Mystery of faster computer taking longer to render...

[HDmania]

Hi, we bought a new computer, much more powerful according to the specs, and we ran a test render with Premiere 2017 on both PC's, and it is slower, we are very puzzled.
The old PC is a HP Pavilion - 14-bf102nl laptop with 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD and an i5-8250u cpu. It has the Geforce 940MX graphics card.
The new PC is: Asus UX430UA-DH74, with 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD, and i7-8550U cpu, Intel UHD 620 graphics.

Both have Windows 10, although the newer machine has been upgraded to the big April 2018 Windows 10 update, the old one doesn't.

The older machine shows render time for the same file, to take about 30 mins - 1 hour less. Is the graphics card really the determining factor, more than CPU and RAM?

We are very puzzled. Everything else is the same - the file, the Video editor and rendering program (Adobe Premiere Pro 2017), the antivirus (Avast)... we don't know what to make of it. No other programs are running when we do the test.

What can it be?

Thanks

[Bernix]

Hi, at first look, there is bigger difference in GPUs in first computer favor. U series are very limited. And CPU is roughly equal. Bit better in second computer, but really not very much. Effective speed according to internet is about 6% better. Also what type of memory you have? I have 16GB memory and really didn't noticed it in speed. But in premiere there should be some advantage. Have you (1x16) 2x8 or 4x4GB and dual channel and its type. Or how is it connected. Edit because not whole reply was displayed


http://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core-i7-8550U-vs-Intel-Core-i5-8250U/m320742vsm338266


Also you can both computer benchmark there. If second is really much faster, so it will shroud in fog, but think you will get similar results.

[poisondeathray]

Was it just an in/out test ? Or were there some edits/effects ? Some effects are GPU accelerated and that might explain some differences. Mercury Playback Engine performs better with NVidia/CUDA

Were all the export settings the same ? For example if you use enabled use previews, the export will be faster . If you used GPU encoding, it might be faster or slower (depending on the hardware)

Check the power profiles - is one PC (newer one) set to low power/energy saving for example?

Check temps and fans - is newer PC throttling because of temps ?

[october262]

Hi, we bought a new computer, much more powerful according to the specs, and we ran a test render with Premiere 2017 on both PC's, and it is slower, we are very puzzled.
The old PC is a HP Pavilion - 14-bf102nl laptop with 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD and an i5-8250u cpu. It has the Geforce 940MX graphics card.
The new PC is: Asus UX430UA-DH74, with 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD, and i7-8550U cpu, Intel UHD 620 graphics.

Both have Windows 10, although the newer machine has been upgraded to the big April 2018 Windows 10 update, the old one doesn't.

The older machine shows render time for the same file, to take about 30 mins - 1 hour less. Is the graphics card really the determining factor, more than CPU and RAM?

We are very puzzled. Everything else is the same - the file, the Video editor and rendering program (Adobe Premiere Pro 2017), the antivirus (Avast)... we don't know what to make of it. No other programs are running when we do the test.

What can it be?

Thanks

check for a graphics card driver update

[Bernix]

Also curious why do you think that second computer is much more powerful. Bigger SSD disk (not necessarily faster) +8 GB (but what type) same cores same threads + CPU at your first computer is more recent. Slightly but is. Probably because GPU i would prefer 1st one.


Bernix

[johnmeyer]

I don't know anything about how Premiere uses a computer, but I know a lot about Vegas. In ranked order of priority, here is what affects render time.

1) CPU speed.
2) CPU cores.
3) Video card GPU (if it can be used)

Hard drive speed is seldom an issue unless you are dealing with uncompressed video (i.e. HUGE files) in which case it becomes quite important. Even if you create intermediates for editing (like Cineform), these files are still not big enough to make the drive a bottleneck. Old-fashioned SATA spinning drives are usually sufficient. SSDs usually don't buy you much when rendering.

I've never heard much discussion about memory speed or architecture being much of a factor, and I doubt it would be in the same league with the three I listed above.

As others have said, the most likely culprit is the GPU, especially since you now have a graphic card based on Intel. I'd give you about a 90% confidence that this is your problem. If you can put the old graphic card into the new computer, you should be able to confirm this, one way or the other.

[HDmania]

Well thank you for your prompt replies...
1) The test: rendering (Export to Youtube 720P 264H) of a very long video, about one hour in length. Queued in the Adobe encoder 2017 and then straight export, both PCs the same. I made sure both PC's are in "high performance" mode. I thought an i7 with 16GB RAM would have the edge, if nothing else is running in the background. Didn't think of temp throttling. I guess the next step is performance benchmarking (The windows performance index - Winaero WEI Tool- curiously, reports that the Asus machine is faster in CPU and GPU).

What benchmarks do you recommend? PcMark?

