Have you already created a perfect picture of the current generation of desktop processors or are you still willing to reconsider some things? For the start of HWC processor tests, we’ve picked the hottest hardware from Intel’s mainstream offer – the Core i9-11900K, which is going to compete against the AMD Ryzen 9 5900X in 40 chapters full of information. The older Core i9-10900K has also successfully been re-tested by the new methodology.
Affinity Photo (benchmark)
Test environment: built-in benchmark.
Topaz Labs AI apps
Topaz DeNoise AI, Gigapixel AI and Sharpen AI. These single-purpose applications are used for restoration of low-quality photos. Whether it is high noise (caused by higher ISO), raster level (typically after cropping) or when something needs extra focus. The AI performance is always used.
Test environment: As part of batch editing, 42 photos with a lower resolution of 1920 × 1280 px are processed, with the settings from the images above. DeNoise AI is in version 3.1.2, Gigapixel in 5.5.2 and Sharpen AI in 3.1.2.
XnViewMP
Test environment: XnViewMP is finally a photo-editor for which you don’t have to pay. At the same time, it uses hardware very efficiently. In order to achieve more reasonable comparison times, we had to create an archive of up to 1024 photos, where we we reduce the original resolution of 5472 × 3648 px to 1980 × 1280 px and filters with automatic contrast enhancement and noise reduction are also being applied during this process. We use 64-bit portable version 0.98.4.
Zoner Photo Studio X
Test environment: In Zoner Photo Studio X, we convert 42 .CR2 (RAW Canon) photos to JPEG while keeping the original resolution (5472 × 3648 px) at the lowest possible compression, with the ZPS X profile ”high quality for archival”.
