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) 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, PCIe, ODBC Connections, USB2, 1394/Firewire, etc.

  • Benchmark UI Change: Select Multi-Threading, Multi-Core, Single-Thread

While it was always possible in Sandra to disable hyper-threading (HT) to use only physical cores/modules or disable multi-core (MC) to use only sockets/packages or just 1 thread - by using Options - we decided to make it easier to use.

So now you can test either MT, MC, ST - which can be useful on processors that use Turbo/dynamic overclocking and can boost fewer threads to higher speeds.

You can also run on all APs (application processors) - but not the BSP (boot processor, aka thread 0) just in case the BSP causes AP threads to wait for it to finish and thus delay the completion of the test (even now there are some problematic systems).

Single-thread will use an AP not the BSP as generally the BSP is loaded with other tasks (e.g. interrupts).

Note: Sandra uses its own scheduler - thus does not depend on Windows to schedule the threads on specific socket/core (and perhaps park the rest). NUMA is also fully supported and the right NUMA node will be selected as appropriate for the package/core the thread should run on.

General Sandra Information

Here are the version types, in line with industry standards:

  • Sandra Lite (free for personal/educational use - no nag screens, time limit, etc.)
  • Sandra Advanced (for OEMs)
  • Sandra Professional (commercial)
  • Sandra Engineer (commercially exploitabile)
  • Sandra Enterprise (commercial)
  • Sandra Legacy (home enthusiast)

List of SiSoftware Sandra Modules:

  • System Summary
  • Mainboard/Chipset/System Monitors Info
  • CPU/BIOS Info
  • APM & ACPI (Advanced Power Management) Info
  • PCI(e), AGP, CardBus, PCMCIA bus and devices Info
  • Video Information (monitor, card, video bios, caps, etc.)
  • OpenGL Information
  • DirectX (DirectDraw, Direct3D, DirectSound (3D), DirectMusic, DirectPlay, DirectInput) 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
  • Windows Memory Info
  • Windows Info
  • Font (Raster, Vector, TrueType, OpenType) Information
  • Modem/ISDN TA Information
  • Network Information
  • IP Network Information
  • WinSock & Internet Security Information
  • Drives Information (Removable Hard Disks, CD-ROM/DVD, RamDrives, etc.)
  • Ports (Serial/Parallel) Info
  • Remote Access Service Connections (Dial-Up, Internet)
  • OLE objects/servers Info
  • Processes (Tasks) & Threads Info
  • Modules (DLL, DRV) Info
  • Services & Device Drivers (SYS) Info
  • SCSI Information
  • ATA/ATAPI Information
  • Data Sources Information
  • CMOS/RTC Information
  • Smart Card & SIM Card Information
  • CPU Arithmetic Benchmark (MP/MT support)
  • CPU Multi-Media Benchmark (including MMX, MMX Enh, 3DNow!, 3DNow! Enh, SSE(2)) (MP/MT support)
  • File System (Removable, Hard Disks, Network, RamDrives) Benchmark
  • Removable Storage/Flash Benchmark
  • CD-ROM/DVD Benchmark
  • Memory Bandwidth Benchmark (MP/MT support)
  • Cache & Memory Bandwidth Benchmark (MP/MT support)
  • Network/LAN Bandwidth Benchmark
  • Internet/ISP Connection Benchmark
  • Internet/ISP Peerage Benchmark
  • Hardware Interrupts Usage
  • DMA Channel Usage
  • I/O Ports Usage
  • Memory Range Usage
  • Plug & Play Enumerator
  • Hardware registry settings
  • Environment settings
  • Registered File Types
  • Key Applications(web-browser, e-mail, news, anti-virus, firewall, etc.)
  • Installed Applications
  • Installed Programs
  • Start Menu Applications
  • On-disk Programs & Libraries
  • Installed Web Packages(ActiveX, Java classes)
  • System Event Logs
  • Burn-in Wizard(test computer stability)
  • Connect Wizard (connect to remote computers, PDAs, Smart Phones and other devices)
  • Combined Performance Index Wizard (overall computer performance score)
  • Create a Report Wizard (save, print, fax or e-mail in CIM (SMS/DMI), HTML, XML, RPT or TEXT format)
  • Performance Tune-Up Wizard (tune-up computer)
  • Environment Monitor Wizard (temperatures, voltages, fans, CPU power, cooling solution thermal resistance, etc.)
  • WebUpdate Wizard for automatic version updating

