Will Upgrading My CPU Help My Encode Times? Currently i7-920. Looking To Get i7-970.

[Corey Benoit]

I know that encoding your final movie edit is complete CPU based and that open CL and CUDA only assist in real time rendering.

So currently i have a core i7920 bloomfield running overclocked @ 3.61 ghz. It came factory @ 2.67 ghz.

I am looking to upgrade to the one of the following processors to help speed up encoding times:

1.core i7 970 - 12mb cache - 3.3 ghz - quad core
2.core i7 975 extreme - 8mb cache - 3.3 ghz - quad core
3.core i7 980 extreme - 12 mb cache - 3.3 ghz - 6 core
4.core i7 990 extreme - 12mb cache - 3.47 ghz - 6 core

Price for performance which is the best upgrade, and will these help my encode times over what i already have or would it be a waste of money?

[Noa Put]

If your NLE uses all cores efficiently you will see the biggest perfomance increase from the 6 core processors, I would choose the I7 980, the little speed increase on the 990 isn't worth the extra you have to pay for it.

[Corey Benoit]

On a hackintosh would it be faster to have a socket "lga2011" cpu? I think its the i3930k?

[William Hohauser]

Correct me if I have this wrong but my understanding is that the video board is used for rendering OpenCL enabled transitions and filters as well as real-time playback. This is why older Mac models are not able to run FCPX if they do not have an OPenCL capable graphics card where as FCP7 was entirely CPU dependent. The CPU is used to create the final file encodes such as ProRes, h264 or MPEG2 for example.

So if you have background rendering enabled and by the time you want to make a master file the entire timeline is already rendered into ProRes (the default codec of FCPX), then it depends what you are outputting to. A ProRes file is a very low processor intensive codec and you will find only a modest difference in export times between the various iMacs. The drives you use will have more of an effect on time in this case. If you do more h264 or MPEG2 then the highest six core that you can afford is preferable.

Also if you rather not convert all your rough footage into ProRes before editing to save drive space then you might want to go with a six core as the CPU is decompressing the footage as it plays, however I am almost sure that a quad core is more than enough to process 720 30p h264. My quad core MacBookPro from 2010 plays 1080 24p AVCHD h264 without a hitch. 1080 60p h264 might choke up a dual quad core MacPro. Of course you could try to plan your exports, get a quad core and save money. FCPX now exports in the background which means you can still edit while exporting a different project.

[Corey Benoit]

Originally Posted by William Hohauser

Correct me if I have this wrong but my understanding is that the video board is used for rendering OpenCL enabled transitions and filters as well as real-time playback. This is why older Mac models are not able to run FCPX if they do not have an OPenCL capable graphics card where as FCP7 was entirely CPU dependent. The CPU is used to create the final file encodes such as ProRes, h264 or MPEG2 for example.

So if you have background rendering enabled and by the time you want to make a master file the entire timeline is already rendered into ProRes (the default codec of FCPX), then it depends what you are outputting to. A ProRes file is a very low processor intensive codec and you will find only a modest difference in export times between the various iMacs. The drives you use will have more of an effect on time in this case. If you do more h264 or MPEG2 then the highest six core that you can afford is preferable.

Also if you rather not convert all your rough footage into ProRes before editing to save drive space then you might want to go with a six core as the CPU is decompressing the footage as it plays, however I am almost sure that a quad core is more than enough to process 720 30p h264. My quad core MacBookPro from 2010 plays 1080 24p AVCHD h264 without a hitch. 1080 60p h264 might choke up a dual quad core MacPro. Of course you could try to plan your exports, get a quad core and save money. FCPX now exports in the background which means you can still edit will exporting a different project.

Oh ok, yea i completely agree!

The thing is i use ALOT of h.264 with my DSLR and its always 1080p. Even though i bring it into final cut and transcode, my 480GTX (i just install the quadro 4000 drivers for yesterday) Is alot faster than my 800gt i had so rendering in the timeline is easy.

What i am looking at is when i render output to h.264 for my final video, if i have some decent color grading and effects on it. It takes 30 seconds to render 11 seconds, which i believe is 100% CPU dependent.

I would like to cut that 31 seconds back to at least 20. Or even faster. which is why i am looking at CPU's.


This is a system i am thinking about building what do you think of this?

- core i7 3930 sandy bridge 6 core 12 mb cache clocked @ 4.2 ghz
- 32 GB DDR 3 @ 1.8 ghz
- nVidia 680GTX


This is my ideal setup i am looking into.

[William Hohauser]

With a "hackintosh", I have no opinion. Good luck.

[Nigel Barker]

I was surprised when I upgraded to a GTX285 CUDA card that Premiere Pro was much faster at exporting an H.264 output file as well as smooth playback on the timeline. It literally halved the time required. Hopefully FCP X can use the graphics card for export too.