CrossFire Xpress 1600 Motherboards: DFI, Asus, ECS
WME Multi-Tasking & LAME MT
We continued our testing with another Windows Media Encoder benchmark, but this test is very different from the one on the previous page. In this test, which is also part of the Worldbench 5.0 suite, a video is encoded using Windows Media Encoder, while an instance of the Mozilla browser is running and navigating through various cached pages. Because the system is multi-tasking with two different applications, this test is more taxing than the one on the previous page, hence the longer times reported below.
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Once again, disregarding the Intel results, we see that all of the AMD powered systems, whether based on the CrossFire Xpress 1600 or nForce 4 chipset, performed at the same level. Only three seconds separates the four AMD powered systems here. Hardly a large enough delta to be considered significant.
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In our custom LAME MT 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 using the multi-thread capable LAME MT application in single and multi-thread modes. Processing times are recorded below. Once again, shorter times equate to better performance.
Unlike most of our previous real-world tests, the Intel powered system jumped out to a measurable lead in both the single-thread and multi-thread LAME encoding tests. The AMD based systems, however, continued to perform and near identical levels. The nForce 4 had a slight edge in the multi-threaded test, whereas the CrossFire Xpress 1600s had a tiny one second advantage in the single thread test.
