MP3 Encoding:

We used LAME MT for our audio encoding test - it's the multi-threaded 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.



While the AMD board is undoubtedly faster, quite strangely, both the Intel Atom boards perform better when using the Microsoft optimised compiler of LAME MT and not the Intel compiled one. The dual-core Atom in the Shuttle stretches a nice 13 to 15 percent lead over the single-core Gigabyte board here but it's still under half the performance of the single core AMD Sempron CPU in both tests.

Xvid Encoding:

We tested video encoding performance using VirtualDub-MPEG version 1.6.15 and a multi-threaded version of the Xvid codec, along with the LAME MT MP3 encoder for encoding audio. We did a two-pass encode of a 15-minute 276MB digital TV recording with a target file size of 100MB.


In video encoding, the Atom naturally takes its time, but the dual-core is only just under four percent faster - not a huge amount for a whole other core and two more execution threads.