CPU Reviews & Articles

SiSoft SANDRA XII 2008 Bandwidth Performance

SiSoft SANDRA XII 2008 is a very popular system benchmark, and each revision sticks to its roots and supplies a wide range of individual benchmarks and system utilities. These tests include processor, system, network, and hard drive benchmarks, along with many other performance metrics. The memory bandwidth test is the most popular section of the SiSoft SANDRA benchmark suite, and it highlights the potential performance levels of the CPU-memory subsystem. As the Integer and FPU memory bandwidth scores are quite similar, we are only including the first one in our benchmark testing.

SANDRA XII 2008 includes a range of memory and cache-related benchmarks, and definitely makes a great fit for our high-end processor testing. With the newer revisions, issues with the Phenom support have been addressed, and this benchmark test shows AMD firmly in control. The Core 2 Duo E8500 is still the highest performing Intel processor, dual or quad core, confirming the results we saw in PCMark05.

The SiSoft SANDRA XII 2008 Cache & Memory benchmark goes well beyond memory performance, and measures the bandwidth of the combined processor cache and memory subsystem. This test can show off the architectural advantages of each processor, as well as the benefits of larger and faster L1/L2 data caches, and help give us an overall view of how the processor and memory match up in high-speed data transfers.

The Cache & Memory benchmark is another that naturally favors a multi-core architecture, and although the Core 2 Duo E8500 does extremely well for a dual core processor, it cannot match the best quads from AMD or Intel.

SiSoft SANDRA XII 2008 incorporates a set of multi-core benchmarks that test the inter-core bandwidth, processor affinity and latency of today's top-end CPUs. The first test measures the efficiency of the inter-connect bandwidth, and determines overall bandwidth available between processors. It's no surprise to see the Core 2 Duo E8500 having a tough time with the quad core Intel processors, but the AMD Phenom quad core processors remain well back in this benchmark.

The second part of the test measures the inter-core latency, and the dual core Wolfdale proves itself the equal of the 1600 MHz Yorkfield.