9 - Synthetic testing

Mandel FPU test

This benchmark measures double precision (also known as 64-bit) floating-point performance through the computation of several frames of the popular "Mandelbrot" fractal. The code behind this benchmark method is written in Assembly, and it is extremely optimized for every popular AMD and Intel processor core variants by utilizing the appropriate x86 or SSE2 instruction set extension.

Now if you come from the Commodore 64 / Amiga era like me, you can probably remember rendering Mandelbrot graphics, and it took a full day to complete an image.  Amazing where we are right now.

FPU Mandel test again is HyperThreading, multi-processor (SMP) and multi-core (CMP) aware. Here's where the 4850 starts to forfeit on performance. Phenom however was showing really impressive stuff.

Memory test

SANDRA has an excellent tool to measure memory bandwidth.  The TBL bugged Phenom is punished hard. I'm looking forward to test revision B3. But look at the X2 4850 and what it can do with some good memory. Very nice.

But enough synthetic testing let's move onwards to game performance.