While H.264 is one of the most common codecs to encounter, even the most powerful workstations sometimes struggle with it. What is it about H.264 that makes it such a pain to work with, and what can you do to make it better?


While H.264 is one of the most common codecs to encounter, even the most powerful workstations sometimes struggle with it. What is it about H.264 that makes it such a pain to work with, and what can you do to make it better?

Intel has recently released a pair of highly exclusive – and expensive – processors: the Core i9 9990XE and Xeon W-3175X. The question is: does either one make sense to use for Adobe Creative Cloud applications?

Intel recently released a pair of rather odd high-end processors: the 14-core Core i9 9990XE and the 28-core Xeon W-3175X. Both have higher clock speeds than other models with similar core count, run much hotter, and have other peculiarities. Because of that, neither of these processors will have a home in our product line at this time – but they are still interesting to test for insight into what current CPU designs are capable of when pushed beyond what is practical.

Dassault Systemes recently updated SOLIDWORKS 2019 with its first service pack (SP1), and we did a roundup of Intel CPUs looking at how they perform in this popular engineering application. We found that both core count and clock speed play a role different aspects of SOLIDWORKS performance, so when Intel released their new Core i9 9990XE with very high clock speeds and a respectable number of cores (14, plus Hyperthreading) this seemed like a good application to test on it.

OTOY is nearing completion of OctaneBench 2019, the first version of their OctaneRender benchmark to support the new RTX technology in NVIDIA’s Turing-based GeForce and Quadro video cards. We will do a full performance roundup when OB 2019 is finished, but for now I wanted to put out a quick preview of the performance increase that RTX tech can bring to GPU rendering.

This article will guide you through the process of replacing the GPU (video card) in the Fractal Define R5. This article has an instruction break down along with a full video produced by Chris Shreve.

This article will guide you through the process of replacing the Front Panel in the Fractal Define R5. This article has an instruction break down along with a full video produced by Chris Shreve.

Intel launched a new processor in their Core X series recently, and it is novel in many ways. It combines a fairly high core count with very high clock speeds, at the cost of power consumption and high heat output. It also is very limited in availability, being offered only to select system integrators via a private auction. We got our hands on one in the first auction, and have been putting it through several rounds of benchmarking to see if it is worth the price and hassle, as well as to determine if we will be offering it in our workstations.

Pix4D is an advanced photogrammetry application, suited to a wide range of uses, with a focus on handling images captured by drone cameras. Processing of those images into point clouds and 3D meshes/textures is time-consuming, heavily using a computer’s CPU and GPU. Both core count and clock speed play a role in Pix4D performance, so when Intel released their new Core i9 9990XE with very high clock speeds and a respectable number of cores (14, plus Hyperthreading) this seemed like a good application to test on it.
One benefit that computers and the internet have brought to us is that they have made it easier than ever before to be creators.