Xvid Encoding:

We tested video encoding performance using VirtualDub-MPEG version 1.6.15 and a multi-threaded version of the Xvid codec, along with the LAME MT MP3 encoder for encoding audio. We did a two-pass encode of a 15-minute 276MB digital TV recording with a target file size of 100MB.


Xvid encoding is slightly better than average with a single card, whereas enabling CrossFire adds a few seconds overhead causing the speed to drop off slightly.

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.


Encoding times are extremely fast and very consistent for the MSI P35 Platinum using the Intel compiled LAME 3.97 encoder.

MP3 Decoding

Decoding is more hard drive weighted in comparison to encoding which uses the CPU-memory subsystem more, and at this the MSI also performs as fast as the fastest boards we've tested so far.