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.



To put things into perspective, the Athlon 64 X2 6400+ (a dual-core chip at 3.2GHz) is over 3.3x slower than the quad-core QX9770 at 3.2GHz. The price is also astronomically different but even the quad-core Phenom 9900 ES at 2.6GHz is also 2.3x slower. If we extrapolate the performance difference between the Phenom 9600 Black Edition and Phenom 9900 up to 3.2GHz (should there be such a chip) we get a tentative value of around 370 seconds for a similarly clocked Phenom chip - that's still quite a bit slower than the QX9770.

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.


The QX9770 is an encoding monster! Even though Intel has done what it does best in the brute force approach for this particular CPU (i.e. just make everything faster), it most definitely works in the video encoding tests. Like most of you out there, being able to afford this CPU is unlikely, but you can rest assured that a quad-core Yorkfield with the nuts clocked off it is definitely the way to go if you're a video encoding nut.