MP3 Encoding, WMEx64 and WinRAR Tests
LAME MT MP3 Encoding
This custom test uses the LAME MT engine to benchmark encoding a 650 MB WAV file into a standard 128 kbps MP3 file. We used the Microsoft compiler for the most fair results.
Windows Media Encoder 9 x64
This custom test uses the standard Windows Media Encoder to convert a 720p HD video file to a 2Mb CBR DVD-quality video in two passes.
WinRAR 3.70 Beta 8
Our own custom WinRAR benchmark, this test takes a large 650 MB text file and compresses it with the highest compression option.
Results from our real-world testing in the LAME MP3 encoder and the WinRAR compression tests show the QX6850 has great performance, but doesn’t walk away with the results as we saw on the previous pages. Actually, in our WinRAR testing, the dual core X6800 was able to perform the compression a few second faster.
Windows Media Encoder was a different story though as it can actually take advantage of the four cores on the chip resulting in a very healthy 52% rendering time reduction over the top dual core unit.
