Benchmark Results: Audio And Video Encoding
We had to reduce our A/V enconding suite simply to complete this review within an adequate amount of time. A quick look at encode times sheds a bit of light on why, exactly.
Our lightest load, Apple iTunes, encodes a full-length movie soundtrack to AAC format in slightly more than five minutes.
Lame takes a little longer to encode the same sound track to MP3.
Performance takes a fast slide downhill when it comes to video transcoding. Cyberlink MediaEspresso takes more than 13 minutes to convert a five-minute video to low-resolution.
ArcSoft MediaConverter performs a little better under AMD’s architecture, encoding the same video nearly twice as quickly. This is still longer than real-time, however, making this combination of hardware and software unsuitable for DVR purposes.
Our HTPC-oriented HandBrake benchmark takes nearly half an hour to run per board, causing us to give up on it. The E-350 is suitable for media players, but definately not full-featured HTPCs.