
AMD and Intel both manage to reduce processing time in single-threaded audio conversions from one architectural generation to the next. Once again we see that large and smart caches are very helpful, and it is very obvious that Intel’s Core processor family beats AMD's portfolio, which in turn is of course significantly more affordable.

Expectedly, the results of iTunes and the Lame MP3 encoder (both single-threaded) are somewhat similar. If you encode or transcode a lot of music and still use a Pentium 4, then it’s probably about time to replace your system.

The performance differences between AMD and Intel processors increased over time. Intel continues introducing improvements from one product generation to the next, while AMD's architectural choices are more evolutionary in nature.
Once again the Pentium 4 delivers really bad performance compared to everything else today. Perhaps an Atom would have been a better choice for comparison?

Here we see different results, but the placing is very similar in MainConcept.
Bear in mind that these results are representative of a single processing core, and that video applications scale pretty well with multiple processing cores. Really, the purpose of our analysis here is to compare architectures, with all else equal. Factoring in parallelism would change the outcome drastically.
- A Real (Theoretical) Performance Shootout
- Six-Core CPUs: AMD Thuban And Intel Gulftown
- Modern Quad-Core CPUs: AMD Deneb And Intel Sandy Bridge
- Modern Dual-Core CPUs: AMD Regor And Intel Clarkdale
- Older Dual-Core Designs: AMD Brisbane, Intel Conroe, And Intel Wolfdale
- Outdated Dual-Core Designs: AMD Windsor And Intel Prescott
- Platforms: LGA 1366, 1156, 1155, 775, Socket AM2+, And AM3
- Test Setup And Benchmarks
- Benchmark Results: 3DMark 11
- Benchmark Results: Sandra 2010 Pro
- Benchmark Results: Audio/Video Benchmarks
- Benchmark Results: Archiving Tools
- Benchmark Results: OCR And PDF Creation
- Benchmark Results: Professional Applications
- Conclusion