Media Encoding and Gaming Benchmarks

Media Encoding

One area where Intel processors have enjoyed an advantage over Athlon 64 is Media Encoding.  Many have expected that Media Encoding with 64-bit extensions would erase that advantage.  We ran the latest XMPEG 5.0.3 with the latest DIVX codec 5.1.1 to compare encoding performance in a common 2-pass setup.  

Media Encoding - XMPEG 5.0 with DIVX 5.1. 1

 

32-Bit

(Windows XP SP1)

64-Bit

(XP64 Preview Edition)

% Change

32 to 64-bit

XMpeg 5.03/Divx 5.1.1

2-Pass

58.7 fps

67.8 fps

+15.5%

Keep in mind that the software we used is not really written for 64-bit operation.  Even so, we found 64-bit encoding to be 15.5% faster than 32-bit.  With 64-bit versions of the encoding software we would expect even higher performance.  Keep in mind that this is a preview version of XP64, hampered by very early drivers, running an encoder optimized for 32-bit.  It certainly appears that Media Encoding under Windows XP64 will be a totally different animal. 

Gaming

The Athlon 64 quickly distinguished itself as the Gaming CPU with its outstanding performance in almost every 32-bit game.  With that kind of 32-bit advantage, we fully expected 64-bit gaming to fly.

Game Performance - Athlon 64 FX51

 

32-Bit

(Windows XP SP1)

Frames Per Second

64-Bit

(XP64 Preview)

Frames Per Second

% Change

32 to 64-bit

Halo DX9.0b

1024x768

55.0

44.5

 -19.1%

Splinter Cell

1024x768

57.52

40.10

-30.3%

X2

1024x768

 135.9

 130.1

 -4.3%

Quake 3

1024x768

 482.0

235.0

-51.2 %

Unreal Tournament 2003 - 1024x768

Flyby

291.85

233.52

-19.0%

Unreal Tournament 2003 - 1024x768

Botmatch

112.46

88.21

-21.6%

GunMetal 2 - Bench 2

DX9 1024x768

49.14

30.63

-37.7%

GunMetal 2 - Bench 1

DX9 1024x768

39.93

26.50

-33.6%

Comanche 4

1024x668 4AA

71.24

52.35

-26.5%

Gaming is the one area in the preview that is a disappointment.  As you can see, the standard benchmark games under XP64 Preview were 4% to 51% slower than 32-bit, with the average speed about 20% slower.  It is far too early to reach any conclusions in this area, but there is a lot of driver optimization to be done to make up this kind of delta.  With the CPU and memory providing faster 64-bit performance, we have to believe the drivers play a big part in this disappointing gaming performance.

Epic was demonstrating UT 2004 64-bit at the release of the Athlon 64 last September, and by all reports the performance was amazing.  Perhaps we will only see the promised advantage of 64-bit in games written or compiled for XP64.  As we have already said, it is too early to draw conclusions;  We are only asking questions.  nVidia, ATI, Microsoft, and chipset manufacturers really need to improve drivers to the point where 64-bit is at least on par with 32-bit when running 32-bit games.  AMD has argued all along the advantages of backwards compatibility with 32-bit games.  This will still be a 32-bit world for a while and competitive gaming performance running 32-bit games is extremely important.  We fully expect gaming to improve as we move toward the release of XP64.  ATI has no published drivers for 64-bit, and nVidia's release drivers now are nearly 3 months old.  As we have seen over and over in the past, drivers are what make the difference in games.  With the release of XP64 Preview we should now see ATI and nVidia making giant strides in 64-bit graphics drivers.

Aquamark 3 would not run under XP64 preview, but the rest of our gaming benchmarks would run.  X2 has always had problems with image tearing on nVidia cards and the image tearing is even worse in XP64, but the benchmark does complete and provide believable results.

Content Creation and General Usage

To our complete surprise the Winstone 2004 benchmarks would not install under Windows XP 64-bit.  Until these benchmarks are updated we cannot run comparisons with XP64.

System and Memory Benchmarks Final Words
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  • Boonesmi - Saturday, February 7, 2004 - link

    sweet :)
  • ksumom - Wednesday, June 23, 2010 - link

    Have any of you tried to hook a printer up to the windows 64 bit?My daughter is trying to find a printer thats compatable with it