In AutoGK, a benchmark utility that tests by converting a media file to DivX, Intel processors yet again lead in terms of performance. The Core 2 Extreme comes in first place at 106.7 FPS. The QX6700’s lead compared to the X6800 isn’t very large. The X6800 comes in at 99.8 FPS. Compared to the Core 2 Duo, the E6700 performs 15% better. The Athlon 64 FX-62, AMD’s current best offering, isn’t able to go past 73.5 FPS. Compared to the FX-62, the QX6700 holds an advantage of 45%.

Intel’s dominance in the above test is a result of some of the innovations Intel has introduced with the Core architecture. Primarily, optimizations to SSE 128bit instructions are a strong reason for the performance displayed by the above Intel processors.

In the above 7-Zip test, it is necessary for us to assume the same thing that we did in Sysmark 2004 benchmarks; that the program has poor exploitation of 4 cores.
For this benchmark, it seems that higher clock frequencies is what impacted performance the most.

Lame MT is a command line interface tool that converts Wav to MP3. In the results, Intel processors for the most part outperform their AMD counterparts. The only exception is the Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 which falls behind the AMD Athlon FX-62 by 8 seconds. Considering the large difference in price between the two cards, kudos should still be given to the E6300 for holding up a pretty good fight.

A general trend which is beginning to appear in programs that have poor exploitation of four cores is that the QX6700 turns out to have very similar performance to the Core 2 Duo E6700. This is a result of both processors having equal clocks indicating that only two cores of the QX6700 are actually being taken advantage of.

In this benchmark, we have used iTunes to convert a Wav audio file to 192kbps MP3. Again we see poor use of the QX6700’s four cores. The Core 2 Extreme QX6700 ends up tying for second place with the Core 2 Duo E6300.

Unlike most of the benchmarks we have run so far, Sony Vegas is a program that is able to take decent advantage of the QX6700’s four cores. As is evident in our benchmarks, it is able to properly use multiple cores. The QX6700 was able to complete all of its conversion in 241 seconds. The fastest competitor was the 2.93 Ghz X6800, which was able to complete its conversion in 325 seconds. The fastest AMD solution was the Athlon 64 FX-62, which came it at 436 seconds.