Intel's Core i7 920, 940 & 965 processors

November 3, 2008 | 08:30

Tags: #2 #920 #945 #965 #benchmark #comparison #core #cpu #i7 #mode #nehalem #penryn #performance #phenom #quad #result #review #smt #testing #turbo

Companies: #amd #intel

TMPEG DivX 6.8 Encoding

Website: DivX and TMPEG

We used the latest version of TMPEG 4.5.2.255 and DivX 6.8, and encoded a 980MB 720x480px 4-8k VBR MPEG-2 video with 48KHz PCM stereo sound into a 320x240px DivX under the "Mobile" profile with a single pass, with 112kbps LAME .MP3 joint stereo sound. This included setting multi-threading and SSE2/4 where possible in the DivX settings.

TMPEG 4.0 Xpress

Source File: 980MB 4-8k VBR MPEG-2 PCM Stereo. Encoding: Divx 6.8 Mobile Profile, 720x480 to 320x240

  • Core i7 965 (4x3.2GHz, 6.4GHz QPI, SMT enabled)
  • Core i7 965 (4x3.2GHz, 4.8GHz QPI, SMT enabled)
  • Core i7 965 (4x3.2GHz, 6.4GHz QPI, SMT disabled)
  • Core i7 965 (4x3.2GHz, Turbo disabled, SMT enabled)
  • Core i7 965 (4x3.2GHz, Dual Channel, SMT enabled)
  • Core i7 965 (4x3.2GHz, Single Channel, SMT enabled)
  • Core i7 940 (4x2.93GHz, 6.4GHz QPI, SMT enabled)
  • Core 2 Extreme QX9770 (4x3.2GHz, 1,600MHz FSB, DDR3)
  • Core 2 Extreme QX9770 (4x3.2GHz, 1,600MHz FSB, DDR2)
  • Core i7 920 (4x2.66GHz, 6.4GHz QPI, SMT enabled)
  • Core 2 Quad Q9650 (4x3.0GHz, 1,333MHz FSB, DDR3)
  • Core 2 Quad Q9650 (4x3.0GHz, 1,333MHz FSB, DDR2)
  • Core 2 Duo E8500 (2x3.16GHz, 1,333MHz FSB, DDR3)
  • Core 2 Duo E8500 (2x3.16GHz, 1,333MHz FSB, DDR2)
  • Core 2 Quad Q9550 (4x2.83GHz, 1,333MHz FSB, DDR3)
  • Core 2 Quad Q9550 (4x2.83GHz, 1,333MHz FSB, DDR2)
  • Core 2 Quad Q9450 (4x2.66GHz, 1,333MHz FSB, DDR3)
  • Core 2 Quad Q9450 (4x2.66GHz, 1,333MHz FSB, DDR2)
  • Core 2 Quad Q6700 (4x2.66GHz, 1,066MHz FSB, DDR2)
  • Core 2 Quad Q6700 (4x2.66GHz, 1,066MHz FSB, DDR3)
  • AMD Phenom X4 9850 BE (4x2.5GHz, 2.0GHz HTT)
  • AMD Phenom X4 9950 BE (4x2.6GHz, 2.0GHz HTT)
  • AMD Phenom X4 9750 (4x2.4GHz, 1.8GHz HTT)
    • 253
    • 255
    • 260
    • 261
    • 263
    • 283
    • 287
    • 298
    • 302
    • 305
    • 317
    • 319
    • 319
    • 331
    • 336
    • 337
    • 345
    • 354
    • 400
    • 410
    • 480
    • 480
    • 519
0
100
200
300
400
500
Time in Seconds (lower is better)
  • Seconds

Again the Core i7s burn through video encoding and in a clock for clock race they are 18 percent faster than Penryn with SMT enabled. Without Hyper Threading on there's only a very little three percent loss of performance. Turning down the QPI bus does very little here, as does disabling SMT, Turbo mode and dropping down to dual channel memory - all of which perform within a few seconds of each other and are between three to four percent slower than the all-on i7 965.

With the Core i7 965 limited to single channel DDR3, it still manages to outperform the i7 940 surprisingly, but both are 12-to-13 percent slower than the i7 965. Between the Q9550 and the i7 920 which carry a loosely similar price, the latter is ten percent faster for a lower price tag, while clock for clock the Q9450 is 13 percent slower.

