Handbrake H.264 Encoding

Website: HandBrake
Our test uses HandBrake - an open-source, GPL-licensed, multiplatform, multithreaded video transcoder, available for MacOS X, Linux and Windows - to encode a high resolution MPEG-2 video using the H.264 codec. This primarily tests multi-threaded CPU and memory subsystem performance.

GIMP Image Editing

Website: GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP)

File Compression & Encryption:

Website: WinRAR

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.



When it comes to performance, there's literally no competition between the Atom-based Samsung NC10 and HP's Athlon Neo-based Pavilion dv2-1030ea - the AMD system simply obliterates Atom, but we did expect that. With that said though, there's more than meets the eye with respect to the dv2's performance - the Neo processor isn't fast enough to decode YouTube HD video either in the browser or in full-screen mode, just like the NC10 and Nvidia's Ion platform. It looks like you really need a dual-core processor to play HD flash clips.

However, when it comes to HD video, the dv2-1030ea is more than able to deliver. We used a wide range of clips and video streams of varying bit-rates to evaluate performance using Media Player Classic - Home Cinema Edition, which is free to download and can take advantage of the Radeon HD 3410's UVD silicon to accelerate the video decoding process. We found that the range of 720p trailers we tried all used less than 20 per cent CPU and were very smooth with no evidence of dropped frames.

In addition to this, AMD claims that the dv2 can play Blu-ray movies and while there's no Blu-ray drive supplied, we did get chance to play with a dv2 at CES, where we tested several high-definition Blu-ray movies with up to 40Mbps bit-rates on a 1080p display connected via HDMI. It handled the three movies on hand without dropping frames, which is good news again if you're thinking of a media PC. The only problem we foresee is that when we've tried to test Blu-ray playback using a USB Blu-ray drive in our labs, we've encountered problems. Interestingly, HP doesn’t offer a Blu-ray drive add-on either, so the fact it can play Blu-ray movies is a little moot in our opinion.