Benchmarks: SiSoftware Sandra
This first batch of SiSoftware Sandra 2009 results looks at memory bandwidth performance and due to the unique design of the Core i7 processors they cannot be touched here. The AMD Phenom II X4 955 fares very well when compared to its older siblings and the Core 2 range nonetheless. When using DDR3 memory the Phenom II X4 955 achieved a bandwidth of almost 13GB/s, while the DDR2 configuration almost reached 12GB/s.
The Phenom II X4 955 was at least 20% faster than the 940 in terms of memory bandwidth, and produced around 70% more bandwidth than the Core 2 Quad Q9650.
The Sandra 2009 processor arithmetic performance has moved only slightly when compared to the older Phenoms. This meant that while the Phenom II X4 955 was able to edge out the Core 2 Quad Q9650 in the Whetstone iSSE3 test, it was much slower in the Dhrystone ALU test.
The SiSoftware Sandra 2009 multimedia performance of the AMD Phenom II X4 955 is impressive. Although the Phenom II X4 processors tend to struggle with the "float" test, the "Int" performance is excellent as the Phenom II X4 955 is able to match the Core i7 940.
The core efficiency of the Phenom II X4 processors is still down, and while they were noticeably better than the Phenom X4 9950, when compared to the older Core 2 processors the results were dismal.