LAME MP3 Encoding
All of the boards performed basically the same for Lame, the differences were so small as not to matter.
MP3 encoding is very processor intensive, and is also affected by memory bandwidth. Given that the boards on the chart above used the same processor, at the same frequency, with the same memory - and same memory timings, on dual memory channels we should only be surprised if the results were noticably different.
XviD MPEG2 Encoding
The 8N-SLI Royal placed third - but only by one second, and it was only one percent slower than the best result.
TMPGEnc MPEG2 Encoding
The 8N-SLI Royal came in last, but there was only a six second - one percent - difference, which could easily be just a run to run standard variation.