SiSoft Sandra Memory Bandwidth

SiSoftware Sandra (the System ANalyser, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant) is an information & diagnostic utility. It should provide most of the information (including undocumented) you need to know about your hardware, software and other devices whether hardware or software. It's available in five versions, ranging from the free "Lite" version to the Sandra Enterprise version. Sandra fully supports and exploits multi-processor and multi-core systems, NUMA memory, Hyper-Threading, and MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE 4.1, SSE 4.2, AVX, and FMA instructions.

It comprises a massive suite of test and reporting features...but the one I'm interested in is the memory bandwidth test: SiSoft's memory bandwidth test provides individual and aggregate scores across a variety of memory operations. For this test I'm reporting the aggregate score. Does the new quad-channel memory system really make that much of a difference?

And the answer is yes...yes it does. The AMD FX-8150 comes in the loser here, even though it's running its dual-channel memory at a slightly higher speed than the Intel platforms. The 2600K's improved memory controller more than makes up for its one-channel deficit relative to the 980X's triple-channel setup, but just look at those 3960X scores: memory bandwidth (at least as measured by Sandra) virtually doubles the next best score.

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