New home-made cross-OS x265 benchmark

[Losko]

I've made a series of HEVC encoding using x265 on my home laptop, now equipped with two OSs (LMDE (64 bit) and Haiku (64bit)), both with fresh updates.
Source content were the two files provided by Ben here (SolLevante and TearsOfSteel) and the command line was as simple as:

x265 --preset slow --crf 22 --input filename --aq-mode 3 --selective-sao 2 --pools 4 --output output.265

On my LMDE (which is Debian 10 (Buster) based) I used two kernel versions: 4 and 5, both provided in repos through synaptic, and two x265 releases as comparison.

linux 4 means:

Linux debbieb1 4.19.0-18-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 4.19.208-1 (2021-09-29) x86_64 GNU/Linux

linux 5 means:

Linux debbieb1 5.10.0-0.bpo.9-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 5.10.70-1~bpo10+1 (2021-10-10) x86_64 GNU/Linux

haikuDx means:

Haiku shredder 1 hrev55874 Feb 14 2022 09:04:41 x86_64 x86_64 Haiku

(this is a nightly build - Dx is the kernel debug level 0 (no debug) or 2 (max debug))

On the other hand, x265 3.3 means:

x265 [info]: HEVC encoder version 3.3+10-gd4b5ab60b
x265 [info]: build info [Linux][GCC 8.3.0][64 bit] 8bit
x265 [info]: using cpu capabilities: MMX2 SSE2Fast LZCNT SSSE3 SSE4.2 AVX FMA3 BMI2 AVX2

and x265 3.4 means (on linux):

x265 [info]: HEVC encoder version 3.4.1+1-1827b372c
x265 [info]: build info [Linux][GCC 8.3.0][64 bit] 8bit
x265 [info]: using cpu capabilities: MMX2 SSE2Fast LZCNT SSSE3 SSE4.2 AVX FMA3 BMI2 AVX2

and (on haiku):

x265 [info]: HEVC encoder version 3.4.1+1-1827b372c
x265 [info]: build info [Unk-OS][GCC 11.2.0][64 bit] 8bit
x265 [info]: using cpu capabilities: MMX2 SSE2Fast LZCNT SSSE3 SSE4.2 AVX FMA3 BMI2 AVX2

(notice the compiler is recent gcc-11.2)

My laptop is equipped with a Core i7 7500u processor (2 cores+HT), with 8 GB (4+4) Kingston DDR4.
Source y4m files were both copied on an USB 3.0 stick, assuring safe access times.
I launched each encoding three times after an OS reboot, then took an average of reported fps stats (stat values were substantially constant, though).

Finally, the numbers:

                   |   x265 3.4   |   x265 3.4   |   x265 3.3   | x265 3.4     |   x265 3.4   |
                   |   haikuD2    |   haikuD0    |   linux 4    | linux 4      |   linux 5    |
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sol Levante        |   1.19 fps   |   1.20 fps   |   1.95 fps   |   1.94 fps   |   1.78 fps   |
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tears Of Steel     |   2.19 fps   |   2.23 fps   |   3.65 fps   |   3.66 fps   |   2.26 fps   |
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

While it is reassuring the identical performances of x265-3.3 and x265-3.4 on linux4, I find shocking the fall on linux5 - it should be noted that, although linux5 is available on repositories, on Buster the official kernel is still linux4, so maybe the newer kernel never received any fine tuning. I had some expectations on Haiku performances, and they disappointed me. The OS is still in beta (beta4 is expected soon), so I will show these numbers on their forum as well, in the hope they can be helpful.