Sisoft Sandra 2009 SP2
Sisoft Sandra is a great synthetic benchmark suite that allows testing of numerous system components. I’ll be using the CPU Arithmetic, Cryptography, Memory Bandwidth and Memory Latency tests.
We’re using version 15.72, which is friendly to processors containing two, three or four cores.
If one were to compare things clock-for-clock, Intel’s Core 2 architecture wins for raw number crunching ability, but chip-to-chip the Phenom II X4 955 holds its own against the more expensive Q9550. The Core i7 outclasses them both handily once Hyperthreading is enabled, but its Whetstone scores are only on par with it disabled.
When it comes to cryptography testing, the Phenom II X4 955 shines. It pulls to the lead in SHA256 testing while staying right on the Intel quad in AES256 testing. When compared to the other AMD quads, the numbers in these two tests seem to indicate the the performance gains comes from the increased frequency. It’s a nice linear step up from the Phenom II 940 Black Edition that coincides with the additional 200 mhz.
Memory bandwidth is as expected. The 955 trounces its rival Intel Quad, but gets handily spanked by the more expensive Core i7, despite the slower memory speeds the Core i7 920 was tested with. But, in its class the Phenom II X4 955 is the DDR3 king. We anticipate its DDR2 scores will lead the X4 810 and will update all DDR2 results when we are able to test on our DDR2 bench.
Latency is as expected. The lowest latency was found with the Core 2 processors running DDR2, with DDR3 latency only slightly slower. The 955’s DDR3 latency was the highest between the three processors tested, but only by a 3ms margin at the 64MB block size. The original Phenoms had the highest latency of all.