What's New

Benchmark Support, Updates & Fixes

  • GP-GPU Processing OpenCL Benchmark: fixed kernel failures on most GP-GPUs. Bug discovered by Mark Poppin.
  • CPU Scientific Benchmark: greatly improved AVX512 GEMM (SGEMM, DGEMM) performance by using the larger 48kB L1D cache (on RKL and ICL-SP) and better prefetch. [note AVX2/FMA3 performance is also improved to some extent]
  • CPU Inter-Thread Efficiency Benchmark: reasonably improved AVX512 inter-thread transfers by using larger transfer blocks that take advantage of the larger 48kB L1D cache (on RKL and ICL-SP). [note AVX2/FMA3 performance is also improved to some extent]
  • Memory Bandwidth Benchmark: modestly improved AVX512 bandwidth transfers by using the larger 48kB L1D cache( on RKL and ICL-SP) and smarter prefetching. [note AVX2/FMA3 performance is also improved to some extent]
  • Multi-Core Efficiency Benchmark: renamed to "Inter-Thread Efficiency" Benchmark as it now measures and displays inter-thread/core/module (CCX)/node (die)/pakage (socket) thread latencies.
  • Inter-Thread Efficiency Benchmark: enabled 512-bit/AVX512 inter-thread transfers for higher bandwidth utilisation.
  • Inter-Thread Efficiency Benchmark: reduce latency reported to just one of the
  • All CPU Benchmarks: expanded CPU microcode version from 2 digits to 8 digits (i.e. MC--<8V>).
  • All GP-GPU Benchmarks: latest nVidia run-time (v456+ CUDA/OpenCL) now includes company name in device name which results in duplicated company name (e.g. "nVidia NVIDIA 2080Ti") that is pretty ugly.

Please see our article Processor Multi-Core Efficiency: Inter-Thread Latency & Bandwidth Benchmarking for an in-depth look at the benchmark and an example of its results from a modern processor.

Hardware Support, Updates & Fixes

  • All CPU Benchmarks: support Intel Pentium & Celeron (Atom "JasperLake").
  • All CPU Benchmarks: preliminary support Intel Xeon ("IceLake-SP").
  • All CPU Benchmarks: optimised Intel Core/Atom Hybrid ("Lakefield") performance.
  • All CPU Benchmarks: initial fixes for detection that fails to detect TDP/other power values on AMD Mobile Ryzen all - series. Please contact us if you have such a processor and can help with troubleshooting.
  • All Benchmarks: initial fix scheduler that fails to detect additional modules/CCXes on AMD Ryzen 3000-series. Please contact us if you have such a processor and can help with troubleshooting. [Note that Ryzen Series 1000, 2000 & 5000 are *not* affected]
  • All Benchmarks: initial fixes for detection that fails to detect TDP/other power values on AMD Mobile Ryzen all series. Please contact us if you have such a processor and can help with troubleshooting.

Additional Support, Updates & Fixes

  • Branding update: all brand images have re-done in high resolution for modern displays.
  • SiSoftware Official Benchmark Ranker: graphics update with new logo and rosette for #1 (gold), #2 (silver), #3 (bronze) and lower ratings.
  • All websites: Cloudflare CDN (HTTPS/3) to reduce client load times and support times of high load that would overwhelm the Ranker servers and cause DOS. Please contact us if you experience any issues.