Pre-purchase CPU benchmark?

If you're thinking about upgrading a system (read: I'm jonsing for a 4770K ) how do you evaluate the cost/benefit from various options? In the past I've looked at the PassMark - either total score or single thread score. However for one of my uses, it seems to not be a good predictor of actual performance. I've also seen comments here that PassMark is not a very good benchmark. Is there something better? Some sites have suites of benchmarks which seem like they test the whole system. That's good if one is considering replacing the entire system, but that's not my situation. I'll replace motherboard, processor and of necessity, processor heat sink. Video card (GTX 460) is adequate and will remain. Recent SSD upgrade handles the disk requirement. (Along with a bunch of older spinning rust drives.) RAM should be good as well.

Workload is development (not gaming) and I'm looking for snappier response. When I'm not working, it would be nice to crunch more WUs for FAH or Rosetta or whatever. Occasionally I rip DVDs and maybe some day I'll start ripping the Blu-Ray's I own.

From what I see, the I7 4770K is near the top of the heap w/out costing an arm and a leg. Does it represent the high end of the sweet spot for price/performance? (mobo/proc combo at Micro Center for $365 with the ASRock Z87 Extreme4 board.)

Thoughts?

I think the 4770k is definitely near the top in price/performance, especially given the tasks for which you're using it.

The price jump up to an Ivy-E processor just doesn't seem to justify the performance jump IMO.

the higher amount of L3 isnt going to effect performance, they add more cause they want to you to think its bettter. even going back one gen from the 4k, you will still be getting a nice performance increase if comparing to your amd in sig. been a bit since i looked into it but i think you can run the older gen K cpu on the Z87. that way you can upgrade to the newer one later when the price drops.

I've been down the "leave room for future upgrade" path before and it just hasn't been realized. When I bought my signature rig, the mobo was rated for the big 125 watt processors. Before I got around to doing anything with that MSI derated it to 95 watt processors. That pretty much cut off any opportunity for upgrade and ruled out MSI from any future opportunity to sell me H/W.

I've had better luck upgrading around the processor, reaping the benefits of additional RAM and SSD drives. I'm using a 5 1/2 year old Thinkpad T500 with 8GB RAM and a Crucial M4 SSD. I suppose running Linux helps. It boots in the mid teens IIRC and comes out of suspend in about 4 seconds. Performance is pretty snappy.

If I do decide to pull the trigger on this, I'll go with a combo from Microcenter which is within striking range. And I'll go with something that I shouldn't have to worry about upgrading in the next couple of years.

Here's the real question:

How many threads will your software use?

ATMINSIDE said:

Here's the real question:

How many threads will your software use?

Click to expand...

The IDE and Android emulator are each single threaded. Both (and particularly the emulator) will benefit from fast single thread performance.

Using Handbrake to rip DVDs (and possible Blu-Rays) will use all cores.

Crunching, of course will use all processor resources.

HankB said:

The IDE and Android emulator are each single threaded. Both (and particularly the emulator) will benefit from fast single thread performance.

Using Handbrake to rip DVDs (and possible Blu-Rays) will use all cores.

Crunching, of course will use all processor resources.

Click to expand...

http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/cpu-charts-2013/-31-Handbrake,3164.html

That chart should help you quite a bit then.

HankB said:

Using Handbrake to rip DVDs (and possible Blu-Rays) will use all cores

Click to expand...

One thing about Ripping, the optical drive takes longer to send data than the transcoding can get done.

wingman99 said:

One thing about Ripping, the optical drive takes longer to send data than the transcoding can get done.

Click to expand...

Depends on the nature. If from an ODD, yes.

Personally, I make ISOs then convert with Handbrake.

Well he said Ripping and I'm going with that.

wingman99 said:

Well he said Ripping and I'm going with that.

Click to expand...

I agree that the ODD is limiting, just listing a way that Handbrake wouldn't be limited

With the present system, time to transcode is longer than time to rip I believe. I haven't really checked that by splitting up the operation, but Handbrake pegs all cores and I believe if it was waiting on the drive, it would leave some idle time.

It would not be unexpected to see a faster system keep up with the drive and in that case it might be useful to copy first and then transcode. Or have better use of the machine while transcoding directly from the drive.

I use to transcode all the time with E8400 3.0GHz dual core and when I rip first from the optical drive to HDD, no transcoding. I could transcode a 2 hour video from the HDD fast as 5 min 27 sec.

Ripping and transcoding strait form any optical drive is about 11 min 36 sec.

There was a time where the pentium III-IV was slower than the optical drive.

wingman99 said:

I use to transcode all the time with E8400 3.0GHz dual core and when I rip first from the optical drive to HDD, no transcoding. I could transcode a 2 hour video from the HDD fast as 5 min 27 sec.

Ripping and transcoding strait form any optical drive is about 11 min 36 sec.

There was a time where the pentium III-IV was slower than the optical drive.

Click to expand...

That's pretty amazing. The Passmark for my CPU is 3490 whereas the E8400 is 2166. I haven't timed transcoding video but Handbrake reports transcoding frame rate and I typically see something in the vicinity of twice the viewing frame rate. A two hour video would take about an hour.

HankB said:

That's pretty amazing. The Passmark for my CPU is 3490 whereas the E8400 is 2166. I haven't timed transcoding video but Handbrake reports transcoding frame rate and I typically see something in the vicinity of twice the viewing frame rate. A two hour video would take about an hour.

Click to expand...

Are you transcoding for DVD5 4.7GB

wingman99 said:

Are you transcoding for DVD5 4.7GB

Click to expand...

I don't think so. I'm encoding using H.264 and using the Handbrake "High Profile."

HankB said:

I don't think so. I'm encoding using H.264 and using the Handbrake "High Profile."

Click to expand...

Encoding and transcoding are completely different.

HankB said:

With the present system, time to transcode is longer than time to rip I believe.

Click to expand...

You said you were transcoding, however encoding does take about a hour for 2 hour video.

So a i7 4770k would be what you want.

wingman99 said:

Encoding and transcoding are completely different.
...
You said you were transcoding, however encoding does take about a hour for 2 hour video.

So a i7 4770k would be what you want.

Click to expand...

That's how little I know about the process. (And I'm pretty much totally bewildered by the myriad settings available in Handbrake. ) Thanks for the clarification and tips.