Benchmarks II
Next we'll turn our attention to MP3 encoding. We're benchmarking by encoding a 610MB custom WAV file (U2's Pop album, incidentally) into 192kb/s MP3 using the LAME 3.92 encoder and Razor-Lame 1.15 front-end.
Running ever-so-slightly faster than the competition at 2812MHz, the MSI manages to complete this benchmark a shade quicker than every other motherboard on test. Still, this is a largely CPU-only affair.
Moving on to DVD-to-DiVX encoding using a 2-pass encoding of Gone in 60 seconds with an 1800kb/s bit rate. An average is calculated when the first VOB is complete. Borders are cropped to save encoding. Quality / slowest settings are used.
Granite Bay continues to do well here when run in its preferred dual-DDR mode.
One of the most stressful benchmarks is SETI. Taking multiple hours to complete, any gains in performance are noticed not in tenths of seconds but in minutes. Here's where bandwidth really matters.
Whilst not eclipsing the benchmark time laid down by PC1066 RAMBUS, it is clearly, and expectedly, the fastest DDR chipset by some way. A little tweaking and it may get a little closer to that magical 2h 30m time.
