clarkdake encoding benchmarks!!!

[deadrats]

and it looks like a winner:

http://hothardware.com/Articles/Intel-Clarkdale-Core-i5-Desktop-Processor-Debuts/?page=8

as you can see the dual core clarkdale achieves 16 fps, the i5 750 reaches 21.5, the q9650 and the x4 965 achieve 20, when using x264, and we need to remember that the other processors are quad core parts.

under divx encoding the i5 661 is about 7 seconds slower than the i5 750 and 4 seconds slower than the x4 965 and under vc-1 encoding it's only 2 seconds slower than the i5 750 and 4 seconds slower than the x4 965:

http://anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3704&p=8

and in this review with longer test samples the it's losing margin is bigger, but from a percentage standpoint it remains the same:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/intel-clarkdale-core-i5-661,2514-9.html

over all for a dual core versus quad cores, the i5 661 makes a good showing, the real ace up it's sleeve is the transcoding driver intel has promised to release that will allow it to use the integrated gpu to accelerate video transcoding.

as i already talked about in another thread, assuming that the driver is a true driver and works like one would expect a driver to work, using the base line, cpu only, benchmarks as a starting point, with gpu integration the i5 661 should be truly something.

can't wait to see that driver in action...

[jagabo]

with gpu integration the i5 661 should be truly something.

It won't be.

[rallynavvie]

One thing that bothers me is that these are a pretty large deviation from Intel's normal tick-tock process. I was looking just for die-shrink instead of additional architecture change. This only means that the hardware won't be vetted properly as they go into the next big architecture phase.

We're supposed to be getting a dev box from HP with X5660s sometime this month to test against the X5550 system I had set up. I'm also waiting to see what VMware is going to do with the integrated graphics (if included with the Gulftowns). I'm mainly interested in the 2 extra cores and VMX Unrestricted mode.

[wulf109]

These dual-core Clarkdale CPU's are far too expensive for what they deliver. An i5-750 or AMD quad offer far more at same and even lower prices.

[deadrats]

One thing that bothers me is that these are a pretty large deviation from Intel's normal tick-tock process. I was looking just for die-shrink instead of additional architecture change. This only means that the hardware won't be vetted properly as they go into the next big architecture phase.

personally i can't stand intel's tick-tock business approach, it's nothing more than planned obsolescence, they had penryn's up and running before conroe's even hit the street, why not just go straight to penryn?

clarkdale is obviously meant to prime the pump, so to speak, they already have software, in the form of media players from third party developer's, that decodes blu-ray streams on the igp, in fact i remember reading that the clarkdale is capable of playing back 2 1080p streams simultaneously, just with the integrated gpu.

it wouldn't surprise me one bit of if the next version of intel's compiler gives developer's the option of compiling their software to run entirely on the x86 cores or if available, across both the 2 cores and igp.

re: X5660's, gulftown's won't have the igp.

[deadrats]

These dual-core Clarkdale CPU's are far too expensive for what they deliver. An i5-750 or AMD quad offer far more at same and even lower prices.

tell me that in a couple of months...

[wulf109]

Perhaps they'll come down in price,but i7 and i5 quads haven't come down since they where introduced. The i7-920 started at $290 and it's still $290,the i5-750 started at $200 and it's still $200. Greed is a powerful business model,just ask Microsoft. Without a competitor prices don't come down.

[rallynavvie]

personally i can't stand intel's tick-tock business approach, it's nothing more than planned obsolescence, they had penryn's up and running before conroe's even hit the street, why not just go straight to penryn?

Actually it's been brilliant. Come out with new tech/platform and put it to the street for the "early adopters" (even though it's still really mainstream for the most) and work out bugs as you go through stepping revisions. Ultimately work toward the die shrink which will yield a nearly-perfected version of that first design but in a smaller package that requires less power and therefor less thermal dissipation. It's also a way for bigger companies to plan their upgrades. Most companies I know try to stick it out until the tock phase for their prod systems. We'll get some dev boxes from the tick phase to develop our systems on the new tech but when it goes prime-time we go with the cheaper implementation in the die shrink.

While we all know that you can't be "future proof" you at least know the next cycle for prod environments will be 2-3 years away and you won't need to prove new tech every cycle. Not only is that more cost in hardware it would also be more engineers required for parallel development. That's one of the reasons that we've never pursued AMD systems is because their roadmap isn't nearly as defined as Intel has been.

