Paint.NET x64

Website: Paint.NET

This is the 64-bit version of the popular free image editing software, Paint.NET. It's not as advanced as something like Adobe Photoshop CS3 or Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo X2, but it does serve well for most image editing tasks.

We used the PDNBench script to test the processing times for a range of images and filters. The multi-threaded software also takes advantage of multi-core processors quite effectively.

For more information on what the benchmark script entails, please see this thread on the Paint.NET forums.


Paint.NET is entirely representative of the performance of the core CPU execution engine and CPU threads - and since all the CPUs featured are dual core with no HyperThreading, it's clear that Intel's execution engine is superior to AMD's, although there is an obvious improvement from K8 to K10 in clock to clock.

GIMP Image Editing

Website: GUN Image Manipulation Program (GIMP)

Our GIMP image editing test simulates how well a PC can manipulate a collection of large digital photos, and to achieve a low time requires a PC with a powerful CPU, plenty of quick memory and efficient hard disk drive access.


In GIMP, the Intel E5200 is again faster than the AMD 7850 BE at stock clocks, and when both are overclocked leaves it very far behind. There's a surprisingly notable 17 second improvement between the 7850 and 7750 Black Editions though.