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ADVERTISING BENCH FORUMS GALLERIES PODCAST PC Components Smartphones & tablets Notebooks & desktops Cloud/Datacenter & IT TRENDING TOPICS CPUs Intel GPUs Smartphones Haswell Mobile NVIDIA Asus Tablets Home> CPUs The Intel Ivy Bridge (Core i7 3770K) Review by Anand Lal Shimpi & Ryan Smith on April 23, 2012 12:03 PM EST Posted in CPUs Intel Ivy Bridge 172 Comments + Add A Comment Quick Sync Image Quality & Performance Intel obviously focused on increasing GPU performance with Ivy Bridge, but a sid e effect of that increased GPU performance is more compute available for Quick S ync. As you may recall, Sandy Bridge's secret weapon was an on-die hardware vide o transcode engine (Quick Sync), designed to keep Intel's CPUs competitive when faced with the onslaught of GPU computing applications. At the time, video trans code seemed to be the most likely candidate for significant GPU acceleration so the move made sense. Plus it doesn't hurt that video transcoding is an extremely popular activity to do with one's PC these days. The power of Quick Sync was how it leveraged fixed function decode (and some enc ode) hardware with the on-die GPU's EU array. The combination of the two resulte d in some pretty incredible performance gains not only over traditional software based transcoding, but also over the fastest GPU based solutions as well. Intel put to rest any concerns about image quality when Quick Sync launched, and

thankfully the situation hasn't changed today with Ivy Bridge. In fact, you get a bit more flexibility than you had a year ago. Intel's latest drivers now allow for a selectable tradeoff between image quality and performance when transcoding using Quick Sync. The option is exposed in Med ia Espresso and ultimately corresponds to an increase in average bitrate. To tes t image quality and performance, I took the last Harry Potter Blu-ray, stripped it of its DRM and used Media Espresso to make it playable on an iPad 2 (1024 x 7 68 preset). In the case of our Harry Potter transcode, selecting the Better Quality option i ncreased average bitrate from to 3.86Mbps to 5.83Mbps. The resulting file size f or the entire movie increased from 3.78GB to 5.71GB. Both options produced a goo d quality transcode, picking one over the other really depends on how much time (and space) you have as well as the screen size of the device you'll be watching it on. For most phone/tablet use I'd say the faster performing option is ideal. Intel Core i7 3770K (x86) Intel Quick Sync (SNB) Intel Quick Sync (IVB) Intel Quick Sync, Better (IVB) NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 AMD Radeon HD 7970 original original original original original original

While AMD has yet to enable VCE in any publicly available software, NVIDIA's har dware encoder built into Kepler is alive and well. Cyberlink Media Espresso 6.5 will take advantage of the 680's NVENC engine which is why we standardized on it here for these tests. Once again, Quick Sync's transcoding abilities are limite d to applications like Media Espresso or ArcSoft's Media Converter there's still n o support in open source applications like Handbrake. Compared to the output from Quick Sync, NVENC appears to produce a softer image. However, if you compare the NVENC output to what we got from the software/x86 p ath you'll see that the two are quite similar. It seems that Quick Sync, at leas t in this case, is sharpening/adding more noise beyond what you'd normally expec t. I'm not sure I'd call it bad, but I need to do some more testing before I kno w whether or not it's a good thing. The good news is that NVENC doesn't pose any of the horrible image quality issue s that NVIDIA's CUDA transcoding path gave us last year. For getting videos onto your phone, tablet or game console I'd say the output of either of these option s, NVENC or Quick Sync, is good enough. Unfortunately AMD's solution hasn't improved. The washed out images we saw last year, particularly in dark scenes prior to a significant change in brightness ar e back again. While NVENC delivers acceptable image quality, AMD does not. The performance story is unfortunately not much different from last year either. The chart below is average frame rate over the entire encode process. CyberLink Media Espresso 6.5 Harry Potter 8 Transcode Just as we saw with Sandy Bridge, Quick Sync continues to be an incredible way t o get video content onto devices other than your PC. One thing I wanted to make sure of was that Media Espresso wasn't somehow holding x86 performance back to m ake the GPU accelerated transcodes seem much better than they actually are. I as ked our resident video expert, Ganesh, to clone Media Espresso's settings in a H andbrake profile. We took the profile and performed the same transcode, the resu lt is listed above as the Core i7 3770K (Handbrake). You will notice that the Ha ndbrake x86/x264 path is definitely faster than Cyberlink's software path, by ov

