AMD Zacate E-350 Processor Performance Preview
H.264 Video Encoding and LAME MT Audio Encoding
The x264 benchmark measures how fast a system can encode a short, DVD quality MPEG-2 video clip into a high-quality H.264 HD video clip. The application reports the compression results in frames per second for each pass of the video encoding process, and it is threaded so it can take advantage of the additional resources afforded by multi-core processors.
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H.264 HD video encoding shows AMD's Zacate E-350 and Intel's Atom D525 neck and neck, while the previous generation AMD Turion II Neo K625 offers a bit more horsepower. Again, the Turion II is AMD's current generation equivalent to Intel's CULV processor line-up but it's really not in the same power consumption class as Atom or Zacate.
In this test, we created our own 223MB WAV file (a hallucinogenically-induced 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, listed in seconds. Shorter times equate to better performance. Here AMD's new low power chip shows it's decidedly more powerful than a dual core Atom processor at 1.8GHz and almost able to catch its cousin, the Turion II dual-core. In reality a more competitive race might be served up better by an Intel CULV processor-based system but with AMD's notebook price target of sub $399, it's hard not to compare it to something in the netbook (Atom) class of machines. 
In our custom LAME MT MP3 encoding test, we convert a large WAV file to the MP3 format, which is a popular scenario that many end users work with on a day-to-day basis to provide portability and storage of their digital audio content. LAME is an open-source mid to high bit-rate and VBR (variable bit rate) MP3 audio encoder that is used widely around the world in a multitude of third party applications.
