SiSoftware Sandra (the System ANalyser, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant) is an information & diagnostic utility. It should provide most of the information (including undocumented) you need to know about your hardware, software and other devices whether hardware or software.
Sandra is a (girl’s) name of Greek origin that means “defender”, “helper of mankind”. We think that’s quite fitting.
It works along the lines of other Windows utilities, however it tries to go beyond them and show you more of what’s really going on. Giving the user the ability to draw comparisons at both a high and low-level. You can get information about the CPU, chipset, video adapter, ports, printers, sound card, memory, network, Windows internals, AGP, PCI, PCI-X, PCIe (PCI Express), database, USB, USB2, 1394/Firewire, etc.
Native ports for all major operating systems are available:
- Windows XP, 2003/R2, Vista, 7, 2008/R2 (x86)
- Windows XP, 2003/R2, Vista, 7, 2008/R2 (x64)
- Windows 2003/R2, 2008/R2* (IA64)
- Windows Mobile 5.x (ARM CE 5.01)
- Windows Mobile 6.x (ARM CE 5.02)
All major technologies are supported and taken advantage of:
- SMP – Multi-Processor
- MC – Multi-Core
- SMT/HT – Hyper-Threading
- MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE 4.1, SSE 4.2, AVX, FMA – Multi-Media instructions
- GPGPU, DirectX, OpenGL – Graphics
- NUMA – Non-Uniform Memory Access
- AMD64/EM64T/x64 – 64-bit extensions to x86
- IA64 – Intel* Itanium 64-bit
The Vortex XT overclocked state means that the synthetic benchmark figures are a significant improvement when compared against the Core i7 2700k at default clock speeds.
very nice build indeed. They could have saved a few quid with the 2600k, as it hits the same speeds. maybe used a slightly better SSD?
I like that CPU cooler, seems brilliant. dont think our local store has them however.
normally I have a chuckle at systems you review, such as the ever crap DELL, but when the insides were opened, that is a better wiring job than I could do.
Nice pictures by the way.
It is a very good system, no doubt about it, but I think to be a successful system builder in the UK (i mean really successful) then you need to do something different. Something no one else is trying.
Dell and Alienware may get slated, however they have their own case designs which you cant get elsewhere (alienware anyway). This is why Dell bought them out, they work well as a system builder and offer something that no one else can.
I dont mean to sound like im discrediting PC SPECIALIST, but really I think anyone can make a system like this in, pick good components, and a nice case and get the best motherboard for overclocking then copy settings over. Its not that hard.
In closing, good review, nice system, but nothing that I will remember in a day or two.