Asus Striker II Formula nForce 780i Motherboard
3DMark06 and LAME MT MP3 Encoding
3DMark06's built-in CPU test is a multi-threaded DirectX gaming metric that's useful for comparing relative performance between similarly equipped systems. This test consists of two different 3D scenes that are processed with a software renderer that is dependent on the host CPU's performance. Calculations that are normally reserved for your 3D accelerator are instead sent to the CPU for processing and rendering. The frame-rate generated in each test is used to determine the final score.
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CPU performance based on 3DMark's results also placed the three boards in a very close knit group, with the Blitz Formula once again in the lead. On the bright side, the Striker II Formula has moved up into second place, 13 points behind. We're still looking at a margin of difference less than a single percent, however.
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LAME MT is an open-source mid to high bit-rate and VBR (variable bit rate) MP3 audio encoder that is used widely around the world in a multitude of third party applications. In this test, we created our own 223MB WAV file and converted it to the MP3 format using this multi-thread capable application in single and multi-thread modes. Processing times are recorded below, listed in seconds. Here, shorter times equate to better performance.
Our custom LAME MT benchmark resulted in identical times for each of the boards except the multi-threaded run on the Striker II Formula (which was one second slower). As with much of the CPU-based testing, the results show little difference between NVIDIA and Intel boards using similar components.
