How Fast is Your System? Learn How to Benchmark Your Rig!
Overclocking is now a mainstream term in the computer world. Every gamer either has an overclocked system or wants and overclocked system.
There are two reasons that benchmarking is important. You want to know the speed and you need to test the stability. Below are the programs that I use to benchmark every part of my system.
Let’s start with the CPU. The real stress test is Prime 95. This will calculate prime numbers and tax the heck out of your CPU. If you have a dual or quad core you might need to open multiple instances and configure them to run on a different core.
You should also check out Cinebench and OpenSourceMark. Cinebench will test rendering performance and OpenSourceMark will test productivity software.
Now, let’s test the graphical performance. I use fraps. Fraps is a great program that will allow you to benchmark any game with the touch of a button (that you pick). You can also use it to record yourself fragging Randy’s behind! It will save the file to an AVI in the Fraps directory.
The other, almost obvious, way to test 3D gaming is 3DMark.
The harddrive is usually the slowest part of the computer. So, let’s see how fast yours is. There are two programs that I like:
HD Tach will test burst speed, CPU utilization, random access speed and read speeds with the touch of a button. I also like HDTune because it displays temperature information so you know if your drive is getting too hot.
Now you are on your way to benchmarking. Every time you change your overclocking settings you should benchmark. You should especially test with Prime95. If your new clockspeed is not stable Prime95 will be the best way to discover this.
Send me some benchmarks! I just might feature them in a video.
/Logan
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