SiSoft SANDRA 2002 Performance

SiSoft SANDRA 2002 is an interesting suite of individual benchmarks and system utilities. The CPU benchmarks are artificial tests that can give a different view of processor and subsystem performance, far away from application-based testing. The benchmarks that truly isolate processor performance are the CPU Arithmetic and Multi-Media tests. Please note that in all CPU testing, there was no change in the default activation of all MMX, SSE and SSE2 enhancements.

The SiSoft SANDRA CPU Arithmetic tests outline the potential performance of the ALU (integer) and FPU (floating-point) portions of the CPU. In the ALU testing, the Pentium 4-2.53 GHz won the day and eclipsed the long-running streak of the Athlon XP 2100+. As expected, the platform choice means little to the actual CPU scores, with any variance between the i850E and SiS 645DX being within allowable limits.

The CPU Multi-Media benchmarks tell basically the same tale, as the Pentium 4-2.53 GHz once again powers to an easy victory. This benchmark has long been Pentium 4 territory, and the added clock speed just increases the overall lead.

The memory bandwidth tests are the most popular section of the SiSoft SANDRA benchmark suite, and really highlight not only the Pentium 4 vs. Athlon XP title match, but also the RDRAM vs. DDR333 side-bout. The i850E certainly didn't disappoint, as this platform easily took the checkered flag. The SiS 645DX puts up a good fight, but the Athlon XP/KT333 is well back.

This once again points to the 266 MHz Athlon XP being well suited to DDR266, while even the 400 MHz Pentium 4 needs all the DDR bandwidth it can get. Once the Pentium 4 hit the 533 MHz FSB, it literally gobbles up the 333 MHz DDR bus of the SiS 645DX and then asks for seconds.

BAPCo SYSmark 2002

SYSmark 2002 is a very demanding system benchmark that combines the elements of Business and Content Creation Winstone into one expansive program. The Internet Content Creation portion makes use of multimedia programs such as Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Premiere, Microsoft Windows Media Encoder 7.1 (AMD and Intel supported), Macromedia Dreamweaver 4, and Macromedia Flash 5. The Office Productivity selection includes popular office programs such as the 2002 versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Access, as well as Netscape 6, Dragon NaturallySpeaking, WinZip, and McAfee VirusScan.

The benchmarks clearly show the Pentium 4-2.53 GHz well in the lead, and in fact, all of the Pentium 4 processors tested surpassed the performance of even an Athlon XP 2100+. The Office Productivity scores are actually quite close, but once we hit Internet Content Creation, the Pentium 4 goes out to an insurmountable lead.