After Effects V7 Render Benchmarks
Various CPUs, Stock vs. Overclocked

Last Change: 03/May/2012, 2205hrs

Whoami: Ian Mapleson
http://www.sgidepot.co.uk/sgi.html
http://www.sgidepot.co.uk/sgidepot/


Here I collate After Effects V7 render test results using various CPUs tested on a range of motherboards. The data includes a 'professional' dual-XEON X58 workstation, so my interest lies in to what extent overclocked consumer systems can approach the performance of such a pro system with two X58 CPUs in which said CPUs can't be overclocked, particularly since the same XEON on a consumer board _can_ be oc'd. Can an oc'd i7 come close to two 3.2GHz X5570s, or even beat them? And even f not, how close is it? Is the pro system worth the significantly higher cost? What about a consumer 6-core?

At the low end, can an overclocked dual-core i3 match a mid-range stock speed 4-core XEON? The latter being a common choice for entry pro systems, eg. the E5540. In all of this though, RAM capacity must be born in mind; even if an oc'd consumer setup shows competitive performance, real-world work may involve quantities of data that exceed the max RAM capacity of such systems (16GB for P55, 24GB for X58, 32GB for P67/Z68).

Perhaps only X79 boards offer a viable solution to the RAM issue in the consumer space (64GB max), but a 6-core SB-E is pretty pricey anyway. Price/performance is critical for many solo professionals on limited budgets.

I'll add more results to the tables below as and when I can.

See after the table for the various CPU/motherboard/etc. settings.

Benchmark Files:

  TotalBenchmark_AE6.aep (Tests 1 and 2) [Screenshot | Final Movie, 94MB 720x486 30Hz QuickTime]
  nightflight.aep [Screenshot | Final Movie, 114MB 720x576 25Hz QuickTime]

Results are shown in order of the Night Flight render time. All times are in minutes and seconds (mm:ss). Note that many older discussion threads found by Google searches will reveal numbers for the Night Flight test where only the first 10 frames are rendered, but all the data shown here is for rendering the entire 100 frame movie (remember this if you want to compare my data to that typically found on old forum threads).


Main Results Table

                                    CORES /         Total Benchmark
MOTHERBOARD / SYSTEM        CPU(s)  THREADS   MHz   Test 1   Test 2    Night Flight
                                                     mm:ss    mm:ss       mm:ss

ASUS Maximus IV Extreme   i7 2700K    4/8    5000    00:11    02:27       05:55     [Turbo ON; P67 Rev B3]
Dell T7500                2x X5570    8/16   3190    00:16    03:25       06:02     [NUMA]
ASUS P8Z68-V              i7 2600K    4/8    4700    00:12    02:34       06:13     [Turbo ON]
ASUS Maximus IV Extreme   i7 2700K    4/8    3900    00:14    03:07       07:39     [Turbo ON; P67 Rev B3]
Asrock P55 Deluxe           i7 870    4/8    4270
Asrock P55 Deluxe           i5 760    4/4    4017    00:16    03:28       08:49
Asrock P55 Deluxe          i7 875K    4/8    3200    00:19    04:11       09:54
Dell T7500              XEON X5570    4/8    3190    00:19    04:05       10:01
Asrock X58 Extreme6     XEON X5570    4/8    2950    00:21    04:23       10:35
Asrock P55 Deluxe           i3 550    2/4    4704    00:18    03:55       12:11
Asrock P55 Deluxe           i3 550    2/4    3200    00:26    05:45       17:52
Maximus IV Exteme        Pent G840    2/2    2800    00:27    06:18       22:05
SUN Ultra 40 M2            Opteron    4/4    2600    00:54    10:56       32:51


CPU Settings:

All configs tested with a Thermaltake Toughpower 1kW PSU, Thermalright U120 Extreme RevC cooler with 2 x Gelid Wing Blue 120mm 1500rpm, Win7/Ult/64, with the following exceptions: the SUN U40 and Dell T7500 have their own internal cooling mechanisms, and the i7 2700K used a Thermalright Venomous-X with two Coolermaster Blade Master 120m fans.

