XMPEG 4.5 is a Digital Video
Stream conversion utility that takes a video of a certain
file type, and converts it to another format. We took a 19MB
MPEG 2 video clip from a classic TV series,
that debuted in Davo's 533Mhz. BUS P4 review, and
converted it to DIVX format using the DIVX Pro 5.02 Codec.
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XMPEG Video
Encoding Performance |
Gomer Pile Goes DivX |
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The Pentium 4 2.8 enjoyed its
largest performance advantage in the video encoding test,
outperforming the Athlon XP 2700+ by almost 12%. The
Athlon XP 2700+ / nForce 2 combo surged past the 2600+ /
KT333 combo though, beating it out by 10.4%.
Throughout our battery of tests, we were impressed by the
Athlon XP 2700+'s performance, but were equally as impressed
with the nForce 2. Even though we were using a
pre-production CPU and motherboard, we're confident in
saying the new Athlon's higher FSB in conjunction with the
nForce 2's system level performance, make an extremely powerful team.
After testing the Athlon XP
2700+, and the nForce 2 powered Asus A7N8X, over the past
few days, and seeing the kind of performance levels this
hardware combination was able to attain, we couldn't help but
be impressed. AMD's transition to their .13 micron
manufacturing process, may have been rough in the beginning,
but they seem to have made great strides and are right back
on track with very competitive products. Also consider
that the initial scores we saw from the nForce 2 were very
nice, which bodes well for both NVIDIA and AMD. We
just hope their latest CPUs and motherboards based on the
nForce 2, ship soon.
Model Number
|
System Bus
|
1KU Price |
Athlon XP 2800+ |
333MHz |
$397 |
Athlon XP 2700+ |
333MHz |
$349 |
Athlon XP 2600+ |
266MHz |
$297 |
Athlon XP 2400+ |
266MHz |
$193 |
Athlon XP 2200+ |
266MHz |
$183 |
The pricing scale listed above
is based on the most current information provided to us by
AMD. In their usual fashion, AMD has priced their
flagship product significantly lower than Intel's top of the
line CPU. If these CPUs were available in volume
today, the Athlon XP 2800+ would have a street price about
$100 lower than a 2.8GHz Pentium 4, but they aren't going to
be widely available for about a month. We should see
high-end systems with limited availability, from companies like Alienware and Falcon
Northwest equipped with Athlon XP 2800+ and 2700+ CPUs in
mid-to-late October, with retail CPUs arriving for the
holiday season and into early 2003.
We wish we could say you'd be seeing these new products on
shelves tomorrow, but unfortunately we can't. The
bottom line though is that the introduction of Athlons with
a 333MHz FSB, and the NVIDIA nForce 2, make it that much
easier to recommend the Athlon platform to anyone looking to
build, or purchase, a high-end system. Kudos to
AMD...Now bring on "Barton" and drop the "Hammer"!
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