AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+

We continued testing the new AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ with a benchmark based on Windows Media Encoder 9.  PC WorldBench 5's Windows Media Encoding test reports encoding times in seconds, and like the tests on the previous page, lower times indicate better performance here.

Windows Media Encoder 9
More Digital Video Encoding

The AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ proved to be a good performer in the Windows Media Encoder test as well. Here, the X2 3800+ too about 46 seconds longer to complete the encoding process than the Athlon 64 4800+, but it finished the process over a minute faster than the 2.8GHz Pentium D 820.

LAME MP3 Encoding Test
Converting a Large WAV To MP3

In our custom Lame MP3 encoding test, we convert a large WAV file to the MP3 format, which is a very popular scenario that many end users work with on a day-to-day basis, to provide portability and storage of their digital audio content.  In this test, we created our own 223MB WAV file (a never-ending Grateful Dead jam) and converted it to the MP3 format. Processing times are recorded below. Once again, shorter times equate to better performance.

With its 400MHz clock speed advantage, and additional megabyte of cache, the Athlon 64 X2 3800+ had no trouble outpacing the Athlon 64 X2 3800+ in our custom LAME MP3 encoding benchmark, besting the 3800+ by roughly 20 seconds. The Pentium D 820, however, didn't fare so well.  It took 12 seconds longer than the Athlon 64 X2 3800+ to encode the exact same file.


Tags:  AMD, Athlon, X2, Athlon 64, AM
Marco Chiappetta

Marco Chiappetta

Marco's interest in computing and technology dates all the way back to his early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the Commodore 64 in the early ‘80s, he was interested in electricity and electronics, and he still has the modded AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once he got his hands on his own Commodore 64, however, computing became Marco's passion. Throughout his academic and professional lives, Marco has worked with virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high end, multi-core servers. Over the years, he has worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, professional quality assurance testing, and technical writing. In addition to being the Managing Editor here at HotHardware for close to 15 years, Marco is also a freelance writer whose work has been published in a number of PC and technology related print publications and he is a regular fixture on HotHardware’s own Two and a Half Geeks webcast. - Contact: marco(at)hothardware(dot)com

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