LAME MP3 encoding
We used LAME 3.92 to encode a 101MB 16-bit, 44KHz audio file into a very high-quality MP3. The exact command-line options we used were:

lame --alt-preset extreme file.wav file.mp3

Here are the results...

The 3200+ shaves 1.5 seconds off the 3000+ chip's encode time, but it's not quite enough to catch the Pentium 4 chips at 3.0 and 3.06GHz.

DivX video encoding

Our video encoding test seems a likely candidate to benefit from the new 400MHz front-side bus, and it does benefit a little bit. With Hyper-Threading and a faster bus, though, the Pentium 4 can encode our test video clip nearly a minute faster than the Athlon XP 3200+.

Speech recognition
Sphinx is a high-quality speech recognition routine that needs the latest computer hardware to run at speeds close to real-time processing. We use two different versions, built with two different compilers, in an attempt to ensure we're getting the best possible performance.

There are two goals with Sphinx. The first is to run it faster than real time, so real-time speech recognition is possible. The second, more ambitious goal is to run it at about 0.8 times real time, where additional CPU overhead is available for other sorts of processing, enabling Sphinx-driven real-time applications.

The Athlon XP 3200+ comes in second to only the 800MHz-bus Pentium 4.