System and Memory Benchmarks

SiSoft Sandra 2004 64-Bit

The 64-bit version of Sandra 2004 has been available for a while, but we did not have an Operating System to reliably run with the 64-bit version.  Sandra 64-bit runs fine on the XP64 preview.  While Sandra is a Synthetic Benchmark, we were curious to see if there would be any performance difference in memory, CPU Arithmetic, and Multimedia benchmarks between the 32-bit and 64-bit versions.  Everything was kept the same; we even used nVidia drivers close to the same version number.  The only difference is Sandra 2004 tests were run on XP Pro, while Sandra 2004 64-bit tests were run on XP 64-bit Preview Edition.

SiSoft Sandra 2004 - Athlon 64 FX51 Performance

 

32-Bit

(Windows XP SP1)

64-Bit

(XP64 Preview Edition)

% Change

32 to 64-bit

Sandra 2004 Standard

Buffered

INT 5722

FLT 5660

INT 5910

FLT 5831

+3.2%

Sandra 2004 UNBuffered

INT 2588

FLT 2682

INT 2811

FLT 2791

+6.3%

Sandra 2004 CPU Arithmetic

9161 mips

3470/4534 mflops

10121 mips

3881/4105 mflops

+10.5% mips

-0.2% mflops

Sandra 2004 CPU Multimedia

INT 16404

FLOAT 21642

INT 16598

FLOAT 22869

+1% INT

+5.7% FLOAT

The 32-bit vs. 64-bit results in Sandra are very interesting.  Even in this pre-release version of XP64, the Athlon 64 CPU and Memory Performance is higher than in 32-bit Windows XP.  Mips, which is based on ALU tests, is more than 10% faster, and Integer and Float tests in the Sandra 2004 Multimedia benchmark is 1% to 6% faster.  The only area without increased performance in 64-bit is the mflops component of the Arithmetic benchmark.  If we look closer, this benchmark is a combination FPU performance and iSSE2 performance.  While Floating Point increases some 11.6% in the move from XP to XP64 Preview, the Intel SSE2 results decrease by about the same amount.   The net result is virtually no change in the composite mflops.  We do not know if this is because Intel SSE2 is penalized by 64-bit operation or whether XP64 and/or Sandra 2004 64-bit benchmark require some optimizations for 64-bit performance.    

Super Pi

Super PI is very simple - it calculates the value of pi.  In the benchmark you can select the number of placed for calculation, and we used 2 million places as used in memory tests at AnandTech.   

Super Pi - Athlon 64 FX51 Performance

 

32-Bit

(Windows XP SP1)

64-Bit

(XP64 Preview Edition)

% Change

32 to 64-bit

Super Pi

2M Places

88 seconds

88 seconds

0%

As you can see, Super Pi was exactly the same result in both 32 and 64-bit.

Performance Test Configuration Media Encoding and Gaming Benchmarks
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  • Staples - Saturday, February 7, 2004 - link

    I really hope those game scores are due to premature video drivers. As you see, Halo did almost as well as the 32bit platform and as you should know, DX9 games are almost solely based on the GPU. So if Halo did almost as well on both platforms, it says that the video drivers can't be that premature, either that or explanation 2 is that we can expect a huge increase in DX9 games.
  • Corsairpro - Saturday, February 7, 2004 - link

    Too bad there weren't any decent video drivers. Every one who just glances at the numbers is going to claim "The message is clear x86-64 has failed" when it comes to games. Oh well, more supply for me to buy!
  • buleyb - Saturday, February 7, 2004 - link

    Not that I'm not excited, but you should point out Wes that this isn't just a 64bit OS, but an AMD 64bit OS, meaning that the performance improvement has a lot to do with the new general purpose registers and such. I don't want people thinking that 64bit is a pure performance improvement, because it really isn't by itself.

    But still, nice work :)
  • KristopherKubicki - Saturday, February 7, 2004 - link

    Skol. Well done Wes.
  • saechaka - Saturday, February 7, 2004 - link

    boy am i glad i just bought this athlon 64 notebook. huurraaayy for me
  • Wesley Fink - Saturday, February 7, 2004 - link

    There are times editing would be useful in this comments section. XP, and not Halo, had about the same performance.
  • Wesley Fink - Saturday, February 7, 2004 - link

    Halo was the game that was close to the same performance in XP and XP64, and not Halo as #4 pointed out. Since X2 is DirectX 8.1 with heavy use of transform and lighting effects, it has little relevance to the Halo performance. Corrected in the article.
  • Emma - Saturday, February 7, 2004 - link

    "It is very interesting that the DirectX 9 game Halo is already very close to 32-bit performance at only 4% slower than 32-bit performance. This means the newest 32-bit games, or at least the newest games from Microsoft, may be as fast on 64-bit as 32-bit at the launch of XP64, or possibly even faster."

    Can you clarify this please. The table shows there being a -19.1% change...
  • Boonesmi - Saturday, February 7, 2004 - link

    by the way ive read in several threads of guys using pcmark 2004 and getting incredible fps in divx encoding
  • Ecmaster76 - Saturday, February 7, 2004 - link

    Very interesting. That 15% increase in media encoding should have the AMD execs laughing maniacally. That might end up getting them a 15% increase in market share.