Intel Pentium 4 1.7GHz: Does the prophecy hold true?

FPU/MP3 Encoding Performance

Finally we have our audio encoding test which illustrates that although bandwidth may have become synonymous with the Pentium 4, encoding in general doesn’t follow the same rules.  The Athlon does seem to have a more power FPU when it comes to standard x87 FP code and since MP3 encoding isn’t exactly memory bandwidth intensive, AMD takes home an easy win here.

It will be interesting to see what a heavily optimized SSE2 encoder will be able to do for the Pentium 4; however chances are that the true strengths of SSE2 will lie in its 64-bit SIMD-FP capabilities which are better suited for professional applications than MP3 encoding.