Handbrake H.264 Encoding

Website: HandBrake
Our test uses HandBrake - an open-source, GPL-licensed, multiplatform, multithreaded video transcoder, available for MacOS X, Linux and Windows - to encode a high resolution MPEG-2 video using the H.264 codec. This primarily tests multi-threaded CPU and memory subsystem performance.

GIMP Image Editing

Website: GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP)

File Compression & Encryption:

Website: WinRAR

MP3 Encoding

We used LAME MT for our audio encoding test - it's the multi-threaded version of the popular LAME MP3 encoder. We ran tests with both Intel's and Microsoft's compilers - naturally, the Intel compiler resulted in some performance increases on Intel's processors. We converted all 18 tracks from Moby's popular Play album to a 192kbps variable bit-rate MP3.



The X340 is a cut above the Athlon Neo-based HP Pavilion dv2-1030ea in all of the tests and it's in a completely different performance class to the Atom-based Samsung NC10. Despite this though, the X-Slim X340's Core 2 Solo SU3500 is not fast enough to play YouTube HD content without dropping frames – you're going to need at least a dual-core processor to overcome that particular performance hurdle.