WMV Video Compression - With digital video cameras increasingly gaining popularity, video conversion and editing is becoming a very popular task in home PC usage. This video compression test measures two different types of video file conversion. In the WMV Video Compression test, a Windows Media format video file is encoded. This test uses the Windows Media Encoder 9. The video source data file used for the encoding is approx. 1.8 MB sized mpg file with a resolution of 320*240. Video compression is done through Windows Media Encoder to the same resolution WMV format with video bitrate of 1000kbps.

The DivX Video compression - This test is similar to the WMV format encoding test, but uses the DivX format. The two different video encoding tests are both included because they are both widely used and they shouldn’t be generalized under one test. The tests also use different types of data. This one uses the DivX Video for Windows codec v5.0.5 for encoding the file.

The video source data file used in this test is a DV format file with a resolution of 720*480. The DV file format is commonly used by digital camcorders. The file is converted to DivX format with the same resolution. DivX is a popular format for storing digital video clips, due to the higher compression ratio. The encoding to DivX format is done aside the decoding of DV in separate threads, as the real applications do. The time for the process is measured and metrics is frames processed per second. The DivX Video Compression test reads the input file from the hard disk and writes the output to the hard disk, so hard disk performance may have some effect to the test result.

Here we measure the FPS. In this test that means the number of converted frames per second, the higher the better. Again, really marginal differences. The C2D systems definitely shine here.

Virus Scan & Audio Conversion

Virus scanning has become a very common and crucial task for using PC in everyday life. New viruses are reported constantly and they spread rapidly through email and internet browsing. Virus scanner engines prevent these viruses to harm the user's system and they have become an essential part of a home user's PC as well. The component used in this test is the virus scanner from F-Secure Corporation.

Audio Conversion, a part of PCs evolution is the increase of entertainment usage. Listening to music and creating your own playlists are common tasks to perform while operating a PC. Audio Conversion test uses the Ogg Vorbis audio compression. The Audio Conversion test compresses a 10 second wave format audio file sized approximately 1.7MB to Ogg Vorbis format and the time for encoding is measured.

Last real-word performance results before we dive into gaming on this platform. This is a bit of a mixed bag. Overall performance is good very though.

Let's have a look at gaming performance to see if we find big differences there.