Imaging & Video Encoding Benchmarks

After having gone through quite some synthetic suites and programs, the time has come to show some real life performance figures and show the advantages of the Intel quad core technology. Multi-threading support found its way into video and audio codec's quite a while ago already. And although for most programs this will certainly apply for the dual core processors, with the required enhancement to supports these. But when looking at the quad core, this might be a different story. As with the change from single core to dual core, some updates and enhancements are required to fully utilize the full potential of the quad core processing.

Adobe PhotoShop CS 8.0

Adobe PhotoShop gives you the power to bring your ideas to life through images. Whether you are a beginning or professional photographer; a designer, an architect, an engineer or other professional, PhotoShop provides you with the digital imaging tools you need. Adobe Photoshop CS software, the professional image editing standard and leader of the Photoshop digital imaging line, delivers more of what you crave. For assessing the actual performance of our Core 2 Extreme QX6700 we look upon DriverHeaven and their PhotoShop Benchmark suite. This suite will actually perform about 12 intensive imaging tasks and the faster these can be executed the better.

PhotoShop Results - Intel - 2GB RAM - Multi Core
	Core 2 Duo E6300	PS Score
Imaging	2.66GHz (380x7)	176
	Core 2 Extreme QX6700	PS Score
Imaging	2.66GHz (266x10)	168
Results Interpretation: Lower index values are better.

Just as before our comparison is all about the Core 2 Extreme versus the Core 2 Duo, and with each of these set at the same clock speed of 2.66GHz. This means that we need to overclock our E6300 a bit to reach this and be equally clocked to our QX6700 quad core. Running the PhotoShop benchmark suite shows the results in seconds, so the less time required to finish the better. Clocked equally we notice that the Core 2 Extreme QX6700 has the edge. The difference might not be as significant as expected, but you need to take into account that imaging operations do require quite some system memory and the overclocked E6300 has an advantage due to the higher memory bus speed. However the results remain, with the quad core leading the way.

DVD Shrink 3.2.0.15

DVD Shrink is a versatile freeware tool for fitting a large DVD video disc on a single layer DVD recordable disc. DVD Shrink is capable of both re-authoring and re-encoding the movie. It features an intuitive user interface which makes it easy to choose what to keep, and what to lose. It is a powerful, easy-to-use DVD transcoder. The interface allows the user to choose specifically which DVD elements to retain on the shrunken DVD. As re-encoding of DVD's is quite an intensive tasks, there is a real advantage in having more cores to process the media sources.

DVD Shrink Results - Intel - 2GB RAM - Multi Core
	Core 2 Duo E6300	DS Score
Re-Encoding	2.66GHz (380x7)	428
	Core 2 Extreme QX6700	DS Score
Re-Encoding	2.66GHz (266x10)	327
Results Interpretation: Lower index values are better.

With DVD Shrink we re-encoded a dual layer DVD so that it would match the available storage of a single layer DVD recordable. Doing so both Intel processors did use all their available cores to get the job done, and by doing so the difference could be measured between the dual and quad core processor. Well, there is no surprise on this one; the Core 2 Extreme QX6700 just does it faster. Since DVD Shrink is well optimized for using all available cores, it shows that for re-mastering and re-encoding a video/audio stream you can best rely on as many cores you can get. And currently that would be the quad core technology from Intel.

DVD2One 2.1.1

DVD2One was the first in a series of new DVD backup programs based on compressed domain transcoding. This technique, developed for real-time transcoding of movies to be broadcast, can reduce the size of an MPEG-2 stream at very high speeds. DVD2One was designed to be simple yet efficient, thus you won't find many snazzy features and selections, but it'll do the job using very little time. We are using DVD2One as an alternative, which full multi-core and multi-processor support.

DVD2One Results - Intel - 2GB RAM - Multi Core
	Core 2 Duo E6300	D2O Score
Re-Encoding	2.66GHz (380x7)	485
	Core 2 Extreme QX6700	D2O Score
Re-Encoding	2.66GHz (266x10)	466
Results Interpretation: Lower index values are better.

When looking at the results when using DVD2One it confirms our previous findings. The Core 2 Extreme QX6700 does a better job by finishing the re-encoding of our DVD a bit faster. And although DVD2One support multi-core, there is still some work to be done for fully supporting the quad core processors and their capabilities. During the re-encoding your can clearly see that all four cores are used, but not as intensive as with DVD Shrink. Nonetheless the quad core QX6700 certainly is in favor for DVD re-encoding.

Windows Media Encoder 9.0

Windows Media Encoder is a powerful tool for content producers who want to capture audio and video content using the many innovations in Windows Media, including high quality multi-channel sound, high definition video quality, and support for mixed-mode voice and music content. With its powerful encoding features and functions, Windows Media Encoder 9 series is the ideal tool for content producers who want advanced capture and compression for a wide variety of delivery scenarios.

Media Encoder Results - Intel - 2GB RAM - Multi Core
	Core 2 Duo E6300	WME Score
Re-Encoding	2.66GHz (380x7)	155
	Core 2 Extreme QX6700	WME Score
Re-Encoding	2.66GHz (266x10)	139
Results Interpretation: Lower index values are better.

During our testing with Media Encoder 9, we actually used a movie file and re-encoded it to a different size for use on a portable media player. So we are redefining the resolution and compression the source movie to meet the portable media standards. Using the Core 2 Extreme QX6700 quad core we could finish this faster than with our Core 2 Duo E6300 dual core system. And indeed both systems were equal only the CPU was different, although both were set at the same operating frequency. Once again the quad core comes out on top and with more optimizations come to better support all available cores; it does show that the future lies open for quad core and even more.