Multi-threaded app. performance
Moving on to multi-threaded apps. now.
Our WAV encoding test crunches 701MB worth of audio data into 128kbps MP3. We use a multi-threaded LAME encoder, but analysis of the results shows that it can only process on two concurrent threads. That's why the QX6800 and X6800 return identical times. Intel's Core 2 Duo/Extreme processors are particularly strong at media encoding, so the results are of no real surprise.
The four-core QX6800 is better utilised when encoding DV footage into a smaller file via the DivX CODEC. As expected, it posts the fastest time we've seen in our labs. and is almost twice as fast as an AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+, which, remember, is a dual-core CPU.
The effectiveness of a quad-core processor can be brought to bear with applications that are truly multi-threaded. Cinebench 2003 - a benchmark based on the widely-used CINEMA 4D rendering engine - returns a 70 per cent increase in performance when switching from dual-core X6800 to quad-core QX6800. Needless to say, the 2.93GHz-clocked QX6800 is the fastest we've tested.
Carrying on the professional application theme, POV-Ray rendering returns, for all intents and purposes, double the performance when an additional two cores are added. That tells us the QX6800's memory bandwidth, which is the same as the X6800's, isn't a defining factor here: pure CPU grunt is.
AMD doesn't have a single-socket, quad-core processor right now, so we'll have to wait until K8L, aka Barcelona, is released before Intel has any serious challenges with respect to desktop CPU performance in fully multi-threaded apps.
