x264 Benchmark

The x264 Benchmark is the work of graysky here at Tech ARP. It basically measures how fast the processor can encode a short DVD-quality MPEG-2 video clip into a high-quality x264 video clip. This is a two-pass encoding process and hence, the results will show the encoding speed (in frames per second) for each pass.

To download and try x264 Benchmark yourself, head over to the x264 Benchmark page. You can also take a look at the more comprehensive processor comparisons there.

Render Time

The x264 encoder supports multi-core processors. Hence, there is a huge performance difference between the quad-core and dual-core Core 2 processors. The quad-core Q6600, which ran at the same clock speed as the dual-core E6600, was 85.8% faster in Pass 1 and exactly twice as fast in Pass 2. Similarly, the quad-core QX6850, running at the same speed as the dual-core E8650, was 82% faster in Pass 1 and 98.6% faster in Pass 2.

The 45nm quad-core QX9650, similar to the QX6850 except for the larger L2 cache, was the fastest processor in the comparison. It was faster than the QX6850 by 5.5% in Pass 1 and 7.2% in Pass 2, and the E6850 by 92.1% in Pass 1 and just over 113% in Pass 2. The much cheaper Q9550 was a tad faster than the QX6850 even with a 9.2% slower clock speed. The Q9450 was halfway between the QX6700 and the QX6800 in performance.

The fastest dual-core Core 2 processor in the comparison was now the new 45nm E8600. It was faster than the older 65nm E6850 by 14% (Pass 1) and 18% (Pass 2). But it was much slower than the quad-core processors. Even the slowest quad-core processor in this comparison, the Q6600 was 35.4% faster in Pass 1 and 37.1% faster in Pass 2.

Aggregated Results

To make it easier to compare the results, we colour-coded the chart.

In the following comparison, we colour-coded the results for easy comparison. Yellow would denote the rendering speed of the first pass. The colour orange would denote the rendering speed of the second pass.

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