SiSoft SANDRA 2005 is the latest revision of this popular system benchmark, but it sticks to its roots and supplies a wide range of individual benchmarks and system utilities. These include processor, system, network, hard drive benchmarks and many other performance tests. The memory bandwidth test is the most popular section of the SiSoft SANDRA benchmark suite, and highlights the potential performance levels of the CPU-memory subsystem. As the Integer and FPU scores are quite similar, we are only including the first one in our benchmark suite.
In the PCMark04 and 05 Memory benchmarks, the Pentium EE 955 was easily the class of the field, and the new CPU continues to impress in SiSoft SANDRA 2005 testing. AMD Athlon 64 X2 processors and their integrated memory controllers had been taking it to the Intel dual core processors (800 MHz) for a long while now, but after bumping the bus speed to 1066 MHz, the Pentium EE 955 shows who's boss. Now that Intel has finally made the jump to 1066 MHz for their dual core line, not to mention the bandwidth effect of high-end dual channel DDR2-667 or 800, it may not be possible for AMD to match Intel using the current processor generation.
We have incorporated the ScienceMark 2 memory benchmark to our suite, and more specifically the MemBench portion of the program. This high-end test utilizes a series of memory bandwidth algorithms, and then offers a measure of the overall memory bandwidth of a given CPU/memory/platform combination. In many ways, it is similar to SiSoft SANDRA in terms of output and format, but depending on the platform and CPU, the actual tests can offer a slightly different result.
The ScienceMark 2 benchmarking shows the Pentium EE 955 taking back the performance crown that the Athlon 64 X2 snagged, and giving Intel the clean sweep as far as memory bandwidth is concerned. The shift to the 1066 MHz bus has definitely paid off, and shows off the inherent advantage of Intel moving away from DDR, and towards high-bandwidth DDR2 platforms.
CINEBENCH 2003 is a system benchmark that uses CINEMA 4D for both CPU and video-based testing. This benchmark processes a large, detailed image file on-screen, times the overall performance, and displays the results. As this is a processor review, we're concentrating on the CPU score, which incidentally, can utilize multi-processing and Hyper-Threading.
CINEBENCH 2003 includes support for both multi-threading and Hyper-Threading, and really provides a bare-knuckle fight between the best from AMD and Intel. Last time out, AMD had solidified its lead with the one-two combo of the Athlon 64 X2 4800+ and 4600+ 2.4 GHz dual core models, while the HT-enabled Pentium EE 840 made a game of it. Now, the higher clock speed of the Pentium EE 955 pushes AMD back into second place, and its quad-threaded HT design makes short work of this benchmark.
CINEBENCH 2003 also supplies a rating for multi-threaded performance, and the Pentium EE 955 and 840 processors lead the pack with a 2.15X increase over single core performance levels. The Athlon 64 X2 dual core models post a 1.8X to 1.9X increase, while the Pentium D offers a 1.7X dual core multiplier.
