Memory & Subsystem Performance Testing:

Memory bandwidth and subsystem benchmarking are the primary methods of differentiating the performance of various platforms. Our first benchmarking section stresses this area, and uses the SiSoft SANDRA 2007, PCMark05 Pro and ScienceMark 2 benchmarks.

SiSoft SANDRA 2007 Performance

SiSoft SANDRA 2007 is the latest revision of this popular system benchmark, but it sticks to its roots and supplies a wide range of individual benchmarks and system utilities. These include processor, system, network, hard drive benchmarks and many other performance tests. 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 suite.

The SANDRA 2007 memory bandwidth scores show the basic performance levels of the various DDR2 clock speeds, with the most noticeable being the gap between DDR2-667 and DDR2-800. The overclocked DDR2-1066 speeds of the Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3 still lead the way, but due to the robust dual channel DDR2 architecture, it was only by the slimmest of margins. When comparing DDR2-800 results, the Intel 975X platform comes out on top, again by a very slim margin.

SiSoft SANDRA 2007 also includes a Cache and Memory benchmark, which measures the bandwidth of the processor cache and memory subsystem. In a bit of a surprise, the Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3 at DDR2-800 speeds posted the top score, followed closely by the Gigabyte board using DDR2-1066. Using similar memory speeds, the Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3 outpaced the Intel 975X motherboard, and by a noticeable margin.

PCMark05 Pro Performance

PCMark05 Professional is the latest update to the popular PCMark system benchmarking series from FutureMark, and it has been revamped to highlight current hardware and features additional multithreaded and multi-tasking performance tests. There is the usual selection of individual System, CPU, Memory, Graphics, and Hard Drive benchmark suites, and these continue to bridge the gap between synthetic and application-based benchmarks. For our purposes, the Memory test will naturally be where we concentrate our platform benchmarking efforts.

PCMark05 Pro reverses the trend towards the Intel P965, and this benchmark shows the Intel 975X with the top score, outdistancing the Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3 at both DDR2-800 and DDR2-1066 memory speeds.

ScienceMark 2 Performance

The ScienceMark 2 memory test is another important part of our benchmark selection, and more specifically, the MemBench portion of the program. This high-end test utilizes a series of memory bandwidth algorithms, and then offers a measure of the overall memory bandwidth of a given CPU/memory/platform combination. In many ways, it is similar to SiSoft SANDRA in terms of output and format, but depending on the platform and CPU, the actual tests can offer a slightly different result.

We again see the actual DDR2 memory speed paying the highest dividends, but only up to a point. The DDR2-667 vs. DDR2-800 comparison is obvious, but there is only a slight advantage to the higher DDR2-1066 speed offered by the Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3. The dual channel DDR2-800 architecture is sufficient in most scenarios, and the higher 1066 MHz memory speed rarely gets an opportunity to pay off.