AMD QuadFX Platform & FX-70 Series Processors
LAME MT and Sony Vegas 7.0b
In our custom LAME MT MP3 encoding test, we convert a large WAV file to the MP3 format, which is a very popular scenario that many end users work with on a day-to-day basis to provide portability and storage of their digital audio content.
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In this test, we created our own 223MB WAV file (a never-ending Grateful Dead jam) and converted it to the MP3 format using the multi-thread capable LAME MT application in single and multi-thread modes. Processing times are recorded below. Once again, shorter times equate to better performance.
LAME MT only utilizes two concurrent threads, hence the similar performance between the dual and quad-core systems tested here. Once again though, the QuadFX systems fall victim to the Intel Core 2-powered rigs, regardless of the test configuration. Interestingly, the QuadFX FX-72 system was marginally slower than the Athlon 64 FX-62, probably due to the QuadFX's NUMA and differences in the motherboard chipsets.
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Sony's Vegas DV editing software is heavily multithreaded as it processes and mixes both audio and video streams. This is a new breed of digital video editing software that takes full advantage of current dual and multi-core processor architectures.
The AMD QuadFX platform scaled very well in our Sony Vegas benchmark. The only system faster than any of the QuadFX rigs was based on Intel's quad-core Core 2 Extreme QX6700, which finished about a minute ahead of the FX-74. Scaling between the competing dual and quad-core architectures also favored Intel slightly. Going from two to four cores increased performance by about 42% on the Intel platform; it increased performance on the AMD platform by roughly 40%.
