Premiere Pro 2017 Intel Core i7 7700K & i5 7600K Performance

Introduction

When Intel launches a new set of CPUs, the main question everyone wants answered is how much faster they are compared to the old models. In this article, we will be tackling this question in terms of Premiere Pro performance by examining how the new Intel Core i7 7700K and i5 7600K perform compared to the previous generation Intel Core i7 6700K and i5 6600K. Since we are currently recommending the “High-End” Core i7 CPUs in our Premiere Pro workstations, we are also going to include the i7 6850K, i7 6900K, and i7 6950X.

There are a wide variety of tasks we could test in Premiere Pro, but in this article we will specifically be looking at:

1. Rendering previews
2. Exporting to H.264
3. Exporting to DNxHD HQ and DNxHR HQ
4. Performing a Warp Stabilize Analysis

If you would rather skip over our analysis of the benchmarks, feel free to jump right to the conclusion section.

Test Setup

To see how the new Core i7 7700K and i5 7600K perform in Premiere Pro, we used the following configurations:

These test configurations include three different platforms along with seven different CPU models. For Premiere Pro, we typically would recommend a “High-End” Core i7 CPU with 6-10 cores so while the i7 7700K and i5 7600K are the focus of this article, much of our analysis will be centered on how they compare to the higher core count CPUs.

The media files we will be using come from a variety of sources. Many of these are available for public download, while others were graciously provided for us to use in our Premiere Pro testing:

Using these files, we will be testing a variety of different tasks which should give us a good idea of how the different CPU models impact performance in Premiere Pro:​

• Rendering previews
• Exporting to H.264
• Exporting to DNxHD HQ and DNxHR HQ
• Performing a Warp Stabilize Analysis

For exporting and rendering previews, we used relatively simple timelines in order to keep them as real-world as possible. In the past, we’ve loaded on the effects to show the maximum difference between configurations, but we found that this was not representative of typical real-world performance and in this case might introduce CPU or GPU bottlenecks. These test timelines consisted of:

• 4-6 clips arranged in series to make a 60 second timeline
• A basic cross dissolve transition applied between each clip
• Lumetri color correction effect applied to each clip
• Vector-based logo graphic added to the bottom corner of the footage

The warp stabilization analysis was performed on 10 second clips with H.264 1080p, H.264 4K and RED 4K footage.

Render Previews

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Rendering previews is a good test in and of itself, but it is also a useful indication of how complex of timelines you should be able to play through without even the need for previews to be generated in the first place. Compared to the previous generation Intel Core i7 6770K, the new i7 7700K is on average about 5.6% faster. One interesting thing to point out is that while the i7 7700K performs at about the same level as the “High-End” Core i7 CPUs when working with a 1080p composition, if you make the jump to 4K you will really start to see a benefit from having more CPU cores. While on average the i7 7700K is only 13.4% slower than the i7 6950X, for 4K alone it is actually 21.6% slower. This isn’t huge (especially considering the difference in price), but for most video editing professionals that 21.6% performance improvement should be significant.

Export to H.264

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When exporting to H.264, we saw a very decent ~10% increase in performance with the i7 7700K compared to the i7 6700K for both 1080p and 4K. This is still about 4-11.5% slower than the i7 6850X (depending on if you export to 1080p or 4K), but it closes the gap between the normal consumer Core i7 CPUs and the High-End Core i7 CPUs quite a bit. Compared to the i7 6950X – which is the best CPU for Premiere Pro at the moment – the i7 7700K is about 15% slower on average (5.5% slower when exporting to H.264 1080p and 31.7% slower when exporting to H.264 4K).

Although the i5 7600K is about 11% faster than the i5 6600K, it is roughly 25-35% slower than the i7 6850K. Compared to the i7 6950X, it is about 27% slower for 1080p and just a hair above half the performance when exporting to 4K.

Exporting to DNxHD HQ & DNxHR HQ

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Exporting to DNxHD HQ and DNxHR HQ is more demanding than H.264, which results in more significant performance gains with higher core count CPUs. This time, we saw only a small 3.8-5.1% (or an average 4.3%) increase in performance with the i7 7700K compared to the i7 6700K. Compared to the i7 6850X, however, the i7 7700K is about 15% slower. Going all the way up to the i7 6950X, the i7 7700K is ~25.6% slower for both DNxHD HQ 1080p and DNxHR HQ 4K.

Warp Stabilize (Analyze)

[+] Show full benchmark results

Benchmarking the analysis portion of warp stabilize is new to our Premiere Pro benchmark suite, but it gives some very interesting results. Unlike rendering and exporting, this task appears to be either single or lightly threaded – meaning it does not take advantage of a high number of CPU cores. Because of this, the “High-End” Core i7 CPUs do not actually fare very well compared to the quad core CPUs. In fact, the new i7 7700K is about 30-40% faster than the 6-10 core CPUs!

Compared to the i7 6700K, the new i7 7700K is able to complete the analysis about 7.6% faster. Surprisingly, the i5 7600K is also faster than the i7 6770K by about 4.2%. We’re not quite sure why this is since the 6700K has an equal maximum Turbo Boost frequency, higher base frequency, and supports Hyperthreading, but we verified the results multiple times and they were very consistent.

Conclusion

Overall, while the new Core i7 7700K still isn’t able to match the “High-End” Core i7 CPUs when working with 4K footage it has some decent performance gains over the old i7 6700K.

Compared to the old Core i7 6700K, the new i7 7700K should be somewhere around 7% faster for most tasks in Premiere Pro. If you work with 1080p projects, the i7 7700K will actually almost match the i7 6850K when rendering previews and only be about 10% slower when exporting. If you have already made the move to 4K, however, the i7 7700K will be about 10% slower for previews and about 14% slower when exporting. Compared to the i7 6950X, the i7 7700K lags a bit more for 4K, coming in at about 20% slower for previews and 25-30% slower for exporting.

It might not seem fair to compare the i5 7600K to the more expensive i7 CPUs, but considering the price difference between the i5 7600K and the i7 7700K is only around $100 it is actually a very valid comparison. While the i5 7600K certainly held it’s own in our warp stabilize benchmark, when rendering previews it came in at about 26.2% slower than the i7 7700K and for exporting the difference was even larger at 35.8%. While we don’t show it in the chart above, compared to the old i5 6700K the i5 7600K clocked at just under 12% faster on average.

For professional Premiere Pro users, we would highly recommend considering one of the “High-End” Core i7 CPUs like the i7 6850K, i7 6900K, or the i7 6950X instead of a more standard quad core CPU. Especially for 4K and higher, these CPUs should be noticeably faster than even the i7 7700K and they allow for much higher amounts of system RAM to be used. If you do a ton of warp stabilization or just dabble in video editing, however, the Core i7 7700K actually performs very well for it’s price – especially if you mostly stick to 1080p footage.

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