Sandra 101: A Primer- Page 1/1
September 19, 2000
By
SysOpt Editor
Analyze and Diagnose Your PC With SiSoft Sandra
If you
like Norton Utilities, Quarterdeck's diagnostic utilties, etc., SiSoft's
Sandra will blow you away! Sandra stands for the "System
ANalyser, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant."
Sandra includes 48 information, benchmarking, listing & testing/diagnostic
modules that give you tons of detailed information about your Windows
95/98 PC.
But the best part of all is that it includes detailed information that PC
tweakers and enthusiasts can definitely appreciate, such as what bus speed
your system is operating at, clock multiplier settings, motherboard
manufacturer and board ID No. string, etc. It will definitely prove useful
in helping to keep your PC running at peak performance.
Instead of a general summary, I thought I'd give you detailed information
about each one of Sandra's modules, or at least about the most major
ones. See the screenshots from the various diagnostic modules and read
all
about the features below, or Download
Sandra if you want to
jump
right in and give it a try.
New Features for Sandra '99!
New CPU Multi-Media Benchmark module, with MMX, 3DNow! & SSE
(Streaming
SIMD) support. Here you can see how the new multi-media extensions would
speed up a typical graphics application, in both integer and floating
point
mode.
New Network Benchmark module. Test the response and transfer rate of
hosts
on your network.
Enhanced Memory Benchmark module. Now tests both CPU (integer) and FPU
(floating point) to memory bandwidth.
2 report formats: SMS to allow easy importing to a Microsoft SMS
management
system; HTML for Internet compatibility. The current .TXT and .RPT format
have been slightly enhanced also.
Support for Intel Pentium III, Xeon III, Celeron 400+; AMD K6-III, K7;
Rise
mP6; Cyrix MediaGXm and other processors (TBA).
DIMM memory analyser (by SPD). Now you can get all the information
(manufacturer, serial no, timings, CAS, parity) about your memory modules.
DirectX 6.1 support (inc. SSE & 3DNow!), including the new DirectMusic
interface as well as support for older versions.
Support for Intel ZX, ZX66; SiS 530, 600; VIA Apollo Pro chipsets.
Resolved
issues with ALI Apollo chipsets.
System monitoring support for Super Socket 7 systems and Celeron
Socket 370
boards.
Enhanced AGP support (4x) and video card detection.
Correctly identifies the CPU model, revision, etc. Impressive.
Other System Information Modules:
APM (Advanced Power Management) Info (Prof.Only)
PCI & AGP bus & devices Info
Video Information (monitor, card, video bios, caps, etc.)
Video 3D Information (Prof.Only)
DirectX (Draw, 3D, Sound, Play) Info
Keyboard Info
Mouse Info
Sound Card (wave, midi, aux, mix) Info
MCI Devices (mpeg, avi, seq, vcr, video-disc, wave) Info
Joystick Info
Printers Info
DOS Memory Info (base, HMA, UMB, XMS, EMS, DPMI, VCPI)
Windows Memory Info
Windows (& DOS) Info
Font (Raster, Vector, TrueType) Information
Modem/TA Information (Prof.Only)
Network Information (Prof.Only)
WinSock (Internet) Information
Drives Information (HD, CDROM, Memory, etc.)
Ports (Serial/Parallel) Info
Remote Access Service Connections (Dial-Up)
OLE objects/servers Info (Prof.Only)
Processes (Tasks) & Threads Info
Modules (DLL, DRV, etc.) Info (Prof.Only)
DOS Device Drivers Info (Prof.Only)
SCSI Information (Prof.Only)
Troubleshooting Modules
Processes
Sandra displays all of the processes that are currently running
in order to help you identify possible software conflicts. When
you hit "Ctrl-Alt-Del", Windows pops open a window that lists
all of the processes, and gives you the option to abort them.
But that's about all it does. Sandra goes into many details about
each process, so you can better understand what it is (if that is not
obvious), and to determine if it is the cause of a particular problem.
I/O and IRQ Settings
Few things can be more frustrating than trying to eliminate
IRQ and I/O conflicts. Sandra helps simplify the task by
displaying the names of the devices that are assigned to each and
every IRQ and I/O address.
Images
If you
like Norton Utilities, Quarterdeck's diagnostic utilties, etc., SiSoft's
Sandra will blow you away! Sandra stands for the "System
ANalyser, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant."
Sandra includes 48 information, benchmarking, listing & testing/diagnostic
modules that give you tons of detailed information about your Windows
95/98 PC.
IE 7
Firefox 2.0
