Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9650 - Yorkfield Has Landed
LAME MT and Sony Vegas
In our custom LAME MT MP3 encoding test, we convert a large WAV file to the MP3 format, which is a popular scenario that many end users work with on a day-to-day basis to provide portability and storage of their digital audio content. LAME 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.
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In this test, we created our own 223MB WAV file (a hallucinogenically-induced 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, listed in seconds. Once again, shorter times equate to better performance.
Although LAME MT is not optimized for Yorkfield and does not make use of its new SSE4 instructions, the QX9650's performance is significantly improved in this test. As you can see, at similar clock speeds, the Core 2 Extreme QX9650 is between 3 and 4 seconds faster than the older QX6850 - that's an improvement of roughly 10%.
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Sony's Vegas DV editing software is heavily multi-threaded 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 dual and multi-core processor architectures.
Like the LAME MT results above, the Sony Vegas video rendering benchmark also showed a marked improvement for the new Core 2 Extreme QX9650. In this test, the new Yorkfield-based processor finished the video rendering process about 21 seconds faster than the similarly clocked Core 2 Extreme QX6850.
