[geeks] Athlon 64 X2 3800+

[Sridhar Ayengar]

Bill Bradford wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 21, 2007 at 05:23:03PM -0400, Sridhar Ayengar wrote:
>> Well, a few days ago, I decided to splurge and bought myself a Blu-Ray 
>> burner.  I am pleased to report that using only the software decoder, my 
>> box can decode a Blu-Ray movie in 1080p using only just under 1/2 of one 
>> processor core!  I am tremendously pleased.
> 
> I remember when real-time MP3 encoding was something to be amazed at (ten
> years ago).  Queue up files to be encoded overnight, or dedicate a machine
> to encode most of the time, as it took 30+minutes/song.
> 
> Nowdays, 6x, 8x, etc.  

When MP3 first hit the scene, I couldn't even *decode* in real-time.  I 
had to batch decode and then play the resulting WAV files.  If memory 
serves, I was running a 486DX-33 at the time.  I managed to upgrade to a 
486BL2-66 shortly thereafter, which was *barely* capable of decoding MP3 
in realtime.

Peace...  Sridhar