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Ah, encoding MP3s. No matter how many advances there have been in audio formats and even with the proliferation of online music services, encoding our audio CDs into MP3s is still a stalwart of a computer's regular tasks. So, let's see how the i7 holds up.

Singe-track, single-thread encoding

It's the way it always used to be done. One track after another until the album's finished. For this test we encode 11 tracks using the LAME encoder.

Single-track, multi-threaded

A slight improvement over single threaded encoding, this method will take advantage of multiple cores for each track it is currently encoding. This test encodes the same 11 tracks and uses the multi-threaded version of LAME.

Multi-track, multi-threaded

Finally, we have the quickest method; encoding as many mp3s at once as there are cores. We used DBPowerAmp to manage the batch processing of the same 11 tracks.

It's more of the same here except we have our first real evidence that triple-channel memory brings an advantage - something that was largely looking like an insignificance up until this point. However, one benchmark would not be enough to convince us that it's worth buying an extra stick of RAM, so if all you can afford when you spec-up your system is 2GB then fret not.

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