Benchmarking

[dragonlord12832]

What good free benchmarking suites are out there. Specifically, I want to know the total Tflops/Gigaflops my computer is capable of; I want to know if it is comparable to the upcoming PS4/XBOX 720, and if so, how comparable.

So, what benchmarking software do you prefer, and why?

 

[twelve25]

Intel Burn Test is a GUI for Linpack and it will tell you how many Gflops your CPU can do. It's a monster load on your system, though. I've never seen anything raise my temps like that app can.

My i5-2310 hits about 91.5 GFlops.

There's a lot of GPU offload and GPU can perform lots of FLOPS, but I don't know of a good tool for that. A decent 3D card like the 7770 is into the teraflops, though.

 

[twelve25]

OK I found a simple and quick tool for the GPU Links are in this forum post:

http://www.gpugrid.net/forum_thread.php?id=3133

My overclocked Radeon 7850 is 2.1 Teraflops

 

[photonboy]

You can't directly compare a PC to a gaming console even if it is essentially an x86 gaming computer.

Console games will be tweaked for optimal performance better than a gaming PC. If the PS4 is $400 it will be an excellent buy.

On the other hand:
- many mouse/keyboard style games won't be on consoles (though Diablo 3 will be on PS4 with controller support)
- STEAM games can be found on sale for far cheaper prices than console games
- there will be very few PS4 games for a while whereas there are lots of PC games to choose from. I'd probably WAIT for two years to invest in a PS4.

 

[twelve25]

You can compare. Often the games are the same and the hardware is similar. The difference is that they know exactly what hardware every PS3 owner has, so they just preset the quality to give acceptable framerates. With a PC, you might have an Intel HD3000 or a quad SLI GTX670, so they have to program options so that you can optimize it yourself.

 

[dragonlord12832]

You can't directly compare a PC to a gaming console even if it is essentially an x86 gaming computer.

Console games will be tweaked for optimal performance better than a gaming PC. If the PS4 is $400 it will be an excellent buy.

On the other hand:
- many mouse/keyboard style games won't be on consoles (though Diablo 3 will be on PS4 with controller support)
- STEAM games can be found on sale for far cheaper prices than console games
- there will be very few PS4 games for a while whereas there are lots of PC games to choose from. I'd probably WAIT for two years to invest in a PS4.

I'm well aware. I was one of the early adopters on the PS3, paying a ridiculous price of it. I probably won't be doing that this time around. . .

 

[dragonlord12832]

Intel Burn Test is a GUI for Linpack and it will tell you how many Gflops your CPU can do. It's a monster load on your system, though. I've never seen anything raise my temps like that app can.

My i5-2310 hits about 91.5 GFlops.

There's a lot of GPU offload and GPU can perform lots of FLOPS, but I don't know of a good tool for that. A decent 3D card like the 7770 is into the teraflops, though.

After a lot of comparison shopping I bought a 6950 a few weeks ago. Is is supposed to out-perform the 7850, but it isn't quite up to par with the 7870. When I bought it I was able to get it for about $30 cheaper than the 7850, but of course, prices are always changing.
I read somewhere that the 6950 was at 2.26 Tflops, but that seemed a bit low.
I mostly 'game' on my living room TV which is only 720p, so the 6950 performs rather nicely for that. After law school, I would like to upgrade and go with a 3 monitor set-up.

 

[twelve25]

2.2 Tflops is pretty amazing, really.

The first computer to hit 2 teraflops was the ASCI RED at the DOE in 1999. It had almost 9300 Xeon Processors, filled over 100 full server racks and filled a 1600 sq. ft. computer room. At peak it sucked up 850,000w of power.

Now you can hit that with a $200 video card that might peak out at 125w.