AMD's Dual Core Laptops Have Arrived: Introducing the Turion 64 X2

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ABBYY FineReader 8

We used FineReader 8 to convert the PDF version of the Tolstoy classic "War and Peace" to the MS Word DOC format. The background recognition mode of the latest version 8 supports both execution units of a dual-core CPU.

Windows Media Encoder

Windows Media Encoder 9, which is optimized for deployment in dual-core systems, was used to convert an AVI file of 426 MB to the WMV format.

Autodesk 3D Studio Max

We opened the 21 MB project file "Stadium" and subsequently rendered six images in a short movie clip in HDTV resolution. This application, too, is optimized for dual-core processors.

Pinnacle Studio 10 Plus

We used the multi-core-optimized Pinnacle Studio 10 Plus to scale a video file from the 352x288 MPEG-2 format to 720x576 MPEG-2, and applied a number of filters.

Multitasking I

In the first multitasking scenario, a script concurrently executed WinRAR and the MP3 encoder LAME. The CPU had to convert a WAV file of 108 MB to the MP3 format, and at the same time compress a folder of 181 MB containing 23 files with maximum compression.

Multitasking II

This scenario represents an aggravated version of the first MT scenario. In addition to WinRAR and LAME, Ogg Vorbis and the Windows Media Encoder were also executed concurrently. Ogg Vorbis converted an audio file to the OGG format, while the Windows Media Encoder converted an AVI file of 108 MB to the WMV format. Thus, the CPU had to process four tasks concurrently.

Multitasking III

In this scenario, we simulated a process that can be observed every day in a business environment: while the user executes an application, a virus scan is performed in the background. In this case, we used FineReader 8 to convert the PDF version of the Tolstoy classic "War and Peace" to the DOC format of MS Word, and concurrently searched a large installation directory for viruses. Everybody is familiar with this type of scenario; most people working for large companies have noticed that it is best to go out for lunch once the IT department starts the scan process via remote access, because it is usually impossible to work productively.