What is the Cheapest CPU with the Most Cores?

[scaryjim]

On the encoding front, if you take both passes together the i5 is faster

Not really.

Suppose you're encoding 5 minutes of 24fps video. That's 7200 frames.

The i5 will do the first pass faster: 51 seconds for the i5 2320, vs 66.4s for the FX-8120 - so that's 15 seconds saved. However, for the second pass, the i5 will take 266s, while the FX-8120 only takes 230s. It's 36s faster at the second pass, making it 21s faster overall.

The longer your video, the harder that 2nd pass deficit will bite the i5 - so for a 2 hour video you're going to be much better off with the FX-8120...

[Willzzz]

If you go back and read my post I said the i5 2500 which would be 6s faster for 7200 frames.

Anyway my point is that contrary to what the OP seems to believe the number of cores is not the only important factor here. The 8 core FX8120 is not necessarily better (or worse) than the 4 core i5.

[scaryjim]

If you go back and read my post I said the i5 2500 which would be 6s faster for 7200 frames.

Anyway my point is that contrary to what the OP seems to believe the number of cores is not the only important factor here. The 8 core FX8120 is not necessarily better (or worse) than the 4 core i5.

Sorry, I must have been confused by you saying

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

An i5 2500 is quite a bit more expensive than an FX8120 - >20% without the AMD rebate, almost 50% with. There are i5s that aren't that expensive, but I've already shown that even for a short video they're slower than the FX for h264 transcoding: for a long video the difference will be much more signficant. And as you say, the FX8150 is significantly faster, yet costs almost exactly the same as an i5 2500 (non-k) - before the AMD rebate.

I agree completely that it's not just about the number of cores on offer, but for the OPs particular task, encoding 2 hour videos to h264 for video restoration - which implies that he cares about video quality - he's almost certainly better off with the cheaper - or similarly priced - options from AMD.

[teppic]

You currently wouldn't go near Quick Sync if you cared about quality. I think it's aimed at people who want to do a quick conversion for a mobile phone, etc. Even on Handbrake, if you turn down all the advanced quality settings to something that would approximate the cheap one click software that uses hardware acceleration, you can go from 10fps to 150fps.

[kalniel]

I suppose Xeon Phi might be a contender for highest x86 cores/price ratio, we'll have to see when it comes out.

[Zak33]

I have a Phenom X6 1045....

haven't managed to max out all 6 cores .. not even playing Minesweeper

i5 are uber chips, no doubt, as are the latest Ivy i7's..... but the sheer ePeen bragging rights of having my 6 AMD cores doing nothing all day long is enough for me

in gaming terms.... rarely do 3 cores break to their max clock speed of 3.2 (auto overclock turbo mode thingy)

it was cheap, it fitted straight into my current "previously cheaper than an intel board when I built it" motherboard, and is very very cool.

I know it'll overclock but Ive not bothered as it doesn't need it.

[jim]

Problem is, you've asked a very closed question. Most cores != best performance. In any regard.

For example, you could get a Pentium D dual core from years back that couldn't compete with a single core from a fast modern processor.

As always, the question needs to be A) what do you want, B) what do you have, and C) how much are you prepared to spend.