AMD A8-3850 & Gigabyte A75M-UD2H Review
SiSoftware Sandra (the System ANalyser, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant) is an information & diagnostic utility capable of benchmarking the performance of individual components inside a PC.
CPU Arithmetic
The CPU arithmetic test ascertains the processor’s capabilities in terms of numerical operations. Two subtests named Dhrystone and Whetstone are carried out respectively. This is not a measure of latency and thus higher is better.
Clock for clock, it is immediately apparent that the A8-3850 isn’t much of an improvement over its older Athlon II X4 sibling. Do bear in mind however that the Core i5 2300 is some 30% more expensive. That said, it is also clear that from a CPU perspective, a further 30-40 pounds can go a long way.
Cache Bandwidth
Without doubt, onboard cpu cache bandwidth is very fast indeed, but will our Core i5 2300 processor perform any differently between the two motherboards?
A similar story is painted with cache bandwidth. The AMD’s score is far from abysmal, mind.
Memory Performance
SiSoft Sandra offers both memory bandwidth and latency based benchmarks. It is quite possible that architectural tweaks will have made a significant impact in terms of both throughput and latency.
A major observation of the LGA1155 Sandy Bridge processors, which we reviewed in January was that they produce exceptional memory bandwidth results despite using a dual channel system. The new FM1 platform simply cannot match this at default frequencies however the results are very much in line with the Socket AM3 family.
Again, another loss in the memory department; nothing major to worry about however.
