When purchasing or building a new computer,buying PC hardware or even a mobile device, you want to make sure that what you're spending your money on lives up to its advertised hype in performance.
As a consumer you have full access to hardware information better known as your spec sheet, and product reviews, but for clear detailed insight on the device or hardware you purchased, your best guide is a benchmark test.
What is Benchmarking and why it's used?
If you maybe stumbled upon any tech website or viewed devices being reviewed on YouTube, the word benchmark might have came up in conservation, at the same time asking yourself what exactly is benchmarking. Adding more confusing, you probably was quite intimidated looking at benchmark charts and numbers that was attached to that product review.
Benchmarking is basically a tool (software) that's used to test hardware. The software itself is used to replicate any type of performance in real world situations. So Why is it used ? Benchmarking is used to get a clear assessment of your hardware during real time usage.
There are several types of benchmarking tools for different types of hardware that's within your PC or mobile devices.
When benchmarking,the processor (CPU) it is subjected to an assortment of mathematical test, this measures how fast your processor can compress or encrypt data. While the hard drive benchmark tests the read/write speed.
Benchmarking graphic cards ( GPU) measures the frame rate achievement while rendering different type of objects on your display.
Can I Run Benchmarks Myself?
The answer is yes. There are several tools you can download off the Internet for free. It very simple to use,just load the software and let it work its magic. You don't have to be a expert in computer technology to use these benchmarking applications. The big advantage with benchmarking is it adds knowledge and awareness of your hardware inside your computer or mobile device.
For beginners the less complex software you can use is the ever so popular Geekbench which I myself use to this day. It's a cross platform tool that's compatible with Macs, Windows, iOS and Android.
Geekbench primarily focuses on the processor and how well the RAM (memory) performs. Then we have PassMark and NovaBench one application measures the speed of your hard drive ,while the other benchmark your graphic card.
So What Are The More Common Type Of Benchmark Tests And What Does All Mean?
There are different benchmark test for different type of hardware. You can run multiple tests to get a clear view of your hardware performance.
Here's a look at some of the more common test and its meaning .
Benchmarking The Processor
The floating point math test tool is used to test processor's ability to perform a series of mathematical functions. A floating point numbers involved fractions, while integer testing is a separate test that uses whole numbers. Results for this type is testing are displayed in seconds. Lower numbers indicates you have a very fast processor.
The compression tests the speed of the processors ability to compress large blocks of data. Single core testing focuses on the performance of a single core within the processor. Not all software that's created is optimized for multi-core processing, so it's important that the processor has decent single core performance.
One many benchmarking software and my favorite FurMark
Benchmarking The Graphic Card
The 3D graphic test is a major test for your gaming and graphically intense software. Often tools used by power users are the FurMark and 3DMark. These test almost always involves the graphic card ability to render a few or more 3D objects on your display, at various levels of complexity , which includes detail shadow, anti-aliasing.
Benchmarking The Hard Drive
Sequential testing hard drives benchmarks focuses on the sequential read and writes speeds, and random read and writes speeds. Sequential testing refers to files that's being stored in a single drive chunk, such as a large file written to a fragmented hard drive. Benchmarking numbers are displayed in MBs per second,the higher number the better.
Random testing shows how the drive performs when it accesses a lot of data that's randomly stored within the drive. Random read and writes are much slower than sequential write times.
Is Benchmarking For Everyone and Is it Important?
To answer the question in reverse, benchmarks is a useful guide to how well your hardware is performing,but its not important. All Benchmarks is just getting a clear gauge value of the device you just purchased,be it a mobile device or computer.
Benchmarks are always best used when you have a specific requirement,such as gaming,video editing or any other task that demands impeccable high-end hardware.
Everyday computing such as web surfing,social media participation doesn't even require heavy duty hardware or a benchmark.