Help Sorting out the Intel Lineup...

[Bassman2003]

Hello,

I will be building a new system this summer and trying to sort out all of the processors Intel is coming out with.

I thought there was going to be a 6 core CPU that had onboard graphics? Is this still in the future or did I just misunderstand?

My focus is video editing and was hoping the next generation of Quicksync might help with accelerating high end codecs with 4:2:2 color and 10bit. In the end, this might help more than the 8 or 10 core Skylake-X models for pure timeline playback.

It is tough to find out much info on Quicksync and would like to know before I make the decision to build a Skylake-X system. Thank for your input.

 

[LTC8K6]

The new desktop Coffee Lake chips will be announced in a couple of months, but not sure when they will be available to purchase.
There should be a 6 core part with an IGP.

It will likely be the same as the current Kaby Lake IGP.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_HD_and_Iris_Graphics#Capabilities_.28GPU_video_acceleration.29

 

[Sweepr]

Hello,

I will be building a new system this summer and trying to sort out all of the processors Intel is coming out with.

I thought there was going to be a 6 core CPU that had onboard graphics? Is this still in the future or did I just misunderstand?

That's correct. Coffee Lake will have an iGPU with 24 EUs, just like its predecessor.

https://gfxbench.com/device.jsp?ben...=GPU&hwname=Intel(R)+Coffee+Lake+UHD+Graphics

 

[Bouowmx]

A bit from the long Intel Skylake thread: Coffee Lake 6-core (K models only?) and Z370 coming between August and September.

The answer of the big question of whether Coffee Lake can be used in 100 and 200 series motherboards is still unknown. For OP, the question does not really matter because it is a new system, unless some old discounted motherboards can be had.

 

[Bassman2003]

Hey thanks for your help! I currently have a 4790k chip that is not cutting it. My editing software offers Quicksync decode acceleration but I think that only applies to 8bit 4:2:0 video material. I shoot with 10bit 4:2:2 codecs and was hoping there would be a new generation of Quicksync to help out. Maybe the Skylake-X is the best choice in the end.

So yes, this is for a complete new build. It is odd to me that Intel has so many part names/numbers and the release dates are kind of random in nature. I will probably build in July so maybe I can get some hard info on Coffee Lake before taking the plunge.

 

[AlbertS]

Hey thanks for your help! I currently have a 4790k chip that is not cutting it. My editing software offers Quicksync decode acceleration but I think that only applies to 8bit 4:2:0 video material. I shoot with 10bit 4:2:2 codecs and was hoping there would be a new generation of Quicksync to help out. Maybe the Skylake-X is the best choice in the end.

So yes, this is for a complete new build. It is odd to me that Intel has so many part names/numbers and the release dates are kind of random in nature. I will probably build in July so maybe I can get some hard info on Coffee Lake before taking the plunge.

I am facing the same problem re upgrade for 4k video editing. What software are you using?
I was planning on i7-7700k then saw overheating problems so decided to wait for the new X series but just found new Kaby Lake 7740X has disabled the GPU !!
None of the Skylake X CPUs have a GPU or Quicksync either. Seems the new i9s are just a marketing move in reply to Ryzen (I'm not an AMD fan).
Magix (now own Sony Vegas software) claim realtime 4k h.264 and h.265 HEVC plus h.265 10 bit color HEVC 10 with only a Kaby Lake CPU using Intel 630 graphics but I can't find anyone who has tried it.
https://software.intel.com/en-us/videos/how-magix-made-4k-360-video-editing-swift-and-easy

 

[AlbertS]

i9 is just a branding scheme to combat the Ryzen pressure. The i9's will just be the high end desktop parts that are Xeon's with ECC removed and repackaged. It is nothing different than prior high-end desktops which were labeled i7 with an X at the end. They do not have integrated graphics.

 

[mtcn77]

I don't know about decode, but if you are going encode you might want to conserve quality with software encoding. Ryzen seems to be up to the task. *Taken from Linus Tips:*

 

[AlbertS]

mtcn77 - not sure what Linus is referring to - do you have link?
Old Quicksync Video 4600 (on the 4790K) had encoding had quality issues but Kaby Lake iGPU has improved and actually has two encoding settings for speed vs best quality.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/10959...ration-kaby-lake-i7-7700k-i5-7600k-i3-7350k/6
You examples are 1080P which edits easily in an old Haswell i5. 4K is a challenge.
I'm not an AMD fan - Intel 1st quarter profits were more than 3X AMD turnover and AMD still showed a loss. Nvidia have taken over the GPU card market. Still not sure AMD will survive but competition benefits us all with new i9 pricing. Cheapest is not always the best solution.

