WinRAR + LAME MP3 Encoding

The first of our combination benchmarks is that of a simulated WinRAR compression and MP3 encoding. I ran the built-in WinRAR benchmark, minimized it, and proceeded to conduct our usual LAME MP3 encoding test.

Running both tasks in unison absolutely killed the performance on our Pentium 4 670 at 2.8 GHz. When doing the same on our Pentium D 820, we shaved over 7 minutes off the total time. The Athlon 64 architecture, when going from single- to dual-cores, saw a similar improvement. With only a 10-second performance penalty over a stand-alone LAME MP3 encode, I'm impressed that the Pentium D design has managed to allow the D 820 to stay more or less on par with a chip that's twice its price. In general, the Athlon 64 X2 4200+ bests the Pentium D 820 by around 1 minute and 20 seconds but that price to performance ratio again is very impressive.

TMPGEnc MPEG2 Encoding + LAME MP3 Encoding

In this simulated usage scenario, I began a single-threaded MPEG2 encode along with the usual LAME MP3 encode. Both benchmarks were started at as identical times as I could manage (less than a second of delay between the start of both).

The results here are surprising. The Pentium D 820 is basically on-par with the X2 4200+. While it loses in TMPGEnc MPEG2 encoding, it wins in LAME MP3 encoding. The Pentium 4 670 at 2.8 GHz takes quite a hit while having to manage both of these tasks at once, though the biggest loser here is the Venice at 2.2 GHz, which gets completely trounced.