[deadrats]

Perhaps they'll come down in price,but i7 and i5 quads haven't come down since they where introduced. The i7-920 started at $290 and it's still $290,the i5-750 started at $200 and it's still $200. Greed is a powerful business model,just ask Microsoft. Without a competitor prices don't come down.

i wasn't talking about the price point, i was talking about the soon to be released video transcoding driver:

http://www.guru3d.com/news/intel-clarkdale-goes-gpgpu/

Intel announced that the Clarkdale would be capable of video encoding through a driver update that would allow it to distribute the computing tasks among ten graphics processing engines. This added feature increases the appeal of the upcoming platform and the fact that Intel finally acknowledged the importance of video transcoding through GPGPU might stir the end-users' confidence in the company's future products.

once this driver is released there will be no other choice for video transcoding, i've gone into the why's at length in another thread but the key points are:

1) assuming this is a true driver, unlike SIMD instructions (such as the SSE family) there will be no need to for software to be re-coded to take advantage of this.

2) this isn't just using DX Compute to accelerate video encoding because the clarkdale's igp is a DX10 part and DX Compute is part of DX11.

3) unlike similar technologies from ati and nvidia, this doesn't require the developer to use a proprietary api, sdk or learn new programming conventions to enable this functionality in their software.

based on what intel has said up until now this driver will most likely intercept math calculations and have them performed on the igp instead of via the hybrid fp/sse unit or the alu, if in fact this is the case, once that driver is released, it will be like someone took a mustang 5.0 (back in the day they used the 5.0 H.O. engines) and turbo charged it.

in short, it will render every cpu without a igp obsolete...

[jagabo]

Intel is talking about a DirectCompute driver. DirectCompute is a part of DX11. It will require that apps be rewritten to work with DirectCompute. Just like all encoding apps that use graphics hardware acceleration, quality will be poor.

Just look at the Clarkdale parts, they're just separate CPU and GPU (and a few other things) die on the same carrier.

[deadrats]

Intel is talking about a DirectCompute driver. DirectCompute is a part of DX11. It will require that apps be rewritten to work with DirectCompute. Just like all encoding apps that use graphics hardware acceleration, quality will be poor.

Just look at the Clarkdale parts, they're just separate CPU and GPU (and a few other things) die on the same carrier.

you have made this claim before, but as i have already pointed out there is no way for you to be right, as you point out direct compute is part of dx11, the clarkdale's igp is a dx 10 part, it doesn't support dx compute:



since the part doesn't support dx compute, since it doesn't support cuda, stream or anything else of the sort, since intel has repeatedly said that what they will be releasing is a driver and since graphics drivers since back in the 5800fx days actively will intercept and re-order instructions from game engines to allow the game to run as fast as possible on the particular vendors hardware (nvidia used to also intercept 32 bit calculations and restructure them so that they became 16 bit calculations, for faster execution on nvidia hardware at the expense of image quality, they no longer reduce the precision but they still re-order the instructions), the only other conclusion is that intel will release a similar driver that intercepts math calculations and offloads either part or all of them to the gpu.

one last thing, the fact that the cpu and gpu are still separate parts on the same wafer, that doesn't mean it can't be done, open cl allows developers to do exactly what i have described, maybe that's what they are talking about, an open cl driver, but thus far they have repeatedly said that it will be a video transcoding driver, which leads me to conclude it's not open cl based either.

can't wait to see it in action...

[jagabo]

you have made this claim before, but as i have already pointed out there is no way for you to be right, as you point out direct compute is part of dx11, the clarkdale's igp is a dx 10 part, it doesn't support dx compute

The DX11 requirement is simply for the DirectCompute API. Earlier cards already have the ability to support that feature and will simply need a driver update.

[deadrats]

The DX11 requirement is simply for the DirectCompute API. Earlier cards already have the ability to support that feature and will simply need a driver update.

let's assume for the sake of argument that you are correct, in many ways that's even better, that means the gpu acceleration won't be solely limited to video transcoding, DX Compute allows for many operations to be accelerated via gpu, we could see a wide range of applications running significantly faster on clarkdale's.