EVGA nForce 680i LT SLI

Xvid Encoding:

We tested video encoding performance using VirtualDub-MPEG version 1.6.15 and a multithreaded 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.

Whilst it's by far from the slowest it's not outright fastest either, dropping a couple of seconds to the rest of the other Nvidia based motherboards.

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.

MP3 encoding performance is about average, and drops a couple of seconds to the other Nvidia motherboards, but still keeps up with or beats non-Nvidia chipset boards.

MP3 Decoding:

We ran tests with both Intel's and Microsoft's compilers converting all 18 tracks from Moby's popular Play album from the previously made MP3s to PCM .wav.

Decoding again we see average performance here, but there's only a second or so difference top to bottom at most.