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[pepar]

Are there any guidelines on the CPU needed to transcode 4k to 2k movies in a PC with no dedicated GPU?

[pepar]

No one?

[mwillems]

No one?

I think the problem is that there's no way to know in the abstract because some CPUs have specialized hardware encoding/decoding for certain codecs, and the framerate and dynamic range of the source and output will also affect the question.  The answer is very much "it depends" what kinds of files you're trying to transcode (From what format?  To what format?)

I'd suggest having a look on the internet for handbrake benchmarks to get a rough idea of what various CPUs will do in a different transcoding contexts, see e.g. (it's a few years old, but you can get the idea):  https://www.anandtech.com/show/17585/amd-zen-4-ryzen-9-7950x-and-ryzen-5-7600x-review-retaking-the-high-end/14

[pepar]

Thanks. I know what load is put on my i7-14700 when I downscale 4k movies to 2k and have real concern about the performance of my i3-10300 HTPC. Guess I need to try one.

[mwillems]

Thanks. I know what load is put on my i7-14700 when I downscale 4k movies to 2k and have real concern about the performance of my i3-10300 HTPC. Guess I need to try one.

Just in general, you can see that your i7 has about four times the CPU speed (using all cores) and about double the CPU speed (using a single core).  That's setting aside whether either of the processors have specialized support for encoding and decoding.  So all else equal, you should probably expect the i3 to be a minimum of between 2x to 4x slower than that i7, and it might be even slower if there's a difference in hardware encoding or decoding.

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/3765vs5852/Intel-i3-10300-vs-Intel-i7-14700

If your i7 is handling realtime transcoding at 10% load (or offline transcoding at 10x realtime), the i3 will probably work fine.  If the i7 is doing realtime transcoding at 30% CPU utilization (or offline transcoding at 3x realtime), I wouldn't expect the i3 to work reliably.

[pepar]

Thank you.

[pepar]

Hah! The i3-10300T and Intel Graphics is woefully inadequate to downscale 4k to 2K. I did not get 24fps, or 23.976fps for that matter; I got 12. I should have been able to deduce that from my experience with an i7-14700K needing ~220 watts and reaching 200° F to barely do the same transcode in "real time."

Thanks to all who replied.

[craigmcg]

For the last few/several years the onboard video has been better (much in some cases) on AMD than Intel (check out mwillems link). Ryzen APUs offer excellent value for HTPC use if you want to look into replacing your I3.

[pepar]

Thanks. 4K displays are on my near future plan anyway. This pushes it closer.

[pepar]

For the last few/several years the onboard video has been better (much in some cases) on AMD than Intel (check out mwillems link). Ryzen APUs offer excellent value for HTPC use if you want to look into replacing your I3.

My i3-10300T does a marvelously fine job on upscaling chroma on 1080p content displayed on a 1080p display. I'd lean toward it being OK on upscaling chroma on 4K content displayed on a 4K display. Upscaling/downscaling 2K/4K is the show stopper.