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Oct.08, 2008 in Informatiom Technology.

Computer benchmarking is an effective way of measuring your PC’s performance. Benchmarking is often used when overclocking, upgrading your PC, optimizing Windows XP, customizing Windows, and even speeding up your Windows XP startup. There are many different methods for measuring your computer’s performance, whether it be using a stopwatch to measure the startup time to shutdown time, or comparing how many FPS a game runs depending on what performance options you have selected on your graphics card. Some of the more common solutions to measuring your PC’s performance is to use specific benchmarking software that does just that. Why sit there at your computer with a stopwatch when you can have a program test that for you? Why perform only one test you have the ability to do yourself when you can use a program that has multiple tests to measure varying degrees of performance?


PCMark05
PCMark05 is a computer benchmarking application developed by Futuremark. PCMark05 will help you reliably test and measure your PC’s performances to determine it’s strengths and weaknesses. It’ll also help you decide on optimal upgrades, or choosing the right new PC that fits your needs.


PCMark05 comes with the ability to benchmark the entire system as well as each individual component. There are 5 different testing suites that come with PCMark05: System Test Suite, CPU Test Suite, Memory Test suite, Graphics Test Suite, and the HDD Test Suite.
PCMark05-Benchmark-Results

PCMark05 comes in three different flavors: Basic, Advanced, and Professional. Basic is free, and is the most limited in terms of benchmarking, allowing you to do only perform the System Test Suite. Advanced will cost you $19.95, and offers the best bang for your buck. Professional ($199.95) adds the ability to run a custom suite, export to MS Excel, use command line options, running PCMark05 with batch files, and it also gives a license for commercial use too.

3DMark06
3DMark06 is also developed by Futuremark, but focuses more heavily on the graphics card side of benchmarking and PC performance, though it does include CPU tests as well. 3DMark06 uses “advanced real-time 3D game workloads to measure PC performance using a suite of DirectX 9 3D graphics tests, CPU tests, and 3D feature tests. 3DMark06 tests include all new HDR/SM3.0 graphics tests, SM2.0 graphics tests, AI and physics driven single and multiple cores or processor CPU tests and a collection of comprehensive feature tests to reliably measure next generation gaming performance today.”


3DMark06-PC-Benchmarking
3DMark06 also comes in Basic (Free), Advanced ($19.95), and Professional Editions ($490.00). Basic lets you perform 2 SM2.0 graphics benchmarks, 2 HDR/SM3.0 graphics benchmarks, and 2 CPU benchmarks as well. Advanced copies of 3DMark06 enables the rest of the benchmarking features, while the Professional version has batch testing, commercial use allowed, and full demo looping.

Aquamark3
Aquamark3 is a free benchmarking program that allows you easily measure and compare your PC performance. It has a reliable benchmark that helps you configure your system for the best gaming performance.
Aquamark3-Benchmarking-Performance-App
Aquamark3 uses DirectX 9 as well as being backwards compatible with DirectX 8 and DirectX 7 graphics hardware. It allows benchmarking in a real-world scenario so you can get the most accurate benchmark results as possible.


SiSoftware Sandra
(System ANalyser, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant) Sandra will measure, test, and benchmark your PC to give you the most accurate information about your hardware, software, and other devices that use either.
CPU-Benchmark-Performance-Results
“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.”

Sandra also has the ability to test computer stability with its burn-in wizard, the ability to give you performance recommends on how you can tune-up your computer, as well as testing for an overall PC performance score, and last, but not least Sandra has a full-on environment monitor wizard that allows you to measure temperatures, voltages, fan speeds, CPU power and even cooling solution thermal resistance.

SiSoftware Sandra comes in several different versions, but they have a really good free version called Sandra Lite, that doesn’t include any timers, serial keys or anything.

HDTach
HDTach is a reliable benchmarking software that allows you test your hard drives, removable drives, flash devices, and RAID arrays. It attempts to get as close to real-world performance as possible by bypassing software layers with low-level drivers, so you get real results, not inflated results.
HDTach-Benchmark-Screen


The trial version measures sequential read speed, random access speed, interface burst speed, and CPU utilization, while the registered version adds sequential write testing.


CPUBench
CPUBench is a free benchmarking utility that helps you make comparisons between different CPUs by measuring the MFLOPs (mega floating-point operations per second) and MIPS (million instructions per seconds) of your CPU.
CPUBench-Benchmark-Results



CineBench
CineBench is another free benchmarking utility that is made with amazing quality. It runs several tests on your PC to benchmark the performance of the processor and graphics cards under real world performance. CineBench also has support for up to 16 CPUs on Macintosh and Windows. The values between the two operating systems are 100% comparable and can aid in purchasing decisions as well.
Performance-Benchmark-Cinebench


COSBI OpenSourceMark
COSBI OpenSourceMark is described as “the definite, comprehensive open source benchmark”. That means it’s free and is damn good for benchmarking.
COSBI-Benchmarking-Results

It’s tests consist of file compression, audio encoding, spreadsheet calculations, and image-editing activites. It detects multiple cores and automatically reconfigures itself to use the benchmarks to take full advantage of your PC’s hardware. You can also do custom test suites if you don’t want to do the full on test.

Which Benchmark Application Is The Best?

There is no best benchmark solution. This list features the best in computer benchmarking available. You’ll just have to decide for yourself which one you like the best, they all measure different types of performances for different components. I’ve used these programs several times when doing maintenance, upgrading, and optimizing, and they have never failed when giving me real-world performance values. PCMark and 3DMark may be $20 but that $20 is well worth it.

If you have any benchmarking applications that you use that aren’t listed here, leave a comment and tell me about it, I’d like to know what else is out there.