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AMD Phenom II X4 940 Black Edition Review
| Author | Edward Chester |
| Published | 8th Jan 2009 |
| Manufacturer | AMD |
| Price | £199.99 (Exc VAT) |
| as reviewed | £229.99 (Inc VAT) |
| Latest Price |
| Features |  |
| Performance |  |
| Value |  |
| Overall | |
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TrustedReviews NewslettersPerhaps the next most obvious task for a powerful CPU in a desktop PC is video encoding. Whether it's for editing your family videos or re-encoding your favourite videos to an iPod-friendly format, video encoding is becoming more and more common and of course it's still a very CPU intensive task too.
We've used two scenarios for testing video encoding performance. The first is our age old test of re-encoding a portion of DVD quality MPEG-2 video into the open source Xvid format. This test is a bit long in the tooth as the version of Xvid we use is quite old so not multithreaded (not to mention the fact that the source footage isn't even HD) but in being so it gives us a very reliable indication of single-core performance.
The next scenario takes a section of 1080p footage, again in MPEG-2 format, and re-encodes it into the h.264 format. This is a much more up to date test as the source material is full HD and the h.264 codec is about the most advanced video format currently available. We also use the open source converter, AutoMKV, for this task, which fully supports multi-threading.
VirtualDud - MPEG-2 DVD to Xvid
Although there's still a clear deficit to make up and AMD's clock for clock performance still has some way to go, the Phenom II 940 takes a significant step forward from where it was.
AutoMKV - MPEG-2 1080p to h.264
Things are less encouraging in this multi-threaded test where not only does the new Phenom pale in comparison to Intel's chips but also doesn't seem to make as much of a gain over the older Phenom.
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supersizeme said on 11th January 2009
wiak said on 2nd February 2009
edward you might want to trow in a Q9400/Q9300 as a direct comparison based on price
as all the intels cpus in this review is all above $300, the i7 920 platform cost twice ... more
kois30 said on 12th March 2009
i know this is off topic but "empire total war" is still slow on this cpu even when overclocked to 3.2ghz. the load time is killing it.
Menahunie said on 25th April 2009
Ya know from reading this thread; my conclusion is this.
This is no different than the arguement over Chevy vs. Ford and who is better.
All I have seen is nothing but... more
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I agree it would be advantageous to see this processor compared with the Q6600. The decision is either plop a 6600 into the motherboard, Jump to core i7 or switch to AMD. The Q66... more