Tom's CPU Architecture Shootout: 16 CPUs, One Core Each, And 3 GHz

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The CPU landscape is really complex. Both AMD and Intel offer tons of different models. But how would today’s processors perform if they didn't have multiple cores? We take 16 different CPUs and compare them all using a single core running at 3 GHz.

Benchmark Results: Sandra 2010 Pro

Intel’s support for accelerating AES-based encryption and decryption in hardware (dubbed AES-NI) is impressive. The instructions allow properly-enabled processors to handle those tasks much faster than competing CPUs.

Overall, the Sandra test suite demonstrates the benefits of Intel's designs, though the dual-core Clarkdale configuration turns out to be fairly weak. We see the gains made possible by AES-NI, though, along with the rewards available to a powerful caching architecture.

However, Sandra also shows that the progress from one generation to the next has never been really significant with one exception: compared to all other CPUs, the Pentium 4 really was a loser.

Patrick Schmid and Achim Roos