h.264 High-Definition Playback

For h.264 playback we again used PowerDVD Ultra and played the files from a hard drive instead of disc. The 720p trailer we used was for the movie, Fantastic Four, with a bitrate of 6,217kbps and two channel AAC sound at 189kbps. For 1080p playback we used the Serenity trailer which is encoded at a bitrate of 7,998Kbps and two channel AAC sound at 192Kbps.



H.264 playback from file on a hard drive is also just as good, with under ten percent CPU usage on both files the other systems perform much better than competing products.

MPEG-4 (AVI) 720p High-Definition Playback

For MPEG-4 (AVI) playback we again used PowerDVD Ultra and again played the files from a hard drive instead of disc. The 720p trailer we used was for the movie, Ray, with a bit-rate of 3,336kbps in DivX 5 and two channel MP3 sound at 191kbps. For 1080p playback we used the Elephants Dream movie-short which is encoded at a bitrate of 9,998kbps and six channel AC3 sound at 448kbps.



While the movie trailer for Ray worked perfectly fine in PowerDVD, Elephants Dream would not. We had to play it back in VLC, which doesn't have the same hardware acceleration support so the performance is almost identical Asus G35 board, but still significantly less than the equivalent MSI 690G system.

WMV9HD Playback

For WMV9HD playback we again used PowerDVD Ultra and again played the files from a hard drive instead of disc. The 720p trailer we used was for the movie, Doom 3, with a bitrate of 6,790kbps and two channel WMA3 sound at 440kbps. For 1080p playback we used the The Living Sea trailer which is encoded at a bitrate of 9,847kbps and six channel WMA3 sound at 384kbps.



WMV9HD playback doesn't see the same degree of performance increase on average, even if the minimum is lower, although the performance is again still better than all the other boards tested.