er 50% to be exact. However even using Handbrake as a reference, Quick Sync tran scodes over 2x faster. In the tests below I took the same source and varied the output quality with som e custom profiles. I targeted 1080p, 720p and 480p at decreasing average bitrate s to illustrate the relationship between compression demands and performance: CyberLink Media Espresso 6.5 Harry Potter 8 Transcode CyberLink Media Espresso 6.5 Harry Potter 8 Transcode CyberLink Media Espresso 6.5 Harry Potter 8 Transcode Unfortunately NVENC performance does not scale like Quick Sync. When asked to pr eserve a good amount of data, both NVENC and Quick Sync perform similarly in our 1080p/13Mbps test. However ask for more aggressive compression ratios for lower resolution/bitrate targets, and the Intel solution quickly distances itself fro m NVIDIA. One theory is that NVIDIA's entropy encode block could be the limiting factor here. Ivy Bridge's improved Quick Sync appears to be aided both by an improved decoder and the HD 4000's faster/larger EU array. The graph below helps illustrate: If we rely on software decoding but use Intel's hardware encode engine, Ivy Brid ge is 18% faster than Sandy Bridge in this test (1080p 13Mbps output from BD sou rce, same as above). If we turn on both hardware decode and encode, the advantag e grows to 29%. More than half of the performance advantage in this case is due to the faster decode engine on Ivy Bridge. Power Consumption Final Words PRINT THIS ARTICLE POST A COMMENT 172 Comments View All Comments wingless - Monday, April 23, 2012 - link I'll keep my 2600K .....just kidding Reply formulav8 - Monday, April 23, 2012 - link I hope you give AMD even more praise when Trinity is released Anand. IMO you way overblew how great Intels igp stuff. Its their 4th gen that can't even beat AMDs first gen. Just my opinion :p Reply Zstream - Monday, April 23, 2012 - link I agree.. Reply dananski - Monday, April 23, 2012 - link As much as I like the idea of decent Skyrim framerates on every laptop, and even though I find the HD4000 graphics an interesting read, I couldn't care less about it in my desktop. Gamers will not put up with integrated graphics - even this good - unless they're on a tight budget, in which case they'll just get Lla no anyway, or wait for Trinity. As for IVB, why can't we have a Pentium III size d option without IGP, or get 6 cores and no IGP? Reply Kjella - Tuesday, April 24, 2012 - link Strategy, they're using their lead in CPUs to bundle it with a GPU whether y ou want it or not. When you take your gamer card out of your gamer machine it'll still have an Intel IGP for all your other uses (or for your family or the seco nd-hand market or whatever), that's one sale they "stole" from AMD/nVidia's low end. Having a separate graphics card is becoming a niche market for gamers. That

's better for Intel than lowering the expectation that a "premium" CPU costs $30 0, if you bring the price down it's always much harder to raise it again... Repl y Samus - Tuesday, April 24, 2012 - link As amazing this CPU is, and how much I'd love it (considering I play BF3 and need a GTX560+ anyway) I have to agree the GPU improvement is pretty disappoint ing... After all that work, Intel still can't even come close to AMD's integrated g raphics. It's 75% of AMD's performance at best. Reply Cogman - Thursday, May 03, 2012 - link There is actually a good reason for both AMD and Intel to keep a GPU on thei r CPUs no matter what. That reason is OpenCV. This move makes the assumption tha t OpenCV or programming languages like it will eventually become mainstream. Wit h a GPU coupled to every CPU, it saves developers from writing two sets of code to deal with different platforms. Reply froggr - Saturday, May 12, 2012 - link OpenCV is Open Computer Vision and runs either way. I think you're talking a bout OpenCL (Open Compute Language). and even that runs fine without a GPU. Open CL can use all cores CPU + GPU and does not require separate code bases. OpenCL runs faster with a GPU because it's better parallellized. Reply frozentundra123456 - Monday, April 23, 2012 - link Maybe we could actually see some hard numbers before heaping so much praise on Trinity?? I will be convinced about the claims of 50% IGP improvements when I see them , and also they need to make a lot of improvements to Bulldozer, especially in p ower consumption, before it is a competitive CPU. I hope it turns out to be all the AMD fans are claiming, but we will see. Reply SpyCrab - Tuesday, April 24, 2012 - link Sure, Llano gives good gaming performance. But it's pretty much at Athlon II X4 CPU performance. Reply 1 2 3 4 5 6 18 ? PIPELINE STORIES + Submit News What's New in Android 4.3 Samsung Galaxy S 4 ZeroLemon 7500 mAh Extended Battery Review Haswell Goes Fanless: 4.5W SDP Parts in Limited Volumes Later this Year NVIDIA Announces Quadro K6000 OCZ Announces ZD-XL PCIe SQL Accelerator SSD Solution Samsung Updates Exynos 5 Octa (5420), Switches Back to ARM GPU Intel re-architecting the datacenter Is Haswell Ready for Tablet Duty? Battery Life of Haswell ULT vs Modern ARM Tablets NVIDIA Confirms Ship Date for Shield - July 31 The AnandTech Podcast: Episode 23 The AnandTech Podcast: Episode 22 NVIDIA GeForce 326.19 Beta Drivers Available Dailytech Newsvisit site

