WorldBench overall performance
WorldBench's overall score is a pretty decent indication of general-use performance for desktop computers. This benchmark uses scripting to step through a series of tasks in common Windows applications and then produces an overall score for comparison. WorldBench also records individual results for its component application tests, allowing us to compare performance in each. We'll look at the overall score, and then we'll show individual application results alongside the results from some of our own application tests.
Audio editing and encoding
LAME MP3 encoding
LAME MT is the multithreaded version of the LAME MP3 encoder that we discussed earlier. LAME MT was created as a demonstration of the benefits of multithreading specifically on a Hyper-Threaded CPU like the Pentium 4. (Of course, multithreading works even better on dual-core processors.) You can download a paper (in Word format) describing the programming effort.
Rather than run multiple parallel threads, LAME MT runs the MP3 encoder's psycho-acoustic analysis function on a separate thread from the rest of the encoder using simple linear pipelining. That is, the psycho-acoustic analysis happens one frame ahead of everything else, and its results are buffered for later use by the second thread.
We have results for two different 64-bit versions of LAME MT from different compilers, one from Microsoft and one from Intel, doing two different types of encoding, variable bit rate and constant bit rate. We are encoding a massive 10-minute, 6-second 101MB WAV file here, as we have done in many of our previous CPU reviews.
MusicMatch Jukebox
As I said earlier, LAME MT's linear pipelined approach doesn't gain any benefit from more than two cores, and I don't believe MusicMatch Jukebox uses anything more than one thread. The QX6700 still looks pretty good, again outperforming the Athlon 64 FX-62 comfortably.
