Why CPU mark 1/2 of expected

[mikadillo]

Just tried PPT and was surprised by my Dell T310 showing a CPU mark of exactly 50% of the average for a Xeon 3440 (2627 vs 5256.) I can't seem to see any reason for it; clocking is right, BIOS set for all cores etc. Any resources to narrow down a cause or is this a benchmark issue? Thanks


Benchmark Results
Test Name: This Computer
CPU - Integer Math: 950.0
CPU - Floating Point Math: 1065.0
CPU - Find Prime Numbers: 419.0
CPU - SSE: 6.8
CPU - Compression: 2728.7
CPU - Encryption: 9.6
CPU - Physics: 233.9
CPU - String Sorting: 2178.0
Graphics 2D - Solid Vectors: 2.2
Graphics 2D - Transparent Vectors: 0.9
Graphics 2D - Complex Vectors: 40.2
Graphics 2D - Fonts and Text: 50.8
Graphics 2D - Windows Interface: 48.6
Graphics 2D - Image Filters: 59.6
Graphics 2D - Image Rendering: 140.0
Memory - Allocate Small Block: 2221.5
Memory - Read Cached: 965.7
Memory - Read Uncached: 924.8
Memory - Write: 869.7
Memory - Large RAM: 1955.3
Disk - Sequential Read: 91.1
Disk - Sequential Write: 98.9
Disk - Random Seek + RW: 3.0
CPU Mark: 2627.6
2D Graphics Mark: 179.3
Memory Mark: 793.0
Disk Mark: 698.0
PassMark Rating: 911.1
System information: This Computer
CPU Manufacturer: GenuineIntel
Number of CPU: 1
Cores per CPU: 4
CPU Type: Intel Xeon X3440 @ 2.53GHz
CPU Speed: 2527.2 MHz
Cache size: 256KB
O/S: Windows Server 2008 R2 (64-bit)
Total RAM: 8182.2 MB.
Available RAM: 6081.6 MB.
Video settings: 1680x1050x16
Video driver:
DESCRIPTION:
MANUFACTURER:
BIOS:
DATE:
Drive Letter: C
Total Disk Space: 80.0 GBytes
Cluster Size: 4.0 KBytes
File system: NTFS

[David (PassMark)]

Check the Edit / Preferences window in PerformanceTest to make sure you are running with at least 4 processes.

See also this post.
Causes and Solutions for a slow PC

[mikadillo]

Thanks, it was set for 8 processes. Upping that to 16 raised the mark to 4600 and raising it to 32 raised it a little more to 4800. If changing the # of processes in the test changes the values that much it makes me curious about how the test was run on all the CPUs in the benchmarks.

[David (PassMark)]

My initial comment was wrong. I should have said 8 and not 4. The Xeon X3440 has hyperthreading, and so can benefit from 8 threads running.

Normally adding more threads beyond 8 shouldn't help much at all (with 4 cores and HT). But in your case it does, and yet still you didn't reach the average score!

So I think there is something else going on. Maybe there are a few background tasks running on the CPU, so the more threads you run in PerformanceTest, the less CPU time there is available to the background tasks.

Did you check the link above. I covers all the common problems.