PCMark Vantage x64

Publisher: Futuremark

PCMark Vantage x64 is a Vista-only 64-bit productivity benchmark that tests a range of standard application types providing a general performance number in respect to other systems.

It tests multi-core processors and requires a processor with at least SSE2 support and a graphics card that supports Shader Model 2.0 or higher.

There are test scenarios for High Definition TV and Movies, Gaming, Memory, Music, Communications, Internet, General Productivity and Hard Drive. They cover the broad range of typical software a PC user will use and acts as a good "one stop" benchmark for general system performance.


These results for the Phenom II X4 are very good, exceeding the performance results for the Intel Q9550 and even the 3.0GHz Q9650 with DDR2. The Phenom II X4 920 gets an even better result than the Core i7 920 by just over three percent. The CPUs greatly benefit from the increased MHz - far more than a faster memory controller clock alone which does absolutely nothing in the clock to clock performance comparison between generations of Phenom CPUs.

Sony Vegas Studio Platinum 8

Website: Sony Creative Software

Sony Vegas Movie Studio is an industry leading movie making application that offers support for a large variety of video formats. It can handle the latest multi-channel audio and high-definition content, even including AVCHD and HDV. Further features include mixing and editing, video composite creating and video restoration among others. As a highly threaded application it makes great use of multi-core processors.

Here we use the free version: Platinum 8, to transcode a 720x480px 945MB raw .MTS with PCM audio into a 720x480px WMV9 at VBR90, with 5.1 channel 44.1KHz 64Kbps WMA audio.


For Sony Vegas the results are slightly less than impressive than x264 encoding, as the Phenom II's slip down the table a bit below the Q9550s and even Q9450 with DDR3. The Phenom II X4 940 still pulls a 3.5 percent lead ahead of the Q9450 with DDR2, but it's not a huge amount, although the X4 920 is only 0.7 percent slower.

Again the elevated core clock speeds are the bigger winner than a faster memory clock for the Phenom II X4 940 and 920, although in a clock to clock comparison the Phenom II and original Phenom there is another five (or so) percent improvement.