Results: Media Encoding And Creativity
The virtually-silent Maven Pure beats our conventional desktops in iTunes and LAME MP3 encoding. That's what you get when you can get single-threaded apps running quickly on one core.
The benefit of logical cores and added cache are apparent in HandBrake and TotalCode Studio as a performance match between the $1600 SBM machine’s stock CPU and the Maven Pure’s overclock.
Nvidia’s technology works a little better in Photoshop’s OpenCL-based filters, so the Maven Pure takes its lead.
Extra cache and Hyper-Threading are nice features for the $1600 PC to have in Adobe Premiere, but Acrobat’s single-threaded engine is far more clock rate-dependent.