Post Description

Sandra - the latest version of its award-winning utility which includes remote analysis, benchmarking and diagnostic features for PCs, servers, PDAs1, Smart Phones1, small office/home office (SOHO) networks and enterprise networks. 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 works along the lines of other Windows utilities, however it tries to go beyond them and show you more of what's really going on. Giving the user the ability to draw comparisons at both a high and low-level. You can get information about the CPU, chipset, video adapter, ports, printers, sound card, memory, network, Windows internals, AGP, PCI, PCI-X, PCIe (PCI Express), database, USB, USB2, 1394/Firewire, etc.

Key features of SiSoftware Sandra 2015:
• 6 native architectures support (x86, x64 – Windows; ARM, ARM64, MIPS, MIPS64, x86, x64 – Android)
• Huge official hardware support through technology partners (AMD/ATI, nVidia, Intel).
• 4 native (GP)GPU/APU platforms support (OpenCL, CUDA, DirectX Compute Shader, OpenGL Compute*).
• 4 native Graphics platforms support (DirectX 12, DirectX 11.x, DirectX 10.x, OpenGL 3.0+).
• 9 language versions (English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Japanese, Chinese (Traditional, Simplified), Russian) in a single installer.
• Enhanced Sandra Lite (Eval) version (free for personal/educational use, evaluation for other uses)

Broad Operating System Support:
• Enhanced for Windows 10 / Server 2015 Desktop mode using the latest API.
• New theme for Windows 10 / 8.1 / 8 with high-DPI support (200% 192ppi) 256×256 pixels icons.
• Full support for Windows 8, 7, Vista as well as Server 2012/R2, 2008/R2.
• Updated hardware support for both current and future hardware

New driver/firmware notification
Keep up-to-date with the latest enhancements for your computer

Sandra checks for updated firmware/BIOS or device drivers for all components/peripherals and provides the user with download information [commercial versions only]:

System BIOS update
Video Card BIOS update, driver update (including DirectX, OpenGL, OpenCL and CUDA)
Disk (Hard Disk, Optical Drive or SSD) firmware update
CPU microcode update
USB device firmware update, driver update
Printer firmware update, driver update
Network device (e.g. router, wireless access point) firmware update Updated Device Performance Certification*
Certify the validity and quality of your benchmarks results [Commercial versions]

Device Performance Certification validates whether the benchmark result (score) you have obtained upon benchmarking your device is valid (i.e. the device you tested is performing correctly) and how it compares to the scores obtained by other users when testing the same device.

By aggregating the results submitted for each device and performing statistical analysis (e.g. computing mean/average, standard deviation, etc.) we can use statistical tools to work out whether the score is within the expected range (confidence intervals).

Based on the variability of scores you can determine whether the performance of your device is consistent or varies significantly from test to test.

New GP (GPU/APU/CPU) Cache/Memory Latency benchmark
4 memory types, 3 access patterns, 2 interfaces

Benchmark all the different memories (global, constant, shared/local, private) of modern GPGPUs using the 3 access patterns (in-page random, full random, sequential/linear) in OpenCL and CUDA. See the differences between modern GPGPU architectures from AMD and nVidia or APU architectures from AMD and Intel.

We have published an article on the cache/memory latencies of current GPGPU architectures: GP GPU/APU Cache and Memory Latencies.
New GP (GPU/APU/CPU) Cache Bandwidth benchmark
4 memory types, 2 interfaces


Benchmark all the different memories (global, constant, shared/local, private) of modern GPGPUs and measure L1, L2 and L3 cache bandwidths in OpenCL and CUDA. See the differences between modern GPGPU architectures from AMD and nVidia or APU architectures from AMD and Intel.

We have published an article on the cache bandwidths of current GPGPU architectures: GP GPU/APU Cache and Memory Bandwidths.

Updated Overall Score for complete system performance evaluation
12 benchmarks to fully evaluate computer performance

While each benchmark measures the performance of a specific device (CPU, Memory, (GP)GPU, Storage, etc.), there is a real need for a benchmark to evaluate the overall computer performance: this new benchmark is a weighted average of the individual scores of the existing benchmarks:
Native CPU Arithmetic, Cryptographic [new] and Multi-Media (SIMD): measures native processor performance
.Net/Java Arithmetic, Cryptographic [new] and Multi-Media (vectorised): measures software virtual machine performance (e.g. for .Net WPF/Silverlight/METRO applications)
Memory and Cache Bandwidth and Latency [new]: measures memory and caches performanc
File System/Storage Bandwidth and I/O [new]: measures storage performance
General Processing GP(GPU/APU) Arithmetic, Cryptographic and Bandwidth: measures GPGPU/GPAPU performance

Memory Latency: code/instruction cache latencies
2 memory types, 3 access patterns

Modern processors have dedicated cache sub-systems (e.g. L1I, L2I) to handle code/instructions that, while just as important as data caches, are not assessed by most benchmarks.

Sandra 2013 adds a brand new benchmark using its 3 dedicated access patterns ("in-page" thus avoiding "out-of-page" latencies, "full random" and "linear/sequential") to fully test code caches performance.

We have published an article on the cache latencies of current CPU architectures: Measuring Cache and Memory Latency (access patters, paging and TLBs).

Brand new style for Windows 8

Windows 8 has its own style (ex-Metro) that it shares with Windows Phone 7/8. Love it or hate it, it is here to stay. We have also provided Windows 7, Vista and XP users with an updated, modern style:

Sandra 2013 - Metro style (Windows 8)
Sandra 2013 - Aero/Metallic style (Windows 7, Vista, XP)

Home Page: www.sisoftware.net
OS: Windows 2000/XP/Vista/7/8


Give The Servers Some Time.