 

[mtcn77]

mtcn77 - not sure what Linus is referring to - do you have link?
Old Quicksync Video 4600 (on the 4790K) had encoding had quality issues but Kaby Lake iGPU has improved and actually has two encoding settings for speed vs best quality.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/10959...ration-kaby-lake-i7-7700k-i5-7600k-i3-7350k/6
You examples are 1080P which edits easily in an old Haswell i5. 4K is a challenge.
I'm not an AMD fan - Intel 1st quarter profits were more than 3X AMD turnover and AMD still showed a loss. Nvidia have taken over the GPU card market. Still not sure they will survive but competition benefits us all with new i9 pricing. Cheapest is not always the best solution.

It was the streaming quality challenge.

You'll be okay with either cpu; that is the essence of it, imo. Software encoder is the best(more compact).

 

[AlbertS]

It was the streaming quality challenge.

You'll be okay with either cpu; that is the essence of it, imo. Software encoder is the best(more compact).

Software encoding is not a problem but both encoding and decoding are CPU intensive. Using the Intel iGPU makes both faster using hardware acceleration. Neither Ryzen or new Intel i9 series have iGPUs so we can't compare them to to Kaby Lake i7-7700K. New 7740X has disabled the iGPU.

 

[mtcn77]

Software encoding is not a problem but both encoding and decoding are CPU intensive. Using the Intel iGPU makes both faster using hardware acceleration. Neither Ryzen or new Intel i9 series have iGPUs so we can't compare them to to Kaby Lake i7-7700K. New 7740X has disabled the iGPU.

That's the real time aspect of the benchmark and QuickSync is a touch faster than 6900 with ShadowPlay. The quality feature also pertains to your benchmarks.

With enough time in hand, more strenuous settings can be utilized; I recall somewhere at another source these 'faster' settings were disproportionately lacking in quality, so it is all irrelevant.
What I want to see is decode benchmarks with MadVR. There is not much necessity pushing encode to consumer hardware, imo. Let's see super-XBR upscaling to 4K, etc.

 

[LTC8K6]

Couldn't a video card do this encoding and decoding, like a GT1030? It has the latest NVENC capabilities.

Or the AMD equivalent?

 

[mtcn77]

Couldn't a video card do this encoding and decoding, like a GT1030? It has the latest NVENC capabilities.

Or the AMD equivalent?

Consumers do them and 4K decode with filters really push the bars - like 1060-480-1070 in order for 4Kp60+. The quality is worth it, though. Font is easily indistinguishable from raw. You totally don't need these, if you won't upscale FullHD material to 4K and such. Nvidia is 2x better at bitrate than AMD.

 

[Bassman2003]

I use Grass Valley Edius as my editor. Software encoding is always better for quality but you need a lot of CPU to make up for the encoding time difference from Quicksync. Playback decoding is like a free gift. I wish motherboard manufacturers offered this feature as a separate onboard chip. Most users do not actually need the GPU but want the acceleration.

Sadly, my software does not take advantage of GPU assistance like Adobe Premiere. I have doubts that the Coffee Lake chips will be out in August/September. Just seems too close to this very large release of CPUs from Intel this summer. It is very complex as each NLE is designed a little differently.

 

[Ratman6161]

Seems like everyone is making this a lot more complicated than it needs to be.
1. If you really want IGP then your only choice as of today is the i7-7700K. There is nothing about the Skylake-x announcement that changes this as none of them has IGP. Recommending AMD doesn't help either as once again, no IGP.

2. If you want to step up the ladder in CPU power above the 4 core 8 thread level i7 level, there is no way around giving up IGP in either the Intel or AMD lineup if you want to build today.

3. Other than 1 and 2, the option is to wait for for the Coffee Lake CPU's to come out. The other options wont be going away between now and then so unless you are in some kind of hurry to get it built, this is probably the best option i.e. wait a while and see what comes out and how it performs in real world tests..

Just seems too close to this very large release of CPUs from Intel this summer. It is very complex as each NLE is designed a little differently.

Not really. The X level cpus always lag at least a generation behind the regular desktop CPU's. They are also aimed at a different market segment. So I don't see the recent skylake-x announcements having any bearing on when Coffee lake is released.

