SiSoft Sandra MAX3

SiSoft Sandra MAX3 – Synthetic

Notes

Sandra MAX3 is the latest creation from SiSoftware, which incorporates support for the AMD64 initiative. Its web site indicates that the benchmark supports Athlon 64, but gives no indication with regard to optimizing for the process. Perhaps that is why the Athlon 64 FX-51 fares poorly in the Arithmetic test, scoring below its predecessor in the ALU section and marginally better in the FPU part. The incorporation of SSE2 support certainly helps, though. It is also possible that, because the Athlon 64 has two extra pipeline stages, it isn’t able to execute as many instructions per cycle as the Athlon XP 3200+, which runs at the same frequency.

The multimedia test again demonstrates a gain attributable to SSE2 instruction set support. However, the Athlon 64 isn’t able to come anywhere near the Pentium 4’s score.

One specification that the Athlon 64 FX and Pentium 4 share in common is support for dual-channel DDR400 memory modules. The significant difference, of course, is that the Athlon 64 FX incorporates its memory controller on the processor die. Thus, the bandwidth benchmark isn’t much of a surprise – the Athlon 64 FX enjoys 14 percent more real-world throughput than its closest competitor.