Faster and fewer cores or Slower clocks and tons of cores for video editing?

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Kneelbeforezod

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Sep 4, 2015
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I am thinking of building a new workstation for video editing given the issues i am having with my 5680s - see my other thread.

I see some of the Broadwell V4s ES chips on Ebay like the like the 2698 20 core. Is this a good choice for a video editing system? Or would something with fewer cores and higher clocks be better?

thanks
 

gigatexal

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Take this as hearsay but I recall at least for something like handbrake - the popular encoding program - that scaling past say 8 or 16 cores doesn't bring you as much as it does when operating in that 8 - 16 core range. But I am curious, too, so I am subscribing to this thread.
 

PigLover

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For video editing with common "prosumer" tools (Adobe Premier, Vegas Pro, etc) its definitely fewer faster cores. No doubt about it. The tools are threaded - but not threaded enough to make workload spreading a linear horizontal scaling problem.

In fact, its extreme enough that a single E5-1650 v4 would probably beat a dual E5-2698/99 v4 for most video editing tasks - except perhaps final render which is the least common task in a video editing workflow.
 
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Keljian

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Memory plays a big part (more is better) and making sure you have a supported graphics card also makes a big difference.

If you use after effects or other special effects software, that is where more cores will help.
 
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Kneelbeforezod

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Tools are mainly Handbrake and Premiere for Video. So even though i'd love to have 40 physical cores that won't have real beneficial effects on video editing?
 

Kneelbeforezod

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Editing itself - little benefit. Compressing, definitely.

So benefit for more cores when encoding and transcoding? I edit and upload news clips so most of the time i am using handbrake since the quality is better than premiers but other things like montages i use premiere.
 

Keljian

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So benefit for more cores when encoding and transcoding?
Correct, typically speaking, more cores means more speed when encoding or transcoding- that said, it depends on the output.

Scaling for a single encode tops out at 8 threads on h264 so you will see little benefit above that (ie above 8 cores)
 
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Kneelbeforezod

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Correct, typically speaking, more cores means more speed when encoding or transcoding- that said, it depends on the output.

Scaling for a single encode tops out at 8 threads on h264 so you will see little benefit above that (ie above 8 cores)

So if i want to run multiple encodes at the same i i would see a real benefit with a ton of cores? I often have 4 instances of handbrake open and the more encodes run at the same time each individual encode is slower.

So more cores would benefit here?

If so then i guess going with a pair of 20 core broadwells makes sense?
 

Kneelbeforezod

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So then the next question is what would be the best bang for the buck xeon Broadwell - A couple of 2650s or a couple of 2698s and i 'm looking those es chips on cheapbay.
 

Peanuthead

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So then the next question is what would be the best bang for the buck xeon Broadwell - A couple of 2650s or a couple of 2698s and i 'm looking those es chips on cheapbay.
Only you can determine bang for the buck as you are the one spending the buck.
 

PigLover

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Boiling it down - if you are editing and creating content you'll be much happier with 6-8 @ 3.4-3.6Ghz cores from an E5-1650/1660/1680. For 'bang for the buck" analysis remember that going from 6 cores (1650) to 8 cores (1680) more than triples the list price (33% potential performance gain for 300% more $$$). Street prices vary, but E5-1650 is the sweet spot here.

If you are encoding/recoding/transcoding/compressing/rendering/etc and doing it on multiple streams at once you'll be happier with many medium speed cores (20-40 cores @ 2.2Ghz. But remember - those are also jobs that that you can queue up and go to bed. So - unless you are doing industrial scale production it might not really be worth it. And you can set up 2x systems with E5-1650 for less money than one dual-proc E5-2698/99 (unless you are willing to go with ES chips, of course). That way you can have one system for editing and one encoding away 24x7.

In practice, you'll find production houses with high-clock/low core workstations on the artists desks backed by a server room full of core working as a render farm for post-production. You probably don't need that in your home/office but the underlying principle is the same - clock for editing, cores for encoding.
 

Kneelbeforezod

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Boiling it down - if you are editing and creating content you'll be much happier with 6-8 @ 3.4-3.6Ghz cores from an E5-1650/1660/1680. For 'bang for the buck" analysis remember that going from 6 cores (1650) to 8 cores (1680) more than triples the list price (33% potential performance gain for 300% more $$$). Street prices vary, but E5-1650 is the sweet spot here.

If you are encoding/recoding/transcoding/compressing/rendering/etc and doing it on multiple streams at once you'll be happier with many medium speed cores (20-40 cores @ 2.2Ghz. But remember - those are also jobs that that you can queue up and go to bed. So - unless you are doing industrial scale production it might not really be worth it. And you can set up 2x systems with E5-1650 for less money than one dual-proc E5-2698/99 (unless you are willing to go with ES chips, of course). That way you can have one system for editing and one encoding away 24x7.

In practice, you'll find production houses with high-clock/low core workstations on the artists desks backed by a server room full of core working as a render farm for post-production. You probably don't need that in your home/office but the underlying principle is the same - clock for editing, cores for encoding.

Thx for the advice. What i think will do is keep my dual westmeres and use that mpg to mp4 conversion and let it run overnight. And build a new dual broadwell - just have to decide on the number of cores.
 

DonJon

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More than any Processor, Memory, Graphics Card, configuring the video editing program to take advantage of the hardware is more important. Lot of them just install the software and expect magic to happen and don't care about advanced configurations that enable hardware acceleration like CUDA, OpenGL etc.
 

Dhamusie

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