NF4 Ultra Shoot-Out: Abit vs. MSI vs. ECS

Name: NF4 Ultra Shoot-Out: Abit vs. MSI vs. ECS - Page 14
Brand: NF4

by Marco Chiappetta — Thursday, July 07, 2005, 10:00 PM EDT

We continued testing these nForce 4 Ultra based motherboards with a video encoding benchmark based on Windows Media Encoder 9. In this test, we ran the Windows Media Encoder 9 portion of the WorldBench 5 suite; encoding times were recorded in seconds. Lower times indicate better performance.

Windows Media Encoder 9

More Digital Video Encoding

Abit's Fatal1ty AN8 scored yet another victory in WorldBench 5.0's Windows Media Encoder test. The AN8 finished the test 3 seconds faster than the MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum, and a full 8 seconds faster then the ECS KN1 Extreme. These aren't exactly huge margins of victory, but it's another win for the Fatal1ty AN8 nonetheless.

LAME MP3 Encoding Test

Converting a Large WAV To MP3

In our custom Lame MP3 encoding test, we convert a large digital audio 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 chose a large 223MB WAV file (a never-ending Grateful Dead jam) and converted it to the MP3 format. Processing times are recorded below. Shorter times equate to better performance.

The ECS KN1 Extreme managed to squeak passed the MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum in our custom LAME MP3 encoding benchmark by a couple of seconds, but the Abit Fatal1ty AN8 was once again the fastest of the bunch, albeit by a very small 1 second margin.

Tags: MSI, ECS, MS, shoot, Ultra, F4, Abit, SHO, ULT

Marco Chiappetta

Marco's interest in computing and technology dates all the way back to his early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the Commodore 64 in the early ‘80s, he was interested in electricity and electronics, and he still has the modded AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once he got his hands on his own Commodore 64, however, computing became Marco's passion. Throughout his academic and professional lives, Marco has worked with virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high end, multi-core servers. Over the years, he has worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, professional quality assurance testing, and technical writing. In addition to being the Managing Editor here at HotHardware for close to 15 years, Marco is also a freelance writer whose work has been published in a number of PC and technology related print publications and he is a regular fixture on HotHardware’s own Two and a Half Geeks webcast. - Contact: marco(at)hothardware(dot)com