GIMP Image Editing

Website: GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP)


Stock performance is very good again, with only a second difference between itself and the performance orientated Maximus III Formula.

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.


Just like above, the performance is consistently fast - better than the Maximus III in this case by a couple of seconds, although a few seconds of the Gigabyte UD5. It's worth keeping in mind that both boards add about £40 on top of the price of the DFI mind you.

Multi-tasking Performance

Website: MPC-HC
Website: 7-Zip


Multi-tasking surprisingly takes a dive though, with the DFI board being a few seconds of the pace, on average, to other the boards tested. This result was consistent and we can only attribute it to how the BIOS is slightly tweaked given the Gigabyte UD5 suffers a similar fate.