The Origin of Speed: Origin's Genesis Gaming System

SiSoft Sandra




Preliminary Testing with SiSoft SANDRA 2009
Synthetic Benchmarks


We began testing with SiSoftware's SANDRA, which stands for System ANalyzer, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant. The 2.67GHz Core i7 920 Origin sent proved rock-solid-stable at 3.8GHz, never crashing or destabilizing even under maximum load.




The Core i5 at 3.8GHz puts up a strong fight in Sandra's baseline CPU performance benchmark, but the Core i7's HyperThreading gives it an edge in both ALU and FPU performance.




If you're wondering about the difference between the arithmetic and multimedia tests, it's laid out in Sandra's help file. Both benchmarks measure CPU performance, but the Dhrystone/Whetstone benchmarks measure a processor's raw capability to execute integer or floating point instructions. Sandra's multimedia suite is designed to test the various SIMD capabilities of a processor. In the company's own words: The test involves the generation of Mandelbrot Set fractals that are used to realistically describe and generate natural objects such as mountains or clouds. By using various multi-media extensions better performance is achieved.

Again, Origin leads the pack thanks to its high clock speed and HT.




Here, the Alienware ALX's faster memory bus gives that system a slight edge. Don't expect the bandwidth difference to have much of an impact on our actual tests though—consumer applications and games are typically more latency-sensitive, than bandwidth-sensitive. Even the Core i5-750, at 'just' 18GB/s of memory bandwidth, is amply provisioned for even the nastiest desktop apps.





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