Media Encoding Tests
LAME 3.97a MT MP3 EncoderThis version of the LAME MP3 encoder is multi-threaded and takes advantage of two threads.
More clocks equals lower times. Done.
Windows Media Encoder x64
WME is a great video encoding application that supports WMV9 HD codecs and more.
Even during our first Nehalem review the results with the Windows Media Encoder were a bit wonky – here we seem to have hit some kind of fundamental speed limit on the application as the entire range of Core i7 processors encoding times varies greatly.
VirtualDub
VirtualDub is a great application for just about any kind of video conversion but our testing we are using the DivX codec to shrink a collection of videos.
There is little doubt that the Core i7 platform is the fastest for multi-threaded media encoding and users of VirtualDub with DivX will definitely notice a move to an 8-thread capable system.
Handbrake
Known mainly for its DVD re-encoding prowess, our test uses the Handbrake command line interface.
Again, the performance of the Core i7-975 impresses as it obviously beats out every other CPU on the market and runs more than 2.2x faster as the Q9650 part.
WinRAR 3.80
Though a stretch to be called a ‘media encoding’ test, the WinRAR benchmark is responsible for testing compression speed.
Our WinRAR compression test continues to scale nicely with the frequency of the Nehalem architecture.
