HandBrake Video Transcoding

Website: HandBrake

We perform a simple encoding test using the freely available HandBrake software, which converts a 60-second, 400MB, 4K, MKV video sample to a high quality, 1080p, MP4 file using the available presets. Our results show strong scaling with increasing threads, which is indicative of high-performance video editing suites, albeit without any GPU acceleration.

PCMark 8 Photo Editing V2

Website: Futuremark

This workload involves making a series of adjustments to a set of photographs using ImageMagik - an open-source image processing library - to adjust brightness, contrast, saturation and gamma. When a favourable balance is found, the changes are then applied to the rest of the images in the set. TIFF files up to 67MB in size are used.

CPU-Z

Website: CPUID

The popular tool for identifying key system information such as real-time CPU frequency, voltage, BIOS version, memory speed, and a whole load of other figures also includes a built-in benchmark tool. This assesses both single and multi-threaded performance in an extremely quick test directly within the usual interface. It also offers a stress test and the ability to limit the number of threads being benchmarked. We use the default settings and obtain both single- and multi-threaded results. The version we use is 1.79, and results are not compatible with previous versions as outlined here.