DFI LANParty UT ICFX3200 T2R/G

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.

Even though usable memory bandwidth is a critical factor in video encoding, the large L2 cache certainly helps and makes it clear that raw CPU power is a more important factor than usable memory bandwidth, with the 11x266MHz (2933MHz) stock CPU speed being closer to the rest of the field, compared to the 6x450MHz (2700MHz) test setup. The DFI drops on average about 15 seconds compared to the other Intel boards tested.

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.

Again we see CPU speed being a more important factor than usable memory bandwidth, with the stock clocked DFI performing almost the same as the other motherboards. We show only the Intel compiled LAME scores since all the boards are Intel CPU based.