PAR2 Multithreaded Archive Recovery Performance

Par2 is an application used for reconstructing downloaded archives. It can generate parity data from a given archive and later use it to recover the archive

Chuchusoft took the source code of par2cmdline 0.4 and parallelized it using Intel’s Threading Building Blocks 2.1. The result is a version of par2cmdline that can spawn multiple threads to repair par2 archives. For this test we took a 708MB archive, corrupted nearly 60MB of it, and used the multithreaded par2cmdline to recover it. The scores reported are the repair and recover time in seconds.

Data Recovery - par2cmdline 0.4 Multithreaded

Faster than AMD? Check. Slower than the Core i7 920? Check. Costs under $200? Check. It's a shame that Intel didn't enable Hyper Threading on the Core i5 750, otherwise it would've really ruined most of the LGA-1366 lineup. The Core i7 860 is probably the best of both worlds unfortunately they are very hard to come by at this point.

The Core i7 870 is actually faster than the i7 975 here. I'll chalk that up to DDR3-1333 with some aggressive turboing.

WinRAR - Archive Creation

Our WinRAR test simply takes 300MB of files and compresses them into a single RAR archive using the application's default settings. We're not doing anything exotic here, just looking at the impact of CPU performance on creating an archive:

WinRAR 3.8 Compression - 300MB Archive

Large file compression is very well threaded and thus we see a real difference in performance between the HT enabled i7 920 and the i5 750 without Hyper Threading. The i7 870 however is within 5% of the i7 975, at 56% of the cost.

Excel & Content Creation Performance Gaming Performance
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  • Genx87 - Tuesday, September 8, 2009 - link

    But after looking at the gaming benchmarks. I am wondering if the i5 is worth the cost to upgrade from an E8400? The best I could come up with from the graphs was the Q9560@3Gz or the E8600. In most of the games they were within a few % points. Ill have to see how the i5 does with the new round of cards from AMD\Nvidia before making a decision if I am going to build a new machine or just upgrade the GPU this winter.
  • Kaleid - Tuesday, September 8, 2009 - link

    Do like I do. Buy a better GPU. I'll stick to my e8400 at least until the 32nm CPU's arrive.

    And according to the guru3d review overclocking makes dramatically increases power consumption during load:
    "Once we overclock to 4.1 GHz... the power consumption all of a sudden is 295 Watts (!), so an additional 1200 MHz of power is costing us an additional 133 Watts."
    http://www.guru3d.com/article/core-i5-750-core-i7-...">http://www.guru3d.com/article/core-i5-7...re-i7-86...
  • papapapapapapapababy - Tuesday, September 8, 2009 - link

    "the lowest Lynnfield is a faster gaming CPU than Intel's fastest dual-core: the E8600"

    bullshit. the E8600 has higher minimum frame rates umm know "when it matters the most"


    http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/cpu/intel/lynn...">http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/cpu/intel/lynn...
  • scooterlibby - Tuesday, September 8, 2009 - link

    Nice review. Lynnfield seems like a great deal too for people building a new system, but from a gaming standpoint, I don't see enough performance difference to upgrade my overclocked e8400 setup. Guess it'll be Sandybridge for me!
  • rbbot - Tuesday, September 8, 2009 - link

    What is the maximum memmory you can fit onto a P55 chipset? I notice the Gigabtye board has 6 dimms but their website still says Max 16Gb?

    Is there a 16Gb chipset limit? Would it increase once those new high-capacity dimms from samsung make an appearance?
  • the machinist - Tuesday, September 8, 2009 - link

    I really don't know what to make of all this. I am about to buy i7 920 and over clock it to 3.6GHZ and then sometime next year upgrade the CPU to i9 6 core on LGA 1366. SLI does not interest me... cores/threads and clock speed are my main concern for 3d rendering.

    Is there any reason for someone like me to get this new platform instead? Please advice me.
  • rsher - Tuesday, September 8, 2009 - link

    I wish I had an answer for you. I am in the same situation. If you do get a good reply please post it so I could figure out what to buy..BTW what is the i9 CPU?
    I have some time before I need to upgrade. HAve you considered using the Xenon processors... I use MAX 2010..
    rSher

    .

  • the machinist - Tuesday, September 8, 2009 - link

    rSher Xeon are overkill these days considering the price premium. Single socket CPUs are so powerful these days that I just don't see the bang for the buck when it comes to Xeons. i7 920 over clocked matches some of the mid level Xeons anyway. If I was minting it and rendering only then I would get pair of high end Xeons

    Regarding your other question....
    i9 will be 6 core version that will come out next year and you can use them on LGA1366 Mobos. I think a 8 core version will come out too. They will be expensive but by the time I decide to upgrade they should be less expensive.
  • PassingBy - Tuesday, September 8, 2009 - link

    Can get single socket Xeon machines as well. The reason that professional users often prefer them is for ECC support. Up to you whether that matters for your applications. Naturally, for servers, ECC is the norm and that is also the situation for most professional workstations. Xeons can overclock as well, perhaps sometimes even better than the desktop equivalents, but professional users rarely overclock.
  • Ann3x - Tuesday, September 8, 2009 - link

    In some respects a great article. However the assertation that anything below the top end 1336 cpus are pointless is pretty obsurd.

    As others have stated the headroom and potential overclock of ANY d0 920 easily beats these new processors.

    As it is, i7s are aimed at enthusiasts. FOR AN ENTHUSIAST *ie someone willing to tweak and OC* the 920 is still by fast the best bang for buck choice.

    The new platform is only better if no tweeking is carried out (ie if youre not a technical user).

    Therefore were left with a column aimed at technical users saying something that is only relevant to non technical users. At best its a gross simplification. As worst its missleading.

    Yes, the new platform is good for the mass market, yes its exciting. However keep some perspective with your audience, the i7 920 is still BY FAR the best performance value for money CPU if you have the knowledge required to get the most out of it (as the majority of people buying X58 do).

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