Paint.NET x64

Website: Paint.NET

This is the 64-bit version of the popular free image editing software, Paint.NET. It's not as advanced as something like Adobe Photoshop CS3 or Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo X2, but it does serve well for most image editing tasks.

We used the PDNBench script to test the processing times for a range of images and filters. The multi-threaded software also takes advantage of multi-core processors quite effectively.

For more information on what the benchmark script entails, please see this thread on the Paint.NET forums.


Wham! that massively powerful Core i7 engine, along with a relatively inexpensive $284 list price means that the Core i7 920 overclocked to 4GHz gives a nearly 200 percent value increase over the baseline E8500 CPU. All the Core i7's are actually upwards of a 75-100 percent relative value increase over the E8500, despite the increased cost, because the performance is so much better. The AMD's sit around mid table, although the overclocked Phenom X4 9850 at 3GHz still ranks very well. It provides a better price : performance rating than the overclocked E8400 @ 4GHz, although the overclocked Q6600 at a full 100 percent increase in value will be of more people's interest here.


When it comes to total platform performance - even despite the high cost of motherboard and memory, the Core i7's win the day here, although the Q6600 overclocked with DDR2 still intermingles nicely at the 100 percent better value than an E8500 with DDR2. The E8400 overclocked with DDR3 is negative value, as is the E8500 with DDR3 - in fact, DDR3 on the Core 2 platform kills it here, mostly due to the high cost of motherboard again relative to the performance gain.

The inexpensive AMD platforms still provide a good value interim, although the DDR2 Core 2 quads seem to just nudge above them except for the Phenom X4 9850 at 3GHz.