Z21 & TMPGenc 4.0 Xpress = slower than SZ491

I have been running through some DIVX-MP4 transcodes on a Z21VN and comparing them to the same running on my SZ491 which I intend to retire and discovered that the performance of TMPGEnc Xpress 4 is very much compromised on the Z - although at the moment, I can not determine what is causing the degredation. An encode on the SZ is taking ~30 mins and 1h30m on the Z.

I am using TMPGenc 4.0 Xpress 4.6.3.267 and initially wanted to check out the CUDA enhancements which the Z equiped 9300M GS should support. I have later found out that due to Sony's hacking togeather of Intel/Nvidia drivers to enable the on-the-fly Stamina/Speed switch - I am unable to upgrade the Nvidia drivers to support CUDA but back to the performance problem.

Both SZ and Z are running roughly the same software. I havent rebuild Vista on the Z, but I have made sure ffdshow, TMPGEnc, BitDefender are all the same.

On paper the Z should way outperform the SZ. Indeed Everest performance tests support this, showing higher performance for HD, memory, CPU in the Z.

TMPGEnc on the SZ will run at 89-94% CPU for 100% of the time from the moment I start an encode until the encode is finished. On the Z, it will run the CPU at approx 55%. Process Explorer shows the remaining CPU as System Idle Process. Settings in TMPGEnc are identical. I have checked that the Performce power profile is enabled as is the Performance Fan profile.

CPU-Z (1.49) does show the occasional flip from 9.5x to 10x cpu mulitplier on the Z, but I am not I trust it. The SZ is solid at 13x. I realise the CPU's are different and suppport differnet Intel features - but still of some interest.

I will reinstall Vista / drivers on the Z and start with a clean system when I have some time, but I would have expected to see what is causing the slowdown. The laptop feels responsive doing everything else, so it may just be a fault in TMPGEnc.

Regards
Rich

ric9887 Newbie

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