System Builder Marathon, Dec. 2009: $2,500 Performance PC

Benchmark Results: Audio And Video Encoding

Apple iTunes performs brilliantly, converting an entire feature-length audio file from wave to AAC in just over one minute.

Anyone willing to wait a few seconds longer will be pleased to encode their audio CD to the nearly-universal MP3 format in well under two minutes.

Our switch to Windows 7 brought with it a moderate performance deficit in DivX encoding, though it’s far easier to attribute the performance improvements of Xvid to hardware.

Always CPU-intensive, our machine’s MainConcept results are better than most of the other systems we’ve tested, including former SBM machines.