Sony Vegas Studio Platinum 8

Website: Sony Creative Software

Sony Vegas Movie Studio is an industry leading movie making application that offers support for a large variety of video formats. It can handle the latest multi-channel audio and high-definition content, even including AVCHD and HDV. Further features include mixing and editing, video composite creating and video restoration among others. As a highly threaded application it makes great use of multi-core processors.

Here we use the free version: Platinum 8, to transcode a 720x480px 945MB raw .MTS with PCM audio into a 720x480px WMV9 at VBR90, with 5.1 channel 44.1KHz 64Kbps WMA audio.

Sony Vegas Movie Studio Platinum 8

720x480 945MB .mts to 720x480 VBR90 WMV9, 5.1 44.1KHz 64Kbps WMA

  • Core i7 965 (4x3.2GHz, 6.4GHz QPI, SMT enabled)
  • Core i7 965 (4x3.2GHz, Turbo disabled, SMT enabled)
  • Core i7 965 (4x3.2GHz, 4.8GHz QPI, SMT enabled)
  • Core i7 965 (4x3.2GHz, Dual Channel, SMT enabled)
  • Core i7 940 (4x2.93GHz, 6.4GHz QPI, SMT enabled)
  • Core i7 965 (4x3.2GHz, 6.4GHz QPI, SMT disabled)
  • Core i7 965 (4x3.2GHz, Single Channel, SMT enabled)
  • Core i7 920 (4x2.66GHz, 6.4GHz QPI, SMT enabled)
  • Core 2 Extreme QX9770 (4x3.2GHz, 1,600MHz FSB, DDR3)
  • Core 2 Extreme QX9770 (4x3.2GHz, 1,600MHz FSB, DDR2)
  • Core 2 Quad Q9650 (4x3.0GHz, 1,333MHz FSB, DDR3)
  • Core 2 Quad Q9650 (4x3.0GHz, 1,333MHz FSB, DDR2)
  • Core 2 Quad Q9550 (4x2.83GHz, 1,333MHz FSB, DDR3)
  • Core 2 Quad Q9550 (4x2.83GHz, 1,333MHz FSB, DDR2)
  • Core 2 Quad Q9450 (4x2.66GHz, 1,333MHz FSB, DDR3)
  • Core 2 Quad Q9450 (4x2.66GHz, 1,333MHz FSB, DDR2)
  • Core 2 Quad Q6700 (4x2.66GHz, 1,066MHz FSB, DDR3)
  • Core 2 Quad Q6700 (4x2.66GHz, 1,066MHz FSB, DDR2)
  • AMD Phenom X4 9950 BE (4x2.6GHz, 2.0GHz HTT)
  • AMD Phenom X4 9850 BE (4x2.5GHz, 2.0GHz HTT)
  • AMD Phenom X4 9750 (4x2.4GHz, 1.8GHz HTT)
  • Core 2 Duo E8500 (2x3.16GHz, 1,333MHz FSB, DDR2)
  • Core 2 Duo E8500 (2x3.16GHz, 1,333MHz FSB, DDR3)
    • 824
    • 835
    • 838
    • 840
    • 873
    • 882
    • 921
    • 959
    • 1007
    • 1042
    • 1067
    • 1091
    • 1121
    • 1134
    • 1161
    • 1222
    • 1262
    • 1352
    • 1378
    • 1413
    • 1432
    • 1614
    • 1652
0
250
500
750
1000
1250
1500
1750
Time in Seconds (lower is better)
  • Seconds

Yet again the Core i7 turns out to be an encoding behemoth, with them all stretching out a significant performance lead over even the fastest Penryn CPUs by at least 40 seconds.

Clock for clock there's a 22 percent performance advantage for the Core i7 965 versus the QX9770, while the 920 has a 17 percent advantage over the similarly priced Q9550 and a 21 percent advantage over a clock to clock matched Q9450.

Again Turbo mode and QPI do little for Sony Vegas - there's just a one or two percent difference in performance. However, disabling SMT drops the performance considerable seven percent or a whole minute in round terms. Dual channel memory again provides a solid performance but single channel causes a 12 percent performance drop, although this single channel DDR3 1,066MHz is still faster than the same clocked QX9770 with dual channel DDR3 at 1,600MHz.
Discuss this in the forums
YouTube logo
MSI MPG Velox 100R Chassis Review

October 14 2021 | 15:04

TOP STORIES

SUGGESTED FOR YOU