AMD's Athlon XP 1900+ (1.6GHz): Still #1

Media Encoding Performance

We benchmarked three different types of media encoding: MPEG-4 video, MPEG-2 video and MP3 audio encoding. First we start out with MPEG-4 encoding under Flask.

We benchmarked Flask using the following settings:

1) The input video was a 320 x 240, non-interlaced, MPEG-1 file
2) The iDCT algorithm was set to autodetect thus selecting the fastest possible algorithm for the particular processor
3) We used the Flask MPEG v0.60 preview with the official DivX 4.01 codec available at www.divx.com
4) The output resolution was set at 352 x 288, filtering quality set to the highest possible, and audio was not decoded
5) The DivX 4.01 codec was selected in the configure output settings; since audio wasn't being decoded we did not change any audio options
6) The encoding process was started and the frame rate at the end of the process was recorded and reported below.

MPEG-4 Video Encoding Flask MPEG 352 x 288 AMD Athlon XP 1.60GHz (1900+) AMD Athlon XP 1.53GHz (1800+) AMD Athlon XP 1.47GHz (1700+) AMD Athlon XP 1.40GHz (1600+) Intel Pentium 4 2.0GHz AMD Athlon XP 1.33GHz (1500+) AMD Athlon-C 1.4GHz Intel Pentium 4 1.9GHz Intel Pentium 4 1.8GHz Intel Pentium 4 1.7GHz Intel Pentium 4 1.6GHz Intel Pentium 4 1.5GHz 50.9 49.2 47.3 45.5 45.0 44.4 41.2 39.4 37.4 36.0 34.1 32.9 | 0 | 10 | 20 | 31 | 41 | 51 | 61

The performance domination continues as the Athlon XP scales with its clock speed. The 4% increase in clock speed resulted in a 3% increase in performance, neither of which is tangible to the end user but looks good on paper, right?

The lead over the Pentium 4 2GHz is only extended with the Athlon XP 1900+; what once was almost a 10% advantage has been extended to just over 13%. When you look at it from that perspective, the 1900+ is icing on the cake.

MPEG-2 Video Encoding Video 2000 AMD Athlon XP 1.60GHz (1900+) AMD Athlon XP 1.53GHz (1800+) AMD Athlon XP 1.47GHz (1700+) Intel Pentium 4 2.0GHz AMD Athlon XP 1.40GHz (1600+) AMD Athlon XP 1.33GHz (1500+) Intel Pentium 4 1.9GHz Intel Pentium 4 1.8GHz AMD Athlon-C 1.4GHz Intel Pentium 4 1.7GHz Intel Pentium 4 1.6GHz Intel Pentium 4 1.5GHz 49.0 47.6 46.2 44.9 44.8 43.3 43.3 41.6 40.6 40.0 38.0 36.3 | 0 | 10 | 20 | 29 | 39 | 49 | 59

The picture doesn't change much as we switch to MPEG-2 as our chosen encoding algorithm. This time using MadOnion's Video 2000 as a benchmark we see that the 1900+ is able to hold a 9% advantage over Intel's flagship.

MP3 Audio Encoding LAME Encoder - Time in Minutes (lower is better) AMD Athlon XP 1.60GHz (1900+) Intel Pentium 4 2.0GHz AMD Athlon XP 1.53GHz (1800+) Intel Pentium 4 1.9GHz AMD Athlon XP 1.47GHz (1700+) AMD Athlon XP 1.40GHz (1600+) Intel Pentium 4 1.8GHz AMD Athlon XP 1.33GHz (1500+) Intel Pentium 4 1.7GHz AMD Athlon-C 1.4GHz Intel Pentium 4 1.6GHz Intel Pentium 4 1.5GHz 2.67 2.75 2.78 2.9 2.92 3.05 3.15 3.22 3.23 3.25 3.43 3.65 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 4

For our MP3 encoding test we used version 3.89 of the Win32 LAME encoder binaries. We took a 170MB wav file and encoded it using the following command-line options: -v -V 0. This created a variable bit rate MP3, varying the bit rates between 160 kbps and 320 kbps. The end result was a 27MB MP3 file that took between 2 and 4 minutes to encode.