Audio and Video Encoding
It is hard to describe the situation with media content encoding, because performance may depend on the type of codec you are using. So, looks like Athlon 64 X2, Core 2 Duo as well as Pentium D in some cases may be most optimal for different encoding tasks from the price-to-performance point of view.
Image Editing
Besides our standard Adobe Photoshop CS3 test session we have also checked the performance of our testing participants in Microsoft Windows Photo Gallery that was used to prepare a digital photo gallery for printing.
During image editing Intel dual-core processors show the best results among other identically priced offerings. In other words, even the impressive price reduction AMD is planning for early April will not change the situation in this type of tasks.
