Maximum PC Benchmarks Explained

Posted 02/08/2013 at 3:40pm | by Gordon Mah Ung

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How to Benchmark like an Expert

Lessons from the Lab that you can apply to your own testing methods

Our last benchmark is Futuremark’s 3DMark 11. We normally eschew synthetic benchmarks in favor of real-world benchmarks, but we have relied on the various iterations of 3DMark over the years. We’re choosing it here because it scales well with multiple GPUs, and this version doesn’t seem to represent the typical game of political football between rival graphics companies that previous versions have. For our test, we run the default benchmark for the Extreme preset.

THE FUNDAMENTALS

Before you begin your benchmarking, there are a few basic rules that every techie has learned through blood, sweat, and tears. First, record all your settings. From bclock, to RAM timing, to GPU clocks, drivers, and BIOS settings, you should keep a written record that you can refer back to. Second, you’re human and make mistakes. If the result from B outrageously exceeds A, assume you made a mistake and retest. Third, double-check your system. Are you in the correct SATA port? Is the RAM fully inserted and in the correct memory mode? Is the CPU overheating and throttling? Fourth, triple-check your settings. Yeah, this is the second tip again, but more often than not, user error is the cause of errors in tests. Finally, benchmarking doesn’t have to cost money. Here are a few free and reliable benchmarks and how to interpret their results.

MAXON CINEBENCH 11.5

Cinebench 11.5 is best used as a pure CPU-performance benchmark and applications outside of that should be carefully weighed.

Cinebench 11.5 is a great test of pure CPU performance. The benchmark is based on Maxon’s Cinema 4D rendering engine and is heavily multithreaded. The test also features an OpenGL rating. So what’s the catch? Cinebench’s rendering test is best used to test CPU performance only. As a system level test, any variances you see between system A and system B will be due to the CPU and not the hard drive, SSD, or memory bandwidth. It’s virtually worthless to try to use it as, say, a motherboard test using the same chip, because any variances will be due to how much the vendor tweaks the board’s bclock settings. OpenGL also has little value for mainstream users, as very few games even use OpenGL anymore. www.maxon.net.

TECHARP X264 HD 5.0

We’ve just started using TechARP’s x264 HD 5.0 benchmark, but we like it already. It gives you an easy, repeatable way to test the encoding prowess of a machine. Be advised that, like Cinebench, it seems to be almost completely compute-bound. We tested it in dual-channel mode and quad-channel mode on a hexa-core chip and found a very minor difference resulting from memory bandwidth. Testing from a single SSD to a RAIDed PCIe SSD also yielded very little difference. www.techarp.com

UNIGINE HEAVEN 3.0

For graphics, Unigine’s Heaven 3.0 is a great way to measure tessellation performance and will push even the fastest cards. It even has a Mac version, but without tessellation. Multiple GPUs help this benchmark, which is purely focused on the GPU. Quad-core, hexa-core, low clock, or high clock hardly make a difference in this test. The free version of Futuremark’s 3DMark11 will also work—but only for the Performance preset. www.unigine.com

CRYSTAL DISMARK 3

We’ve also been happy with CrystalDiskMark, which is easy to run and gives you a good feel for your disk subsystem’s performance. Keep in mind, one limit with the test is that the workload is limited to 4GB, so even a hybrid drive could perform like an SSD. www.crystalmark.info

CrystalDiskMark 3.0 is a reliable way to measure disk performance but not across an entire disk or SSD.

Folks interested in measuring their memory bandwidth should check out SiSoft Sandra 2012. The free version offers a host of benchmarks, including a synthetic memory benchmark. Keep in mind, though, with the large-cache CPUs today, it’s very difficult to see an impact from memory bandwidth unless you are running integrated graphics.

Note: This article appeared in the August 2012 issue of the magazine.