4. You say you aren't an AMD fan. But don't let biases based on previous generations sway you. I was an "AMD fan" in the days of the Athlon, Athlon 64 and Athlon 64x2 which were killer in their day. But gave up on them for a long time for anything other than certain niche purposes. But the R5 and R7 truly are game changers. If you make the decision to give up igp and move up to skylake-x, then it would seem to me to just be doing due diligence to at lease compare benchmarks. The AMD's are likely to remain bargains price wise compared to Intel CPUs with comparable core/thread counts and the money saved could be put into beefing up the graphics card.

5. If money is no object then the choice is Skylake-x + a high end graphics card.

 

[AlbertS]

Seems like everyone is making this a lot more complicated than it needs to be.
1. If you really want IGP then your only choice as of today is the i7-7700K. There is nothing about the Skylake-x announcement that changes this as none of them has IGP. Recommending AMD doesn't help either as once again, no IGP.

2. If you want to step up the ladder in CPU power above the 4 core 8 thread level i7 level, there is no way around giving up IGP in either the Intel or AMD lineup if you want to build today.

3. Other than 1 and 2, the option is to wait for for the Coffee Lake CPU's to come out. The other options wont be going away between now and then so unless you are in some kind of hurry to get it built, this is probably the best option i.e. wait a while and see what comes out and how it performs in real world tests..



Not really. The X level cpus always lag at least a generation behind the regular desktop CPU's. They are also aimed at a different market segment. So I don't see the recent skylake-x announcements having any bearing on when Coffee lake is released.

4. You say you aren't an AMD fan. But don't let biases based on previous generations sway you. I was an "AMD fan" in the days of the Athlon, Athlon 64 and Athlon 64x2 which were killer in their day. But gave up on them for a long time for anything other than certain niche purposes. But the R5 and R7 truly are game changers. If you make the decision to give up igp and move up to skylake-x, then it would seem to me to just be doing due diligence to at lease compare benchmarks. The AMD's are likely to remain bargains price wise compared to Intel CPUs with comparable core/thread counts and the money saved could be put into beefing up the graphics card.

5. If money is no object then the choice is Skylake-x + a high end graphics card.

1. Agreed - but many NLEs are using Intel iGPU for h.264 and h.265 decoding as 4k software decoding is taxing even the top CPUs when you add multiple layers of 4k. 7740X has disabled the iGPU so that leaves i7-770K - or wait for Coffee Lake as you say.
4. Competition is great and benefits us all as we've see with better prices on i9s. Intel's 1st quarter profits were 3X AMD's turnover and AMD still recorded a nett loss. Nvidia has stomped them in the GPU card market. I would give AMD another year to prove Ryzen quality, solve memory and other problems and a lot of app software has yet to be optimized for Ryzen. My concern is AMD may not survive (they don't make Ryzens) and my next upgrade will be a 3-5 year investment so I'll stick with Intel.

 

[AlbertS]

I use Grass Valley Edius as my editor. Software encoding is always better for quality but you need a lot of CPU to make up for the encoding time difference from Quicksync. Playback decoding is like a free gift. I wish motherboard manufacturers offered this feature as a separate onboard chip. Most users do not actually need the GPU but want the acceleration.

Sadly, my software does not take advantage of GPU assistance like Adobe Premiere. I have doubts that the Coffee Lake chips will be out in August/September. Just seems too close to this very large release of CPUs from Intel this summer. It is very complex as each NLE is designed a little differently.

Bassman - Edius is a great NLE - and 8 has added h.265 timeline support using Intel iGPU decoding. Your 4790K has Intel 4600 iGPU (same as mine). The Kaby Lake i7-7700K has much faster and better quality iGPU with 4k support and better Quicksync which may be as good as software decoding. New i9 Kaby Lake 7740K is a bit faster CPU but for some strange reason they have disabled the iGPU so it won't help you with Edius - you need an Intel iGPU. So forget i9s and Ryzen options even if you add an expensive Nvidia 1080TI you will loose Quicksync and accelerated timeline playback. See what Edius users think of the 7700K vs your 4790K on their forum. May plan is to wait for Coffee Lake 6 core CPU with Gen9 Intel iGPU (same as Kaby Lake) of if you are not in a hurry wait for Cannon Lake next year which will have newer Gen10 Intel iGPU. If you are in a hurry the i7-7700K with an ASUS Prime Z270 motherboard is a good bet.

