TMPGEnc Plus is an extremely popular MPEG encoder, and a program that not only offers real-world MPEG performance results, but includes a host of specialized CPU support options. The program supports virtually all CPU multimedia features such as MMX/MMX-2, SSE/SSE2, 3DNow!, and even Hyper-Threading.
For the following test, we've taken a high-end, 3-minute AVI file, and then encoded it to MPEG-1 using TMPGEnc Plus 2.5. The results are expressed in the form of time elapsed (minutes: seconds) and unlike our other benchmarks, a smaller bar denotes less time taken, and therefore higher performance.
The TMPGEnc Plus MPEG-1 scores show another very tight race between the Sempron 2800+ and Celeron 335, and it's basically a dead heat in terms of real-world results. There is also not much change when moving from integrated to dedicated graphics, or even between the two platforms. The Sempron 3100+ again proves that pure CPU horsepower isn't its forte, and while it does outperform the Pentium 4-2.8 GHz, the 3100+ also falls back from the Athlon XP 2800+ and Pentium 4-2.8E GHz.
For the next test, we've taken the same high-end, 3-minute AVI file, and encoded it to MPEG-2 using TMPGEnc Plus 2.5. This is more stressful on the system than our previous MPEG-1 encoding, and is the standard for DVD authoring. The performance results are expressed in the form of time elapsed (minutes: seconds) and as with the MPEG-1 results, a smaller bar denotes less time taken, and therefore higher performance.
The increase in our TMPGEnc benchmark settings to basic MPEG-2 encoding doesn't seem to affect the Sempron 2800+ vs. Celeron 335 rankings, and both processors are again very close together. The Sempron 3100+ does not impress in this benchmark, falling in with the entry-level crowd, and dropping behind the Athlon XP and Pentium 4 competition.
This next test ups the MPEG-2 ante in terms of overall stress levels, by increasing the Motion Search Precision to High, and really giving the processors a work out. Enabling this feature will allow higher quality MPEG-2 image output, but it does significantly increase processing times, and can help us further identify which processors are the true video processing workhorses.
Once the settings are jacked up to MPEG-2 (High Precision) levels, the Sempron 2800+ starts to pull away from the Celeron 335, and shows that it's got a bit more CPU power than the Intel competition. The Sempron 3100+ continues to drop back in the crowd, and the 256K of L2 cache really seems to have an adverse effect on its video encoding performance.
Also keep in mind that these TMPGEnc Plus encoding tests were performed with a 3-minute AVI file, so if real-world differences could be extrapolated to a 2-hour AVI file encoded to MPEG-1 or -2, then the discrepancy would be much higher. In the MPEG-2 tests with High Motion Search Precision Enabled, the gap between the Sempron 3100+ and the Pentium 4-2.8E GHz would be over 2 extra minutes for every 3 minutes of encoded video.
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