- Mar 12, 2011
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When you build your first computer or even if you have built a few there is always that sense of pride and accomplishment once the build is completed. Then your eager to get to using it for what you built it for and more often then not it was built for gaming. So while your eager to get going with your games there is that sense of wanting to know just how good is this new creation.
You also want to know where your Pc stacks up when compared to others of similar components and you also want to know if there are a problem areas such as bottlenecks , up to date drivers and components running at optimal capacity.
Well your in luck because there is a lot of software out there that is designed just for that purpose.
1. PassMark Software
http://www.passmark.com/index.html
2. PCMark ( 5, 7 and Vantage)
http://www.futuremark.com/benchmarks/pcmark
3. Cinebench
http://www.maxon.net/?id=1258
4. SiSoft Sandra
http://www.sisoftware.net/
SiSoft Sandra is considered one of the better all around benchmark software as it has multiple testing areas to give you a complete diagnosis of your Pc's components and it's overall performance. The testing itself will stress the different components and usually will stress them at 100% capacity which will cause the part to heat up.
Step one would be to make sure that your Pc case has adequate ventilation and that you have chosen a good aftermarket CPU heat sink your video card, hard drive and ram will also make more heat so make sure that there is good air flow in those areas. You also want to make sure that all drivers are up to date and the same with any Windows updates.
Step two, download either one of the chosen benchmarking software or a couple. Most are free downloads for a trial or basic version and you will have the option to purchase an upgraded version if you want to. I have found that the free versions don't have all of the testing options and will give you just a basic quick result. Purchasing an upgraded version would be a good idea as it will give you ranking capabilities.
One thing you can do is to download several of the benchmarking programs and try them to see which one would suit you better and get the upgraded version of that one.
Step three, run the benchmark program for the CPU/Processor and save the results, then run it again and save the results. After running the program three or four times then look at the results and see if they are consistent.
Step four. run the benchmark for the graphics card and save those results as you did for the CPU.
Step five , run the benchmark for the memory and again save the results.
Step six, run the benchmark for the Hard drive and save the results.
Depending on which benchmark software you chose you now want to visit that web site and compare your results with those of others that have registered their results with the site. If you have purchased the upgraded version you can do the same if you want to.
By looking at the other scores you are looking for whether or not your components are performing the same or if there is a gap in performance which would point to an issue. There may be a bottleneck or one of your components may not be set correctly in the bios such as the ram may want to be set to the XMP Profile to be optimized.
You may find that the CPU may need a slight overclock to match up with your video card or the video card could use a bit of a boost.
Finally you want to do the whole system benchmark that will test all the components together as a unit and give you an overall score. You can also visit the web site and compare this score with others and most of these sites will have a ranking of the top 10 or top 20 or just 1 to whatever with that total being all the registered members.
You will notice the different combinations of components and the clock speeds also so you can actually climb the ranking ladder by overclocking.
A couple of useful we pages for benchmarking are;
http://www.techradar.com/us/news/computing/pc/how-to-benchmark-your-pc-test-your-computer-s-performance-1170285
http://www.pcworld.com/article/258473/how_to_benchmark_your_pc_for_free.html
You also want to know where your Pc stacks up when compared to others of similar components and you also want to know if there are a problem areas such as bottlenecks , up to date drivers and components running at optimal capacity.
Well your in luck because there is a lot of software out there that is designed just for that purpose.
1. PassMark Software
http://www.passmark.com/index.html
2. PCMark ( 5, 7 and Vantage)
http://www.futuremark.com/benchmarks/pcmark
3. Cinebench
http://www.maxon.net/?id=1258
4. SiSoft Sandra
http://www.sisoftware.net/
SiSoft Sandra is considered one of the better all around benchmark software as it has multiple testing areas to give you a complete diagnosis of your Pc's components and it's overall performance. The testing itself will stress the different components and usually will stress them at 100% capacity which will cause the part to heat up.
Step one would be to make sure that your Pc case has adequate ventilation and that you have chosen a good aftermarket CPU heat sink your video card, hard drive and ram will also make more heat so make sure that there is good air flow in those areas. You also want to make sure that all drivers are up to date and the same with any Windows updates.
Step two, download either one of the chosen benchmarking software or a couple. Most are free downloads for a trial or basic version and you will have the option to purchase an upgraded version if you want to. I have found that the free versions don't have all of the testing options and will give you just a basic quick result. Purchasing an upgraded version would be a good idea as it will give you ranking capabilities.
One thing you can do is to download several of the benchmarking programs and try them to see which one would suit you better and get the upgraded version of that one.
Step three, run the benchmark program for the CPU/Processor and save the results, then run it again and save the results. After running the program three or four times then look at the results and see if they are consistent.
Step four. run the benchmark for the graphics card and save those results as you did for the CPU.
Step five , run the benchmark for the memory and again save the results.
Step six, run the benchmark for the Hard drive and save the results.
Depending on which benchmark software you chose you now want to visit that web site and compare your results with those of others that have registered their results with the site. If you have purchased the upgraded version you can do the same if you want to.
By looking at the other scores you are looking for whether or not your components are performing the same or if there is a gap in performance which would point to an issue. There may be a bottleneck or one of your components may not be set correctly in the bios such as the ram may want to be set to the XMP Profile to be optimized.
You may find that the CPU may need a slight overclock to match up with your video card or the video card could use a bit of a boost.
Finally you want to do the whole system benchmark that will test all the components together as a unit and give you an overall score. You can also visit the web site and compare this score with others and most of these sites will have a ranking of the top 10 or top 20 or just 1 to whatever with that total being all the registered members.
You will notice the different combinations of components and the clock speeds also so you can actually climb the ranking ladder by overclocking.
A couple of useful we pages for benchmarking are;
http://www.techradar.com/us/news/computing/pc/how-to-benchmark-your-pc-test-your-computer-s-performance-1170285
http://www.pcworld.com/article/258473/how_to_benchmark_your_pc_for_free.html
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