New CPU but older CPU was used more effeciently by Premiere CS6? Help pls!

S

Stab

Well-known member
Today I bought an i7 3770 to upgrade from my old i5 2500k. The i7 is a tad faster and has hyperthreading which should make it around 30-35% faster in heavy threaded tasks like rendering and exporting.
Great. So I thought. But there seems to be something wrong and I don't know what.

Before, when I was exporting a file on my i5 2500k, the CPU was utilized 100%. Let's say that an average movie of 7 min was taking around 45 min to complete.
So now I was testing the i7 3770. And what happens is, that the same export now also takes 45 min. When I check the activity of the CPU, I see that it is only used for around 40-60% at best! Why?

So I did a stress test and I worked nicely. No throttling occured and the CPU went all the way up to 100% usage. Also when I create a timeline, put some clips on it and add effects like warp stabilizer and film convert and press 'render', it goes up to 100% and it is much faster than my old i5 2500k.

However, when I EXPORT a file in h264 while using the same settings as I always did, it only uses my CPU for 40-60%... What could have happened here?

I tried an export from a project both on the internal 7200 rpm HDD and a USB 3.0 7200rpm hard disk. (The one I always used to edit from)

What is the problem here?

Computer specs:
Windows 7
Premiere CS6
i7 3770
12 GB RAM (Dual Channel + Single channel)
Nvidia GTX 660
1 TB WD HDD @ 7200 RPM
Asus P8P67-M Mainboard

So, it's not the temps. And nothing else has changed except for a new CPU which should be faster than the old. And it is when it's fully used. Except for the fact that it isn't while exporting a h.264 file whereas the old CPU was. Any ideas?
Thanks so much.
 
It's not really speed I'm looking for Gariques. I want to CPU to be used 100% when exporting. This CPU should be faster than my old i5 2500k. And I'm sure it will be, but it's only used at 40-60% while exporting. The old CPU was used 100% and therefore the exports were at least just as fast as it is now. So something isn't right. That's the problem.
 
As mentioned above, the bottle neck in this case is the HD writing speed.
If you want the CPU to work at 100% while exporting, assign additional task along the exporting…
 
You might be right. I just imported some GH4 4K files, added some effects and tried another export. This time the CPU was used almost constantly between 90-100%.

So it could very well be that the CPU is bottlenecked by the HDD with less intensive GH3 1080p files.
However, my old i5 2500k was used for 100% and the export times are now around the same... In other words, I gained nothing by the i7 (with it's hyperthreading) when it comes to exporting.

How is that possible then? Was the i5 2500k exactly operating on the limit of being bottlenecked? That seems strange to me.
 
When the bottleneck is the HDD writing time, no CPU upgrade will speed up the export time. However possibly your older CPU would have been the bottleneck for 4K files exporting.
Possibly some tasks other than exporting are gained by the upgraded CPU.
 
Is Premiere CS6 using the GTX 660 for Mercury GPU Hardware Acceleration? It is likely not unless you have hacked or deleted the "CUDA_supported_cards.txt" file. Using the Nvidia GPU card can really boost performance. See if you are in hardware or software mode in CS6.

Thanks
 
Thanks Sharbor. Yes I did do the hack to the CUDA supported cards file and the Hardware acceleration is enabled. I never have to render any cross dissolve anymore :)
When I do an export and check the activity of my hardware, it shows that my GPU is never used for more than like 50%. So it is definately helping, but is not the bottleneck as well.

I guess Joshua_G is right. The 3770 does renders faster and will handle 4K files faster, but now I've unlocked a new bottleneck which is most probably the hard disk speed.
 
Stab said:
How is that possible then? Was the i5 2500k exactly operating on the limit of being bottlenecked? That seems strange to me.
Click to expand...

It's called a balanced system. And a *system* is more than a box of independent parts. As you have now graphically illustrated.

So you've upgraded the CPU. Next up is probably a hard drive upgrade (SSDs are wonderful). Adding memory if needed (especially if you are paging). Etc.
 
I've been there myself where an upgrade provides little real advantage. I've built a very similarly-configured computer and I understand your frustration.

Any complex system is only as fast as it's slowest component. You've gained some speed advantage where CPU speed was the bottleneck - cross dissolves, etc. The next place to look for performance enhancement is likely any memory devices. Things like hard drives and even your RAM speed can limit overall speed. Some third-party plugins don't use multicore or hyperthreading efficiently (or at all.) At some point, your architecture or motherboard may even become a problem.


Jim
 
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