XP home outperforming Vista 64bit

Howdy,

My system is primarily used for video processing and I have been running XP home it it for about 6 months. The system is a 3 GHZ quad core extreme so it's no slouch, 10K RPM Raptor boot drive, 3.25 GB RAM and a decent PCI-E video card.

So I thought since the apps I use have 64 bit versions, mainly Windows media encoder, I though I would get a 64bit version of a windows OS. So I got Vista 64BIT Ultimate. Most of the encoding I do uses WMV V9 Advanced or VC1 which is optimized to run inder a 64 bit OS. Just for the record I was going to download the trial version of XP 64 bit to test but the trial page is not offering the trial at the moment. I've been encoding WMV HD content for some time now so I know the tricks for performance.

I kept my XP home install on a sepereate drive so I can test. The first test with Vista was a 1080 15 minute clips encode down to a 720 resolution. Vista 64bit took 38 minutes, XP home using Encoder 32 bit took 27 minutes.

I've done no tweaking of Vista yet but my XP home install is basically stock as well, no performance tweaks.

Am I jumping to conclusions or did I just drop a dozen lead bars in the trunk of my sports car?

Thanks,

~CC

Hi CodeCake,

I guess it would depend on the source media, codec and converter your using for the test...There are some 64bit encoder codec's that outperform nearly all 32bit encoder programs and the same go`s for the converter program and type of source media your using...How many alternatives for video processing have you tyred on Ultimate? If your not stuck using them programs there are other alternatives that might work better?

Steven

dmex said:

Hi CodeCake,

I guess it would depend on the source media, codec and converter your using for the test...There are some 64bit encoder codec's that outperform nearly all 32bit encoder programs and the same go`s for the converter program and type of source media your using...How many alternatives for video processing have you tyred on Ultimate? If your not stuck using them programs there are other alternatives that might work better?

Steven

Click to expand...

This was a very straightforward test, Windows Media Encoder 64 bit on Vista Ultimate using WMV 9 advanced codec Vs. XP Home and 32 bit Windows media encoder. The source material is WMV 9 Advanced 1080 resolution 12MBPS. Same system using the same source file for encoding and same output type. This is a Microsoft made product, both the codecs and encoding app. No off the wall codecs or encoding apps.

I should see an increase in performance using the 64bit version. I'm not, it's actually slower. Next ill try the command line verson of the encoder in both 32 and 64 bit to see what the performance is like, not expecting much of a difference.

Microsoft media utilities are not some of the best ones around especially for encoding...you should try some other more mature codec's for any real benefit.

Steven

dmex said:

Microsoft media utilities are not some of the best ones around especially for encoding...you should try some other more mature codec's for any real benefit.

Steven

Click to expand...

XVID and DIVX type codecs all mpeg4 hybrids are great for lower bitrate encoding.

So what do you suggest for 1080 and 720 encoding that outperforms VC1? What do you consider a more "mature" codec? My issue is not the time it take to process these files but the fact that upgrading to 64bit enviroment has slowed it down.

~CC

Im no expert on media encoding but xvid and fourcc are good...Whats the best one you have used on 64bit?

CodeCake said:

XVID and DIVX type codecs all mpeg4 hybrids are great for lower bitrate encoding.

So what do you suggest for 1080 and 720 encoding that outperforms VC1? What do you consider a more "mature" codec? My issue is not the time it take to process these files but the fact that upgrading to 64bit enviroment has slowed it down.

~CC

Click to expand...

dmex said:

Im no expert on media encoding but xvid and fourcc are good...Whats the best one you have used on 64bit?

Click to expand...

I have no interest in changing codecs, I've done the tests, at high bitrate and resolution VC1 is the way to go. Other NLE's like Vegas or premiere have the ability to output to VC1 but have higher overhead which increases rendering time. My source is already in VC1 so I meet the requirments of the 64 bit path. I have a file that has a 64bit decoder and encoder so all processing should be in 64 bit, no bottleneck like a 32bit decoder. So by using WME Gui or command line is also the best way to go.

From research I see that some 64 bit apps just do not perform as well as the 32 for some reason. I was hoping MS would make that XP 64 available for download so I can test it as well but no luck with the download availability.

~CC