ATi RADEON XPRESS 200 Series: AMD Platform Chipsets
Windows Media Encoder 9 & LAME MP3
We continued our testing of the ATi RADEON XPRESS 200 chipset with a video encoding benchmark using Windows Media Encoder 9. In this test, we took a 416MB Digital Video file and encoded to WMV9 streaming format. The encoding times were recorded in minutes:seconds, with lower times indicating better performance.
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Somewhat surprisingly, the RADEON XPRESS 200 finished just slightly ahead of the other AMD based test systems in the WME 9 test when using the IGP. Its margin of victory was only 1 second, but score one for the IGP nonetheless. With a discreet graphics card installed, the RADEON XPRESS 200 performed on par with the nForce 3 Ultra.
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Next, we did some audio encoding with LAME MP3. LAME MP3 is relatively new to our test suite, but we thought it was an important component to include as a performance metric. Converting audio files to MP3 format is a very common task that many end users perform on a regular basis to facilitate portability and storage of their digital audio content. In this test, we used a large 223MB WAV file (a never-ending Grateful Dead jam) and converted it to the MP3 format. Processing times are recorded below in minutes:seconds, and once again, shorter times equate better performance.
All of the Athlon 64 powered systems performed similarly in our custom LAME MP3 encoding benchmark, finishing the encoding process with 2 seconds of each other. Once again, when using the IGP, the RADEON XPRESS 200 manages to squeak passed the discreet card, but the nForce 3 Ultra posted the fastest time for any of the AMD based systems here.
