NVIDIA GeForce 9300 and 9400 Motherboard GPUs

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.

LAME MT
Audio Encoding

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.


 

Out custom LAME MT benchmark was essentially a wash between the GeForce 9300s and Intel G45, although the NVIDIA platform did finish slightly faster in the single-threaded version of the benchmark.

Kribibench v1.1
CPU-Bound 3D Rendering

For this next batch of tests, we ran Kribibench v1.1, a 3D rendering benchmark produced by the folks at Adept Development.  Kribibench is an SSE aware software renderer where a 3D model is rendered and animated by the host CPU and the average frame rate is reported.  We used two of the included models with this benchmark: a "Sponge Explode" model consisting of over 19.2 million polygons and the test suite's "Ultra" model that is comprised of over 16 billion polys.



In the two Kribibench rendering tests we ran, the system built around Intel's G45 finished just slightly faster than the Asus and Zotac GeForce 9300 motherboards.  The difference can be attributed to the G45's use of faster, and hence higher bandwidth, DDR3 RAM.


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