System Builder Marathon: $2,500 Enthusiast PC

Benchmark Results: Audio/Video Encoding

Apple iTunes gains nothing from the new architecture of our $2,500 Core i7 build and instead favors the slightly higher clock speed of the former $4,500 Core 2 Quad system.

Core i7 edges out Core 2 technology in Lame MP3 encoding.

All three video encoding tests heavily favor the $2,500 PC’s Core i7 architecture. TMPGEnc has always shown its preference for better memory performance, and these results indicate that Mainconcept has similar preferences.