Benchmark Results: Synthetics
Let's begin with the usual suspects, Futuremark's 3DMark and PCMark suites. We should note that they didn't work on the 785G at first, but AMD sent us an updated .dll file that allowed us to run the benches. This is an issue we've seen in the past when the app isn't able to detect the new hardware.
Everything looks about right here, except that the GeForce 9400 is probably a lot higher than it should be compared to the other chipsets, despite the fact that we turned PhysX optimizations off to keep things on an even keel. Unfortunately, 3DMark can create an unrealistic expectation sometimes as we will see in the game benchmarks.
The PCMark results look to be where we would expect them, with the exception of a somewhat slower hard drive result for the 785G. We're looking into that but as of publication time we don't have a explanation. On the positive side, this phenomenon didn't seem to manifest itself in the rest of the benchmarks.
Let's run through SiSoft Sandra's gamut of synthetic benchmarks on all of these platforms, starting with the CPU arithmetic bench:
Not much variance here, but what is incredibly surprising is that these are the results of two different CPUs: the Phenom II X2 550, and the Core 2 Duo E7200. First glance would suggest these competitors are very evenly matched.
We're seeing the CPU's split up a little bit here, with the Phenom II X2 performing notably better when it comes to iSSE4.1
Here's where some real differences come into play. The Phenom II X2 and its integrated memory controller deliver significantly more memory bandwidth. Note that the GeForce 8200 board is running a little slower, as it's the only AMD system using DDR2 memory. Both of the Intel systems, also using DDR2, lose ground.