Asrock P55 Deluxe (P55), 4GB DDR3/2000 Mushkin Ridgeback (2 x 2GB):

  i7 870 @ 4270MHz (203.3 x 21, 7-10-8-27 @ 2030MHz): http://valid.canardpc.com/show_oc.php?id=1507189
  i7 870 @ 2930MHz (195.3 x 15, 7-10-8-27 @ 1953MHz): http://valid.canardpc.com/show_oc.php?id=1511561


Asrock P55 Deluxe (P55), 8GB DDR3/1600 GSkill Sniper (2 x 4GB):

  i5 760 @ 4017MHz (191.3 x 21, 9-9-9-24  @ 1530MHz): http://valid.canardpc.com/show_oc.php?id=2217331
  i5 760 @ 2945MHz (133.3 x 22, 9-9-9-24  @ 1333MHz):


Asrock P55 Deluxe (P55), 8GB DDR3/2030 Mushkin Redline (2 x 4GB),

  i7 875K @ 3200MHz (133.3 x 24, 9-9-9-24 @ 1600MHz): http://valid.canardpc.com/show_oc.php?id=2227822
  i3 550  @ 4704MHz (196.0 x 24, 7-9-9-25 @ 1568MHz): http://valid.canardpc.com/show_oc.php?id=2093028
  i3 550  @ 3200Mhz (133.3 x 24, 7-9-9-25 @ 1333MHz): http://valid.canardpc.com/show_oc.php?id=2252847


Dell Precision T7500, 12GB (single CPU) or 24GB (dual-CPU) DDR3/1333 Samsung (6x2GB/12x2GB, 9-9-9-24/?), Win7/Pro/64:

  2x XEON X5570 @ 2930MHz (HT on, Turbo on, 3190MHz): http://valid.canardpc.com/show_oc.php?id=2241184
  1x XEON X5570 @ 2930MHz (HT on, Turbo on, 3190MHz): http://valid.canardpc.com/show_oc.php?id=2236417


Asrock X58 Extreme6, 12GB DDR3/1333 GSkill Sniper (3x4GB, 7-8-7-24/1T):

  XEON X5570 @ 2950MHz (134x 22, 7-8-7-24 @ 1342MHz): http://valid.canardpc.com/show_oc.php?id=2005935


Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R, 12GB DDR3/1066 GSkill Sniper (3x4GB, 7-6-6-19/1T):

  XEON E5540 @ 2550MHz (HT on, Turbo on, 2665MHz):    http://valid.canardpc.com/show_oc.php?id=2239080


SUN Ultra 40 M2: 32GB DDR2/750 Samsung (8x4GB, 5-5-5-13/?), single EVGA GTX 460 1GB FTW (850 core):

  2X Dual-core Opteron 2218, 2.6GHz (1MB L2/core):    http://valid.canardpc.com/show_oc.php?id=2240236


ASUS Maximus IV Extreme (P67), 8GB DDR3/2133 Mushkin Redline (2x4GB, 9-11-10-28/1T):

  Pentium G840 2.8GHz (2-core, no HT, no Turbo):      http://valid.canardpc.com/show_oc.php?id=2302374
  i7 2700K @ 3.5GHz fixed (HT on, Turbo off):         http://valid.canardpc.com/show_oc.php?id=2328012
  i7 2700K @ 3.9GHz (3.5 + Turbo ON, HT on):          http://valid.canardpc.com/show_oc.php?id=2328763
  i7 2700K @ 5.0GHz (oc with Turbo ON, HT on):        http://valid.canardpc.com/show_oc.php?id=2334534


ASUS P8Z68-V (Z68), 8GB DDR3/2133 GSkill Ripjaw (2x4GB, 9-11-10-28/1T), Quadro 600:

  i7 2600K @ 4.7GHz (oc with Turbo ON, HT on):        http://valid.canardpc.com/show_oc.php?id=2353622


Other Benchmark Info:

  http://www.sgidepot.co.uk/misc/pctests.html
  http://www.sgidepot.co.uk/misc/stalkercopbench.txt
  http://www.sgidepot.co.uk/misc/x3tcbench.txt
  http://www.sgidepot.co.uk/misc/uniginebench.txt
  http://www.sgidepot.co.uk/misc/uniginebench2.txt
  http://www.sgidepot.co.uk/misc/uniginebench3.txt
  http://www.sgidepot.co.uk/misc/viewperf.txt
  http://www.sgidepot.co.uk/misc/cinebench.html
  http://www.sgidepot.co.uk/misc/ptboats.txt
  http://www.sgidepot.co.uk/misc/callofjuarez.txt