Core 2 Duo: Effects Of Memory Timings

MP3 Encoding:

We used LAME MT for our audio encoding test - it's the multithreaded version of the popular LAME MP3 encoder. We ran tests with both Intel's and Microsoft's compilers - naturally, the Intel compiler resulted in some performance increases on Intel's processors. We converted all 18 tracks from Moby's popular Play album to a 192kbps variable bit-rate MP3.

The performance differences between memory settings were the same on both the Core 2 Duo E6600 and E6400 processors when using both the Intel and Microsoft LAME MT compilers. The Intel Compiler benefitted more from tigher memory timings, as there was no difference in performance between 3.0-3-3-9 and 4.0-4-4-12 when using the Microsoft compiler.

MP3 to WAV Decoding:

For our decoding test, we converted the MP3 tracks created in the previous test back to .WAV format, saving the output to a different folder.

There were no differences between the three memory timing settings on both CPUs when decoding MP3s to WAV format.