Everest 4.60: memory performance
The memory tests show how quickly the processors communicate with their environment. Besides the pure bandwidth, what's interesting here are the access times. The fewer clock cycles it takes to access a memory cell (a measure known as latency), the faster the cell can be read. With large database applications a low latency can have a positive impact on overall performance.
Whereas AMD processors, with their integrated memory controller, could match Intel chips of the Core-2 era for memory access, and even offer advantages, things have changed with the arrival of the Nehalem architecture. These new chips, with their outstanding memory transfer performance and memory access, are clearly the top performers.
Memory performance (GB/s): longer bars are better.
Memory latency (nanoseconds): shorter bars are better.
Everest 4.60: CPU & FPU performance
In the synthetic Everest benchmark tests, Intel's new Nehalem architecture emerges impressively as the top performer. In some tests the 2.66GHz Core i7 920, thanks to its hyperthreading technology, even beats the 3.2GHz Core 2 Extreme QX9775. Nehalem's lead is particularly apparent in the floating-point benchmark SinJulia, which makes full use of hyperthreading.
CPU performance: longer bars are better.
Floating-point performance: longer bars are better.
4%
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The charts that accompany this article are difficult to read because the order of the bars and the legends keep changing. What's up with that?