Intel Extreme Edition 955
Stephen Cooper, January 31st, 2005

     First off, let’s examine the results obtained from SANDRA for Arithmetic ALU & FPU performance. As we can see from the results above, the Extreme Edition 955 manages to slide into its position at the top of the totem pole. The roughly 8.5% difference in both the ALU and FPU benchmarks is equal to the clock gain over the Extreme Edition 840. The Pentium D 820 posts up some solid scores in this benchmark, coming in at a mere 2.80GHz and lacking the Hyper-Threading features of the Extreme Edition’s.

     When it comes to both Integer and Floating Multimedia results, we see a similar story. In these results, the Extreme Edition 955 CPU holds a performance lead over the Extreme Edition 840 by little more than the equivalent gain in clock speed. We again see the Pentium D 820 looking like it’s being blown out of the water, but these results simply help to show the gains in potential from Hyper-Threading, something both the 840 and 955 have enabled.

     Finally, we have the Integer and Floating results obtained from the memory bandwidth benchmark. For memory bandwidth, the Pentium EE 840 and Pentium D 820 are putting up identical numbers, while the Extreme Edition 955 manages to leave them in its dust. Remember, the Extreme Edition 955 features the long lost 1066MHz FSB, whilst both the Extreme Edition 840 and Pentium D are only operating with an 800MHz FSB. This logically leads to the results we’re seeing here.