Sandy Bridge Performance Review- Relatively Affordable, Absolutely Fast (For Now, at Least)

Author

Oik Yusuf Araya

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Processors

January 22, 2011

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MediaEspresso 6.0

Logo Intel Muncul Saat MediaEspresso Menggunakan Feature Intel Quick Sync

Media Espresso 6.0 is the latest video transcoding application from Cyberlink. This program converts video from one format to the other (available formats include BlackBerry and iPhone-specific video, and others). Media Espresso 6.0 supports AMD (ATI) Stream and NVIDIA CUDA accelerations. The newest version also offers Intel Quick Sync acceleration. Results are measured in the amount of time needed to finish the video conversion process. Less time means better performance.

Video Source 1 : 1920×800; MPEG4; 2min 16sec

Video Source 2 : 1920×1080; MPEG2; 4min

(Intel Core i7 2600K, Core i5 2500K, Core i5 2500=Red Bars)
(Intel Core i7 930, Core i7 875K; Core i5 661; Core i5 655K=Blue Bars)
(AMD Phenom II X4 975 BE; Phenom II X4 970 BE; Phenom II X6 1100T=Green Bars)

Indeed, the results turned up to be quite surprising. Quick Synch acceleration really helps the Sandy Bridges achieve better scores in this particular test. Look at the Core i7 2600K’s result obtained using the second video source (MPEG4 conversion, 720×480) on H67 motherboard. Without Quick Sync (“Full Hardware Acceleration” option in Media Espresso 6.0 inactive), the system needs 1 minute and 10 seconds to finish the conversion. When we enabled this feature, that time was reduced to just 20 seconds. That’s 3.5 times faster.

Unfortunately, the Intel Quick Sync feature in MediaEspresso will automatically become unavailable if you install an add-on graphics card such as those from AMD (ATI) or NVDIA.

Photoshop CS5

Adobe Photoshop CS5 is the latest version of the world’s most famous image editing software. We carried out our test using an action that applies “Photo Merge” and several filters on three TIFF images. Results are measured in the amount of time needed to finish the process. Lower figures are better.

(Intel Core i7 2600K, Core i5 2500K, Core i5 2500=Red Bars)
(Intel Core i7 930, Core i7 875K; Core i5 661; Core i5 655K=Blue Bars)
(AMD Phenom II X4 975 BE; Phenom II X4 970 BE; Phenom II X6 1100T=Green Bars)

The Sandy Bridges are grouped close to one another in this test. There’s only a marginal time difference of just 1 second at most between them.

WinZip 14.5

WinZip is a file compression software that produces compressed files in the Zip extension, which can be password protected using the AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) encryption method. Some of the latest processors are equipped with AES instruction to accelerate the encryption process. Results are measured in the amount of time needed to finish the test. Lower scores are better.

(Intel Core i7 2600K, Core i5 2500K, Core i5 2500=Red Bars)
(Intel Core i7 930, Core i7 875K; Core i5 661; Core i5 655K=Blue Bars)
(AMD Phenom II X4 975 BE; Phenom II X4 970 BE; Phenom II X6 1100T=Green Bars)

The AES-NI (AES New Instruction) feature implemented on Sandy Bridge and Clarkdale (Core i5 6xx series) processors reduces the amount of time required to finish compression with AES-256 compression significantly. In fact, with these processors, a file compression with AES 256-bit encryption is almost as fast to finish as one without. Lacking the AES-NI instruction, all the AMD processors, the Core i7 875K, and i7 930 are slower when processing compression with AES 256-bit encryption.