µATX Part 2: Intel G33 Performance Review

Media Encoding Performance

We are utilizing an updated video encoding test suite for this article that includes Nero Recode 2, Windows Media Encoder 9, Sony Vegas 7.0e, and Roxio VideoWave 8. The scores reported include the full encoding process and is represented in seconds, with lower numbers providing better performance.

Our first series of tests is quite easy - we take our original Office Space DVD and use AnyDVD to rip the full DVD to the hard drive without compression, thus providing an almost exact duplicate of the DVD. We then fired up Nero Recode 2, selected our Office Space copy on the hard drive, and performed a shrink operation to allow the entire movie along with extras to fit on a single 4.5GB DVD disc. We left all options on their defaults except we checked off the advanced analysis option.


The results are fairly indicative of what we will see in our application testing. The G33 boards will generally fare a little better in CPU or memory sensitive tests due to their latency and memory throughput advantages although our Gigabyte board tends be slightly slower than the other G33 boards when it comes to storage system results. In this test, the ASUS P5K-VM finishes first and is around 7% quicker than the Gigabyte board.

Our next test has us converting our day at the beach AVI file into a high definition WMV file suitable for our Aunt Gertrude to view on her new high definition LCD TV. We ensured our quality settings were set to High Definition. The balance of options is set to standard settings and then we let this program do its magic.


Our MSI board finishes this grueling task first and is 3% quicker than the last place board. While CPU performance is very important in this test, a good storage system is a must during this particular conversion. We see the Gigabyte board finishing behind our other two G33 boards and attribute most of this to the storage system performance not being up to par.

Our Sony Vegas 7.0e test converts several of our summer vacation files into one plasma screen pleasing 1080/24P format with a 5.1 audio stream. We ensured our quality settings were set to their highest levels and then let the horses loose.


In a test that really stresses the CPU, we see the ASRock X1250 board is about 4% faster than the Gigabyte G33 based board with the ASUS board finishing a couple of seconds faster than the MSI board.

Next on the list is our Roxio VideoWave 8 test from the PC WorldBench 6.0 test suite that does a short contemplation of video vacation shorts into a final movie.


The Gigabyte G33 board finishes first and is about 9% quicker than our X1250 boards in a test that really stresses CPU throughput with less emphasis placed on the storage system. Both X1250 boards make up a second place tier of performance in this benchmark.