Synthetic CPU and Memory Tests
SiSoft Sandra 2009 SP1
The latest version of SiSoft Sandra offers up a lot of new features including GPU performance testing and Nehalem processor support. 

Nehalem Revolution: Intel's Core i7 Processor Complete Review - Processors 102

Nehalem Revolution: Intel's Core i7 Processor Complete Review - Processors 103

Nehalem Revolution: Intel's Core i7 Processor Complete Review - Processors 104

Our first two SiSoft Sandra tests look at the raw compute power of the processor and the Core i7 CPUs obviously take the win by a large margin.  No doubt the inclusion of HyperThreading has a lot do with these performance results but notice that the difference between the QX9770 and the Core i7-965 with Turbo Mode Off is about 59% on the floating point calculations with SSE3.  On the multimedia results the improvements are little more muted though the i7-965 EE offers a 12% performance gain over the QX9770. 

Nehalem Revolution: Intel's Core i7 Processor Complete Review - Processors 105

This test looks at the inter-core bandwidth on the CPUs and you can see how dramatic a shift the move to a memory controller and QPI interface on the Core i7 CPUs makes when compared to the Core 2 products.  The Core i7-965 EE is actually more than twice as efficient the Core 2 QX9770.

Nehalem Revolution: Intel's Core i7 Processor Complete Review - Processors 106

And here is where we start to see some REALLY impressive memory performance numbers – the triple channel memory controller in the Core i7 series of processors is incredibly fast!  To see how memory clocks affected bandwidth, I tested the Core i7-920 CPU configurations running at DDR3-1066, the default memory speed according to Intel, while the Core i7-940 and i7-965 were run at DDR3-1333 speeds by setting the memory multiplier to 10x.  Look at the scores on the Core 2 QX9770, and even the AMD Phenom X4 9950, we can clearly see the integrate memory controller that Intel has designed is definitely going to help them get and edge.

Also we should not forget that the new L3 cache shared amongst the four cores on the Core i7 processors also makes a dramatic difference in our observed memory speeds as well. 

Nehalem Revolution: Intel's Core i7 Processor Complete Review - Processors 107

Nehalem Revolution: Intel's Core i7 Processor Complete Review - Processors 108

 
These final two tests look at memory latency and internal cache and memory bandwidth.  Latencies on the DDR3-1333 Core i7 CPUs are in upper-70 ns range while the DDR3-1066 Core i7-920 actually has a higher latency than our DDR3-1333 based Core 2 processors.  As for the cache and memory BW test we can see the result scaling with frequency (and DDR3 memory speed) on the new Nehalem parts and dropping off slowly with the Intel Core 2 CPUs.


Everest Ultimate Edition
Everest has been a staple in raw memory performance testing for years.

Nehalem Revolution: Intel's Core i7 Processor Complete Review - Processors 109

Nehalem Revolution: Intel's Core i7 Processor Complete Review - Processors 110

Nehalem Revolution: Intel's Core i7 Processor Complete Review - Processors 111

Our Everest results more or less mirror those that we observed with SiSoft Sandra’s newest benchmark and indicate a stark performance benefit for Intel’s Core i7 CPUs in raw memory benchmarks. 

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