Benchmark Results: Audio And Video Encoding
Our iTunes-based workload is single-threaded, so it tends to favor Intel's newer Ivy Bridge architecture over Sandy Bridge, regardless of core count (and assuming the same clock rate, of course). Our Sandy Bridge-E-based machine enjoys a 100 MHz clock rate advantage, overclocked, though. Nevertheless, the Core i5 takes top honors in this test.
The race tightens up in Lame, but Ivy Bridge's advantage in IPC throughput keeps today's setup on top.
HandBrake and MainConcept are optimized to take advantage of all available processing resources, returning a large lead to the six-core Core i7-3930K.