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| Video and Audio Encoding Performance AMD's Dual Core vs, Intel's Core2 Duo | |
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(Review by JoeF, August 28, 2006) |
One Lump or Two?
All the programs used, with the exception of LAME, claim support for multithreading to take advantage of dual core processors or multi-core systems. There is a multithreaded version of LAME available, but it requires a feature of LAME to be disabled, which could potentially result in a lower-quality MP3 file.
Monitoring the CPU utilization in Monkey’s Audio showed that it only hit 50%, indicating that Monkey’s Audio was not using the second core on the CPU. Digging through the options revealed the capability of Monkey’s Audio to simultaneously encode more than one file. By making a second copy of the source .wav file and loading them both into Monkey’s Audio, it was possible to peg the CPU utilization at 100%, using all the power available. Monkey’s Audio was tested both with a single file in queue and with two files encoding at the same time.
CPU Utilization in Monkey's Audio towards the end of simultaneous encoding of four .wav files. The last file took longer and while its encoding still continued, the CPU utilization dropped to 50% before tapering off after all encoding ws finished.
Dr. DivX OSS was able to get the CPU utilization between 60% and 80%, showing that it was using both CPU cores, but not to their fullest capability. Nero Vision, however, kept the dual core CPU utilization above 90%, making a good showing for Nero’s built-in MPEG2 encoder.
The BIOS of the Intel 975 board used for the Core 2 processors allows the chip to be run as either a dual core or single core CPU. On the Intel side a comparison is something of a moot point, since all currently announced Core 2 CPUs are dual core. AMD is still offering single core chips for both S939 and AM2, though the only processors here for evaluation are of the dual-core variety. Unfortunately, the single core option does not appear in the BIOS of AMD boards. What is left to us is to do the single/dual core comparison on the Intel chips and extrapolate the results. We’ll see exactly how much of a difference the second core makes.
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Athlon64 X2-3800+ (ADA3800DAA5CD) | |
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Core2 Duo E6300 (HH80557PH0362M) |
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