AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+: Competing with Aggressive Pricing

Media Encoding Performance

Although DivX was one of the first areas we saw performance gains with when moving to 64-bit years ago, our codec and encoding front end are both still 32-bit applications.  We've moved to DivX 6.5.1 but our test settings remain the same.  We use the codec in its unconstrained profile, using a quality present of 5 in 1-pass mode.  Enhanced multithreading is enabled and we report encoding frame rate for our 1080p source file.

The Core 2 Duo E6700, the closest price competitor to the X2 6000+, delivers significantly better performance in our DivX test.  The Core 2's 22% performance advantage more than makes up for its $70 price premium.  The E6600 continues the trend by offering better performance at an even closer price to the Athlon 64 X2 5600+.  The same is true for the E6400 and the X2 5000+, the clear win goes to the Core 2 processor even when you take into account price. 

Windows Media Encoder is available in a 64-bit version and thus we used that here as one of our encoding tests.  Our test remains the same as we've run it in the past, only using the 64-bit version of WME instead of the 32-bit version.  Performance is reported in frames encoded per second:

The performance advantages aren't nearly as high as they are under DivX, but our WME tests agree with what we just saw.  At equal or similar price points, the Core 2 Duo is a much better performer than the Athlon 64 X2.  We've known this to be true ever since the Core 2 launch, but we're re-affirming it after the last round of price cuts. 

We also looked at encode time using Windows Movie Maker, a 64-bit application that comes with Windows Vista.  We measured the time it took to encode content recorded off of Media Center into a format for posting on YouTube.  Encode time was measured in seconds:

Performance under Windows Movie Maker falls somewhere in between what we saw with DivX and WME; the Core 2 family gets the clean win here. 

H.264 encoded content is still not mainstream yet, but the benefits of storing your content in the new format are numerous.  We measured H.264 encode performance using Quicktime and report the results in frames encoded per second:

The tables turn a bit under Quicktime, with the Athlon 64 X2 6000+ actually coming out on top.  The 5600+ also manages to outperform the E6600 and the 5000+ is faster than the E6400.  The results here are a bit different than under Windows XP, but we're unsure of whether that is due to Vista or the 64-bit version of Vista. 

We conclude our look at Media Encoding performance with a simple conversion from a 304MB wav file to a 192kbps MP3 using iTunes.  The conversion rate is reported in MB/s:

MP3 encoding performance shifts the balance once again over to Intel; the E6700, E6600 and E6400 each hold an advantage over their respective AMD counterparts.