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SiSoft Sandra is one of the most widely used synthetic benchmarking applications. Sandra offers performance testing for many subsystems and components. It also provides detailed analyses of system performance, capabilities, and stability. Overclockers will appreciate Sandra's dedicated tests designed for specific areas, such as processor, memory, and drive systems. These tests will help determine the best combination of settings for memory bus rates, front-side bus rates, and processor multiplier values.
Sandra's processor testing is broken down into two benchmarking modules. The primary processor-testing module provides instructions-per-second ratings for both integer and floating-point math operations. The multimedia module tests any enhanced streaming instruction capabilities the processor may offer, including Intel's SSE2 or AMD's 3DNow!. While synthetic processor testing may not represent real-world performance, it is a good place to start in identifying changes that result from overclocking.
The Sandra memory module lets you benchmark the available bandwidth between the memory and processor buses via the chipset bus. The results are displayed in megabytes per second for both integer and floating-point operations. Increases in front-side bus and memory bus rates offer greater bandwidth improvements than multiplier-only overclocking.
The Sandra file system benchmark provides both stability and performance testing. Front-side bus overclocking can produce higher drive bandwidth, with less read/write latency, through consequent overclocking of the PCI bus transfer rate. Stability can be evaluated by way of multiple-loop drive testing (i.e., running the test multiple times) to verify that data integrity is maintained during operation at extended PCI bus frequencies.
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