Round 6: Video encoding
Results with night vision may vary.
With products such as Microsoft's Windows Media Center operating system and the video-capable iTunes 7, a computer's ability to encode video will only become more important. That said, we suggest you pay extra attention to these video-encoding scores if you're building a PC with any intent to integrate it into your home entertainment scheme.
Video-encoding test (in seconds)(Shorter bars indicate better performance)
Intel made its most competitive showing on our video-encoding test. AMD still wins the round, but the difference is not as pronounced as it is on other tests. The Athlon 64 X2 4800+ takes its familiar perch atop the performance chart, and both it and the Athlon 64 X2 4600+ stand out from the pack in a noticeable way. The processors in the middle of the performance scale, however, are so close that they're statistically tied, with less than 4 seconds and 2 percentage points between the Pentium D 840 and the Athlon 64 X2 4200+. Perhaps we should no longer be surprised that AMD's midrange chips compete well with Intel's higher-end CPUs, but that AMD's dual-core CPUs have maintained such a consistent streak of high performance should impress even the most adamant of Intel apologists.
Winner: AMD
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Round 2 |
Round 3 |
Round 4 |
Round 5 |
Round 6 |
Round 7 |
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AMD |
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Intel |
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On to round 7