Thanks again

[jagabo]

I thought an i7 with 16GB RAM would have the edge

Once you have enough memory, more doesn't help. Complex editing will need more memory but for simple encoding of one file 4 GB is enough.

i5 vs i7 doesn't mean much, just marketing nonsense used by Intel to obfuscate what's inside. In your case both are 4 cores, 8 threads, and the same 8th generation Kaby lake (so no architectural improvement). The i7 is clocked a little higher but not so much that you would notice without a side by side comparison. In a best case scenario it would only get ~10 percent faster encoding.

Didn't think of temp throttling.

Laptops are notoriously bad for CPU intensive tasks. They're not designed for 100 percent CPU usage over extended periods. They will overheat and throttle back in a few minutes when encoding. If you really want encoding speed you want a desktop, not a laptop. Desktop CPU's are clocked about twice as fast and are less likely to throttle back while encoding.

What benchmarks do you recommend? PcMark?

The best benchmark is the software you use. It doesn't matter if some other software runs faster or slower.

[Bernix]

@Johnmeyer
For example (this is not this case) ryzen really benefits very much with dual channel much more than nowadays intels. So is better 2x4GB than 1x8GB. Also memory difference is not know if is it slightly different. HP has DDR4-2666 and Asus (I like this brand) 2133MHz DDR4. I know it shouldn't be bottleneck the speed is enormous but difference is 25% in Mhz, found nothing about latency. But apparently it can't be disadvantage. And since it is laptop so I guessing there is some reason for this type of memory in HP. It is one piece not PC custom build.



Bernix

[HDmania]

OK great, much food for thought.... very helpful.

[poisondeathray]

1) The test: rendering (Export to Youtube 720P 264H) of a very long video, about one hour in length.

But was the source 720p too? Any scaling ? The reason I ask is MPE is also responsible for scaling . Adobe is optimized for NVidia/CUDA . OpenCL performance is almost always lower for Adobe. Your only options on the Asus machine would be OpenCL and Software . Note MPE doesn't "encode", but various operations like scaling , some effects, colorspace conversions are accelerated. Overall , it can still make a significant difference in render times. There used to be a benchmark suite on the Adobe forums you can use, and check against other users in the database, not sure if it's still around but you can check

If you want an "apples to apples" test, set both to software . It should be slower for both, but the gap should be closer. If there still is a significant discrepancy, it's more information to help you debug other potential issues. It suggests something else is wrong



There are other encoders available too, like voukoder, which gives you access to libx264 (faster and better quality than the h264 encoder Adobe uses from Mainconcept), and NVEnc (very fast if you had a faster/newer Nvidia GPU)

[BobByte]

Learning a lot from this thread regarding render time. Thanks, fellas!

By the way, just in case anyone's interested, my cousin Lyn is selling an American Force Independence SS and Ironman tire package. If anyone's interested, feel free to PM me.

[Bernix]

Just one thing, don't know but it affect speed too. Your nvidia is with DDR3 memory, not GDDR5 version. So the memory is slower than shared memory of second computer integrated graphics. So it is less powrerful than version I compared. Who knows how this can affect GPU speed can say more. Also not sure how it affected rendering.


Bernix

[Jhonitto05]

I checked my hard drive and it was only 1% fragmented using the tool built into Windows. I've done registry checks and deleted all errors. I installed Windows on my new hard drive about 4 months ago and don't have a lot of programs installed and rarely download anything 'dodgy'. As for the services I use a program called Game Booster 3 to close all unnecessary processes and services whenever I boot up my pc. As for virus software I use 'ESET NOD 32 Antivirus' and have had no issues with viruses. Thanks for the help, if there's anything else you can think of please let me know. FetLife IMVU Canva

[johnmeyer]

Fragmentation is never a problem with modern disk drives, and defragmentation is a waste of time. The three things I listed earlier are the three things that affect rendering speed. If task manager shows all cores being used 100%, than your CPU is doing everything it can. However, if it shows lower percentages then either your software is doing a lousy job spreading the load across all the cores, or the O/S is slowing down the CPU to avoid overheating. You can one of dozens of heat monitoring programs to report on the CPU temp and if you find yourself near the maximum temperature for your CPU, then as others have already noted, the O/S will slow down the CPU to avoid overheating, and your render will therefore be slow.

[Zero-11]

maybe the cooling solution in the 2nd Laptop is not as good and the CPU is throttling

[sneaker]

Maybe the CPUs are configured differently? For laptop CPUs the maker can specify different throttling/TDP (e.g. 15W vs 25W). So even if you buy 2 different laptops with the same CPU on paper the speed may be different in practice. The CPUs will not hold their full 4 core turbo all the time but may downclock after a mere 15 seconds already. Start encoding and observe CPU clocks for a few minutes on both.

[TimA-C]

What about the rest of the PC? How much pre-installed cr&p is still there? How many unnecessary background tasks and services are running? Are all your drivers up to date? What security software is installed? Has it been properly configured? Are your temporary/scratch directories excluded from being monitored? etc. etc. etc.