Windows Media Encoder x64 Edition
Windows Media Encoder is one of the few popular video encoding tools that uses four threads to take advantage of quad-core systems, and it comes in a 64-bit version. For this test, I asked Windows Media Encoder to transcode a 153MB 1080-line widescreen video into a 720-line WMV using its built-in DVD/Hardware profile. Because the default "High definition quality audio" codec threw some errors in Windows Vista, I instead used the "Multichannel audio" codec. Both audio codecs have a variable bitrate peak of 192Kbps.

In Windows Media encoding, the very same chips come out on top as in our picCOLOR benchmark: the 3600+, E4300, 5000+, 5600+, and E6600, in order from the highest performance per dollar to the lowest.

The Q6600 is in the same spot as before, too, although this test gives us a more concrete example to illustrate its position. If you look at our encoding numbers, the Q6600 encodes our file 302.3 seconds (just over five minutes) faster than the E6600. If you don't encode movies very often then that's probably not a big deal, but if this is a task you carry out regularly, then those chunks of five minutes may turn into hours. It's up to you whether you think that time saving is worth the $306 difference between the E6600 and Q6600.

LAME MP3 encoding
LAME MT is a multithreaded version of the LAME MP3 encoder. 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 multi-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. That means this test won't really use more than two CPU cores.

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.

Surprise, surprise. The 3600+, E4300, 5000+, 5600+, and E6600 offer the four best value propositions in this test, as well. The Athlon 64 X2 6000+ nonetheless sits fairly close to the E6600 in terms of performance per dollar, and its raw performance is a wee bit higher.

Coughing up the extra dough for the Q6600 here is quite counterproductive, since this application can only use two cores at once.