Multitasking test

Multitasking with 7-Zip and mplayer

Websites: www.7-zip.org and www.mplayerhq.hu

Multitasking is a phrase that we're all familiar with, because most of us are now used to running multiple applications at the same time. However, to run multiple applications well you need a powerful (ideally multi-core) CPU and plenty of RAM.

Our multitasking test performs a massive file backup (with encryption) using 7-Zip, while simultaneously playing back a HD movie file using mplayer, making it a demanding test for any PC.


The X2 550 BE clearly dominates the multitasking test - not only shooing in the fastest time for its overclocked setting, but also a clear third place at stock speeds - even outperforming most of the overclocked CPUs including the Athlon II X2 250 and Core 2 Duo E5200, both of which have a clear clock speed advantage. Most certainly the large L3 cache and two, independent DDR3 memory controllers - one per core/thread - have an important role to play here in handing the X2 550 BE the advantage.

WPrime

Download from: www.wprime.net
WPrime is a multi-threaded maths calculation benchmark that counter-intuitively uses square roots rather than prime numbers. The standard benchmark uses 32 million numbers, calculating the square root via 'a recursive call of Newton's method for estimating functions'. We're not sure what that means either, but you can read the full blurb on WPrime's About page. What we do know is that WPrime scales well across multiple CPU cores, and can push a CPU to 100 per cent load on all its cores.

To run the benchmark, first visit the core count to check that WPrime will load all physical and logical cores, and then run the 32M test. The results are expressed as a time taken to calculate the square root of the set of numbers (32 million in the standard test). A lower score is better.



wPrime is mostly benefited from pure clock speed and core count, but since all these CPUs are dual cores the higher clocked Intel CPUs win here, with the Phenom II X2 550 and Athlon II X2 250 not far behind.