Media Encoding Tests
LAME 3.97a MT MP3 EncoderThis version of the LAME MP3 encoder is multi-threaded and takes advantage of two threads.
Results in our LAME encoder are pretty standard though the performance in the multi-threaded score is a bit slower than the i5-750.
Windows Media Encoder x64
WME is a great video encoding application that supports WMV9 HD codecs and more.
Here the Core i7-860 finds itself nearly equidistant between the i5-750 and the i7-870 in terms of encoding speed.
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.
Ditto.
Handbrake
Known mainly for its DVD re-encoding prowess, our test uses the Handbrake command line interface.
Handbrake easily takes advantage of HyperThreading to help deliver a 37% performance gain over the Core i5-750 while only having a 5% clock speed advantage.
7-Zip Compression
I decided to replace the WinRAR test with a more repeatable and threaded application, 7-Zip.
Obviously the big boost here again comes from 7-Zip’s ability to use more than 4 threads for processing thus leaving the Core i5-750 well behind at that setting.
