DivX 6.7 Encoding

Website: Divx.com

We tested video encoding performance using VirtualDub-MPEG version 1.6.15 and DivX 6.7 with multi-threading enabled and SSE2 or SSE4 enabled where appropriate. We did a two-pass encode of a 15-minute 276MB MPEG-2 digital TV recording with a target file size of 100MB.

While this benchmark does use SSE4 which is currently unique to Intel's 45nm processors, the latest DivX 6.7 has enhanced Multi-threading support and also uses SSE2 enhancements, which applies to all of the processors tested.

While Intel has admitted to bit-tech that it throws out some "best case scenario" numbers to the press, we took our usual MPEG-2 digital TV recording that we use for our XviD tests and DivXed it instead using the same VirtualDub we always do.



In DivX 6.7 encoding, the Phenoms really perform reasonably and the multi-threaded capability of the latest DivX certainly contributes to this. And, while the Phenoms don't have the same SSE4 instructions as the Core 2 Extreme QX9650, they do take advantage of the SSE2 optimisations that all the other processors use.

The performance increase over Athlon 64 X2s is very notable here, and the scaling is very good, but with a core frequency topping out at 2.6GHz, Phenom still delivers less performance than lower clocked Intel quad-core CPUs. The L3 extra cache on the Phenom certainly helps, but as it's far slower and smaller than L2 cache on the Intel Core 2 CPUs, the AMD chips lose out.

AutoMKV x264 Encoding

Website: Doom9

We tested x264 compression using AutoMKV version 0.90 and x264 to to compress a 1.1GB DVD VOB file into 350MB MP4 file using a two-pass encode and we used a 112kbps LAME encoder to compress the audio. The whole process is dependent on both single and multi-core performance and the entire encoding time was recorded.

There's quite a shift to using MKV or MP4 wrappers for x264 content now, especially for movie content and those in the large anime fansubbing community. x264 doesn't have the same SSE enhancements as DivX 6.7 but the benefits of extra cache and better memory performance should still show notable improvements.


We see that quad-core is definitely the way to go in x264 encoding, with very large increases in speed across the board over dual-core alternatives from both AMD and Intel. The test uses both a combination of intensive single and multi-core performance as the scripts encode both video and audio.

The Phenoms perform remarkably well here, even outperforming the competition from Intel in many cases - the 2.4GHz and even 2.3GHz Phenoms outperform the 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600, and the 2.6GHz Phenom is better than the 2.67GHz Intel Core 2 Quad Q6700 also. Should AMD finally reach 3GHz this could make for an MPEG4-AVC encoding monster.