Google Looks to Bring Free Wi-Fi Hotspots to San Francisco Quick Note: Production BMW i3 EV Images Leak Microsoft Decrees Every Xbox One Can Be Used to Develop Games Google Offers $35 Media Streaming Stick "Chromecast" Neuron Chip "Learns" to Recognize Distinct Gestures Via Retina Sensors ARM Beats Profit, Revenue Expectations, but Misses on Margin Growth DARPA Plans Hydra Mothership for Underwater Attacks Quick Note: "Gran Turismo" Movie in the Works Report: Ballmer Tells Employees Windows 8 Sales Need Improvement Apple's Q3 Earnings, iPhone Sales Beat Analyst Expectations Turkey's Top Hacker Defaces Skrillex's Webpage, Posts Poetry Ford and Toyota Sever Partnership to Develop Hybrid Trucks 7/24/2013 Daily Hardware Reviews Best Buy Steals Google's Thunder, Already Taking Pre-Orders for New $229 Nex us 7 Google's Bid to Combat Glass Porn Proves Flaccid, Adult POV Film Airs Fukushima Plant is Leaking Radioactive Water Into the Sea Two-Drug Therapy Could Keep Cancer from Growing, Spreading FACEBOOK TWEETS anandshimpi: @drewhenry @SanDisk @NVIDIATegra we should talk :) anandshimpi: @drewhenry @SanDisk @NVIDIATegra oh man that's awesome, current part or something similarly unreleased? :) anandshimpi: RT @drewhenry: Here's a little secret, @SanDisk iNAND storage i s featured with Logan. @NVIDIATegra @anandshimpi http://t.co/YVmPoEgRSv anandshimpi: You guys have no idea. Talking to @nerdtalker while he's in dis covery mode is like talking to an OS anandshimpi: RT @anandtech: What's New in Android 4.3 http://t.co/EhzrsGVS7g IanCutress: Buses in Swindon don't offer change, exact (or more) money only. This is madness... Oh well, Crystalwell later today :-) IanCutress: Good job before printing the sign #spelling http://t.co/aMER8IVS yc IanCutress: Now it costs 1.50 to buy a train ticket online? WTF? IanCutress: Crucial M500 960GB, now only 450. Exciting stuff. IanCutress: Testing 2800 12-13-12 1T. Niiice. jarredwalton: The problem also exists on every DX9 title I've tried (includi ng non-games like 3DMark03), so (@YouTube http://t.co/Av6HdkQ4bb) jarredwalton: No, neither is on NVIDIA's TWIMTBP list (nor on AMD's Gaming E volved/Get In the Game list -- (@YouTube http://t.co/Av6HdkQ4bb) jarredwalton: Old drivers have performance issues and other problems with re cent titles, and swapping (@YouTube http://t.co/Av6HdkQ4bb) jarredwalton: Alienware M17x R4 with 7970M Enduro - StarCraft II and Skyrim Rendering Errors: http://t.co/Av6HdkQ4bb via @YouTube jarredwalton: An i3 is a faster CPU with a slower GPU. If you're going to bu y a discrete GPU, it makes sense (@YouTube http://t.co/L2ZIzroBUs) nerdtalker: @eddypoon oh I've heard lots and lots of talk about folded syste ms, believe me nerdtalker: @p3ery @PenLlawen no worries, haha nerdtalker: @p3ery @PenLlawen you can't exactly use the remote app when the thing isn't attached to your network... That's the point of OOB pairing. nerdtalker: @PenLlawen that's like the "oh noes this is a failure since it n eeds USB power" REALLY PEOPLE? nerdtalker: @PenLlawen yeah there's some willing cognitive dissonance at pla y, this is so much better done than Nexus Q so far ganeshts: @DTheSleepless No Miracast, No 5 Ghz - why bother? Bet Marvell is dumping their GTV chips on this (now that GTV devices are dead and buried) ganeshts: @chrisheinonen source for pixel mapping issue? I have driven 4Kp30

from a GT 640 on the 50" and it looked OK.. ganeshts: @chrisheinonen Pros and cons of using the Seiki 39" 4K TV as a mon itor for productivity? HDMI for 1080p60/4kp30, only $700 looks attractive ganeshts: @nerdtalker Silverlight is being phased-out by MS [ http://t.co/5v jF17OQZZ ], and Netflix is working on HTML5 delivery ganeshts: @nerdtalker Silverlight doesn't even do the 3.6 Mbps stream that t he Metro app does for non-Super HD ISPs : http://t.co/bXpZArIXUk Follow @ANANDTECH LINKS Home About Forums RSS Pipeline News Bench Galleries DailyTech TOPICS CPUs Motherboards SSD/HDD GPUs Mobile IT/Datacenter Smartphones Memory Cases/Cooling/PSU(s) Displays Mac Systems Cloud Trade Shows Guides FOLLOW Facebook Twitter RSS The Most Trusted in Tech Since 1997 About Advertising Terms, Privacy 2013 Anandtech, Inc. All rights reserved. Ghostery has found the following on this page:Facebook Connect Google Analytics OpenX Po.st Quantcast Twitter Button