Audio and Video Encoding

Audio and video encoding tasks are a great illustration of effective processor performance. In fact, the CPU is the only component that affects the codecs performance: all other computer subsystems hardly have any influence on the performance in these tasks. However, despite the different type of workload we are looking at in this chapter, the situation we observe is exactly the same. Core 2 Duo processors are far ahead of all their rivals, leaving them not a single chance. In particular, the Core 2 Extreme X6800 is about 22% faster than Athlon 64 FX-62 during digital content encoding. The advantage of the new top processor from Intel over the previous-generation Pentium Extreme Edition 965 based on NetBurst architecture (that has actually been specifically optimized for work with streaming data) is even greater and equals 49%.