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.



The Black Edition is a couple of seconds slower on average compared to the ES 9600, but it still performs as we expect it to. Had it scaled like we wanted it to, we would have seen some good performance at 2.6GHz and above.

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.


For the first time, the Phenom 9600 ES is quite a bit faster than the 9600 Black Edition - almost 20 seconds in this case, although the performance of both is still faster than the Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 for a change and should you actually get a Black Edition that scales, it will deliver excellent performance in this scenario.