5 - Synthetic testing

DryStone CPU test

We make use of a multi-threaded Dhrystone test, which basically is a suite of arithmetic and string manipulating programs. Since the whole program should be really small, it fits into the processor cache. It can be used to measure two aspects, both the processor's speed as well as the optimizing capabilities of the compiler. The resulting number is the number of executions of the program suite per second.

First impression, not bad, yet that is a long way to the Q6600.

Queen CPU test

This simple integer benchmark focuses on the branch prediction capabilities and the misprediction penalties of the CPU. It finds the solutions for the classic "Queens problem" on a 10 by 10 sized chessboard. At the same clock speed theoretically the processor with the shorter pipeline and smaller misprediction penalties will attain higher benchmark scores. For example -- with HyperThreading disabled -- the Intel Northwood core processors get higher scores than the Intel Prescott core based ones due to the 20-step vs 31-step long pipeline. However, with enabled HyperThreading the picture is controversial, because due to architectural bottlenecks the Northwood core runs out of internal resources and slows down. Similarly, at the same clock speed AMD K8 class processors will be faster than AMD K7 ones due to the improved branch prediction capabilities of the K8 architecture.

CPU Queen test uses only the basic x86 instructions, it consumes less than 1 MB system memory and it is HyperThreading, multi-processor (SMP) and multi-core aware and thus is a multithreading CPU Benchmark with MMX, SSE2 and SSSE3 optimizations.

The tide is turning for AMD here. Very nice.

3DMark06 CPU test

Now apparently I never factually did write down the CPU test results of competing Intel processors, coughs .. we'll make sure that does happen in the future though. This benchmark therefore is just for reference.