 

[LTC8K6]

Bassman - Edius is a great NLE - and 8 has added h.265 timeline support using Intel iGPU decoding. Your 4790K has Intel 4600 iGPU (same as mine). The Kaby Lake i7-7700K has much faster and better quality iGPU with 4k support and better Quicksync which may be as good as software decoding. New i9 Kaby Lake 7740K is a bit faster CPU but for some strange reason they have disabled the iGPU so it won't help you with Edius - you need an Intel iGPU. So forget i9s and Ryzen options even if you add an expensive Nvidia 1080TI you will loose Quicksync and accelerated timeline playback. See what Edius users think of the 7700K vs your 4790K on their forum. May plan is to wait for Coffee Lake 6 core CPU with Gen9 Intel iGPU (same as Kaby Lake) of if you are not in a hurry wait for Cannon Lake next year which will have newer Gen10 Intel iGPU. If you are in a hurry the i7-7700K with an ASUS Prime Z270 motherboard is a good bet.

SL is gen 9 IGP, KL is gen 9.5 IGP, just to be picky.
Haswell is gen 7.5

Haswell is QS v3
Skylake is QS v5
Kaby Lake is QS v6

 

[AlbertS]

LTC8K6 - I can't keep up with all the Intel Lakes, Gens and Versions - so please excuse me - except Anandtech says "To be clear, Kaby Lake is still an Intel Gen9 GPU – the core GPU architecture has not changed – but Intel has revised the video processing blocks to add further functionality and improve their performance for Kaby Lake", (to be "pickyer"), so I get confused. Thanks

 

[Bassman2003]

Well my only desire to get a system that will execute better than I have now. My problem is my Panasonic cameras use a 4:2:2 10 bit codec which I am pretty sure is not supported by Kaby Lake's Quicksync version. I was hoping to find out if Coffee Lake had a new spec IGP but it seems like it will have the same as the existing IGP in Kaby Lake. So it looks like Skylake-X, 8 or 10 core for me. Edius seems to depend upon a fair amount of single threaded activity for playback so I am really liking the two golden core approach in Skylake-X.

Everybody talks about 4k but I have issues with playback using 1080p60 material with some color correction filters. Decoding these very detailed and compressed codecs takes a lot of umph. Especially with a multicamera shoot...

 

[AlbertS]

For your Pana 4:2:2 try transcoding to Grass Valley HQX codec (4:2:2) and then edit with Edius. Your 4790K should be all you need for that.
For professional work you can try DaVinci Resolve (free) and if you have performance issues, try Optimized Media using ProRes or DNxHD. Resolve benefits from 6-8 cores but claims a 10X performance in ver 14 beta on existing hardware.
For h.264/265 codecs Edius plus Intel GPU is hard to beat.
Many are confused because silicon CPU technology hit the wall about six years ago and stalled around 4-5 GHz and it's not going to improve much for many years. More cores only helps if your app software is multi-threaded. There is little benefit moving from you 4790K to a 7700K except the iGPU. Kaby Lake iGPU has 10 bit color but it's 4:2:0. More cores should not be necessary for HD editing so don't run out and buy an i9.
Adobe P-Pro still struggles as they have only optimized effects for GPU so software decoding is still CPU intensive.
You shouldn't need to upgrade until you move to 4k editing. You might benefit more from 16GB ram and a fast SSD to avoid I/O bottlenecks if you don't have already. Send me a PM if you try GV HQX 4:2:2 and let me know if it helps as we are wandering off topic from Intel.
Al

 

[mtcn77]

How is the bitrate? If it is 150MB/s then AMD cannot help you, if it is +300MB/s neither Nvidia can. There is no acceleration for these types of media streaming. It is just the way it is unfortunately. You have no iGPU to accelerate too, only software decoding. HD630 for instance, does 120 MB/s.

 

[LTC8K6]

LTC8K6 - I can't keep up with all the Intel Lakes, Gens and Versions - so please excuse me - except Anandtech says "To be clear, Kaby Lake is still an Intel Gen9 GPU – the core GPU architecture has not changed – but Intel has revised the video processing blocks to add further functionality and improve their performance for Kaby Lake", (to be "pickyer"), so I get confused. Thanks

KL has an improved Gen9 IGP, thus Gen 9.5. Not a big enough jump to call it Gen 10, but a difference.
Coffee Lake 6C will almost certainly be the same IGP as KL.

Wiki has very good coverage of Intel IGPs and their features and capabilities.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_HD_and_Iris_Graphics

 

[Bassman2003]

Thanks for your responses. The lack of clear options sort of sucks. I do not want to transcode everything and the system does bog down with 1080p60 material with some filters applied. I will wait until some Edius users can test the new chips to see if there is any benefit but I am not super optimistic. The IGP was kind of my best shot to get better decoding performance but it looks like 4:2:2 material is still not supported. Sigh...