Alder Lake CPUs’ favorable price/performance ratio was initially spoiled by expensive motherboards. However, after the arrival of models with Intel B660 chipsets, the unfavorable situation began to turn around and in some cases quite dramatically. Asus TUF Gaming B660 Plus WiFi D4 with support for DDR4 memory, which is far cheaper than DDR5, can handle even the fastest CPUs. And the vast majority of users won’t even feel any bottlenecks.
Audio encoding
Test environment: Audio encoding is done using command line encoders, we measure the time it takes for the conversion to finish. The same 42-minute long 16-bit WAV file (stereo) with 44.1 kHz is always used (Love Over Gold by Dire Straits album rip in a single audio file).
Encoder settings are selected to achieve maximum or near maximum compression. The bitrate is relatively high, with the exception of lossless FLAC of about 200 kb/s.
Note: These tests measure single-thread performance.
FLAC: reference encoder 1.3.2, 64-bit build. Launch options: flac.exe -s -8 -m -e -p -f
MP3: encoder lame3.100.1, 64-bit build (Intel 19 Compiler) from RareWares. Launch options: lame.exe -S -V 0 -q 0
AAC: uses Apple QuickTime libraries, invoked through the application from the command line, QAAC 2.72, 64-bit build, Intel 19 Compiler (does not require installation of the whole Apple package). Launch options: qaac64.exe -V 100 -s -q 2
Opus: reference encoder 1.3.1, Launch options: opusenc.exe –comp 10 –quiet –vbr –bitrate 192
