AOpen XC Cube EU965

Adobe Photoshop Elements 4.0

For our Photoshop Elements test, we used a selection of 400 3MP photographs taken in a variety of surroundings using the batch file processing function in the Elements Editor. We performed all of the auto fixes, including Auto Levels, Auto Contrast, Auto Colour and Sharpen before resizing the image to 640x480 and saving as a high quality JPEG.


The onboard video really cripples the performance of the AOpen, adding on two more minutes rendering time. The AOpen using discrete video even out performs the Gigabyte with the same graphics card by a few seconds, despite not being able to adjust the memory timings. The Shuttle out performs them both, running at 3-3-3-9-1T and using a 975X chipset.

File Compression & Encryption:

Our file compression and decompression tests were split into two halves to cover a broad spectrum of performance. The first test we ran was to compress and encrypt the MPEG-2 source file from our video encoding test with the highest quality compression ratio. Secondly, we compressed and encrypted the folder of 400 photographs used in our Photoshop Elements test with the same compression settings.

Again we see a large drop in time when using onboard video, but this time even when using a discrete video card as well. Despite the Shuttle having a different video card, it makes no difference in 2D, and it still out performs the Aopen. The lack of memory timing and speed control playing a large effect here since hard drive speeds are the same.

File Decompression & Decryption:

The two RAR archives created during the compression and encryption tests were then decompressed and decrypted.


Using discrete video makes the AOpen match a similar chipset board, but yet again, onboard video slows things down.