come out looking pretty good at the end.

Hope it's helpful anyway

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

It's not all about the cores you know.

A four core i5 will beat a FX8120 and isn't much more expensive.

Firstly,a Core i5 is at least £130 for a retail CPU(OEM CPUs with a 1 year warranty and no cooler can be had for a bit less) and for certain applications such as video encoding,even a Core i5 is not necessarily faster. Flip-flop is irrelevant.

Lets have a look at the performance of the FX8120 in video encoding:

http://www.guru3d.com/article/amd-fx...mance-review/5

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu...0_7.html#sect0

An FX8120 is faster overall than the lower end Core i5 CPUs.

Lets look at the Hexus HandBrake 0.9.5 chart:

http://forums.hexus.net/pc-hardware/...ded-power.html

I would predict that an FX8120 or a Phenom II X6 1045T is not far off a Core i5 2500.

If you can use software that supports quicksync you will find those times go down by another factor of 4, perhaps getting the same job done in around 1 hour.

At lower image quality than CPU only encodes and the software is not free. Moreover,HandBrake is getting OpenCL based acceleration which does speed up encoding using any OpenCL compatible graphics card. However,even then quality is not as good as CPU only encodes,although I suspect it might have the edge over things like Quick Sync and VCE.

[Willzzz]

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5771/t...770k-review/21

"Intel put to rest any concerns about image quality when Quick Sync launched, and thankfully the situation hasn't changed today with Ivy Bridge. In fact, you get a bit more flexibility than you had a year ago."

Like I said, it depends what software he uses, maybe the FX8120 is the better option, maybe not.

Is £130 a lot more than the £126 Fx8120? Even with the rebate £24 extra isn't much if you can take hours off the encoding time.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5771/t...770k-review/21

"Intel put to rest any concerns about image quality when Quick Sync launched, and thankfully the situation hasn't changed today with Ivy Bridge. In fact, you get a bit more flexibility than you had a year ago."

Like I said, it depends what software he uses, maybe the FX8120 is the better option, maybe not.

Is £130 a lot more than the £126 Fx8120? Even with the rebate £24 extra isn't much if you can take hours off the encoding time.

It is still lower quality. The cheapest IB Core i5 I can find is an OEM Core i5 3450 with a one year warranty and no cooler for around £129(so probably at least around £135 with a cooler). Moreover cheaper Core i5 CPUs have the HD2000 or HD2500 IGP meaning encode speed is slower than the K series which have more EUs in the IGP.

Moreover the software costs money too. HandBrake OpenCL acceleration which is arriving later this year is much more interesting for many of us(that includes Anand on Anandtech) as it is free,and image quality will be better. That will run off ANY graphics card from AMD or Nvidia which supports OpenCL. Even then the quallity is probably going to be lower than CPU only encodes.

[Willzzz]

It doesn't have to be Ivy, although as you say HD4000 is going to be much faster.

I still think if he is looking for a cheap option as implied by the thread title that an i5 will offer the best performance by cost. Sure he could add a GTX 680 to speed things up but that's pretty pricey. HD4000 supports OpenCL so that can be used to boost performance just like with AMD APUs like Trinity.

The quality of the samples provided by Anandtech looked pretty good to me.

From your link:

"Moving on to the benchmarks dealing with HD video content processing, ... The only disappointment is the FX-8120: its very low clock frequency makes it fall behind even the youngest Core i5 model, while its price is at a higher level."

On the encode test the 8120 is behind the i5 2500 as well, the 8150 does a lot better.

[Kumagoro]

The question is what have you already got and how much have money you are willing to spend.

What mobo have you got

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

It doesn't have to be Ivy, although as you say HD4000 is going to be much faster.

I still think if he is looking for a cheap option as implied by the thread title that an i5 will offer the best performance by cost. Sure he could add a GTX 680 to speed things up but that's pretty pricey. HD4000 supports OpenCL so that can be used to boost performance just like with AMD APUs like Trinity.

The quality of the samples provided by Anandtech looked pretty good to me.

Considering that many of the cheaper AMD VLIW5 cards,will do OpenCL acceleration fine(The HD6550D does well in such things) and a number of Nvidia cards will do so. The HD4000 is only found on higher end K series CPUs,so you are stuck with the slower HD2500.

It still makes the Phenom II X6 1045T and FX8120 much cheaper than a Core i5.

So basically looking at cost,the Phenom II X6 1045T and FX8120 look pretty good for the money and I am on socket 1155 myself.

From your link:

"Moving on to the benchmarks dealing with HD video content processing, ... The only disappointment is the FX-8120: its very low clock frequency makes it fall behind even the youngest Core i5 model, while its price is at a higher level."

On the encode test the 8120 is behind the i5 2500 as well, the 8150 does a lot better.

Here are the actual pictures from the articleand the OP is using H264 encodes for restoration work.





As you know most of the encode time is in the 2nd pass.

So basically a Phenom II X6 1045T or FX8120 is not far off a Core i5 2500,and at a much lower price too.

These are the charts from the other review I linked to,which you forgot to mention.







Looking at the Phenom II X6 results alone,a Phenom II X6 1045 will not be far off a Core i5 2500,and an FX8120 should be around Core i5 2500 level performance in HandBrake.

Edit!!

Here is another review:

http://www.kitguru.net/components/cp...m5a99x-evo/15/



Both the CPUs are around the £100 mark,so for video encoding they are great value for money. AMD also has some very well featured motherboards too if you are on a budget.

[ET3D]

Check out Anandtech's Bench. Lots of CPU's compared in such transcoding jobs. (Like to first pass x264 benchmark.)

Edit: I see that CAT-THE-FIFTH has posted a bunch of benchmarks while I was looking at this. All benchmarks point to AMD CPU's being quite good at the job and certainly good value for money.

[Willzzz]

I may have misunderstood what restoration work involves, does it not include processing on the video?

On the encoding front, if you take both passes together the i5 is faster, not by much but still faster, and that's without taking advantage of the integrated GPU.

An interesting question might be what GPU the OP has available to pair with any new CPU he buys.

Oh and interestingly the HD2500 is actually just as good at quicksync as the HD4000 - weird but true:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/5871/i...phics-tested/2

I don't see a single person on the handbrake chart using a FX8120?

[Domestic_Ginger]

Someone mentioned that handbrake was going to support opencl at some point soon. I think it can do cuda. Would be nice to know if anyone can confirm.

[DanceswithUnix]

The question is what have you already got and how much have money you are willing to spend.

What mobo have you got

Bump for this post in case it gets lost in all the graphs, as I think it is key.

Cheapest quad core is the one that can fit on your current motherboard.
Ultimate cheap would be ticking the BIOS option in an AMD dual core setup to unlock 2 more cores

What CPU/motherboard do you currently have? Some idea of what power supply is in the PC would be useful too.