Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6700 - Quad-Core Assault
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.
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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.
There are many current audio conversion and editing applications that rely on the Lame MP3 encoding engine. Unfortunately, at this time, LAME only supports up to two threads and our Core 2 Extreme QX6700 performs exactly like a E6700 chip. Incidentally, we tried the same exact file conversion with Apple iTunes and came up with similar results. No quad-core optimizations here yet but we're certain it won't take long since this type of application is a natural for multithreading.
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Sony's Vegas DV editing software on the other hand is heavily multithreaded as it processes and mixes both audio and video streams. This is a new breed of digital video editing software that takes full advantage of current multi-core architectures.
;) Sony Vegas - A64 FX-62 |
;) Sony Vegas - C2E QX6700 |
In the above screen shots, we can see that both the Athlon 64 FX-62, as well as our Core 2 Extreme QX6700 chip, are fully loaded 100% on each of their respective cores. Hence our performance testing shows very clearly the advantages of the additional processing resources available with Intel's new quad-core CPU.
We tossed in our overclocked scores here as well, just to see how things scale but this graph, in general, is very telling. Versus the Core 2 E6700 at the same clock speed, we get a 42% performance advantage with the QX6700 and roughly a 37% advantage over the dual-core Core 2 Extreme X6800 with its 270MHz clock speed advantage. This is not a two-fold increase as you might expect, which is perhaps the result of Kentsfield's shared front side bus architecture. Regardless, no matter how you slice it, the Core 2 Extreme QX6700 is the fastest processor by a wide margin in this test and might we offer, easily the fastest Desktop processor on the planet currently as of this article's launch, at least it is according to the Sony Vegas software.
