Making New Marks On the Bench
Always planning for a better tomorrow
THERE ARE LOTS of conversations that happen behind the scenes that generally don’t make it into the magazine. Some of these are about future products (that we can’t talk about for legal reasons), while others are to do with the direction of the magazine and which tools we should use. Benchmarking, as a topic, is something that we talk about almost constantly—not quite every day, but not far off. If we’re not bullying systems into divulging an actual figure, we’re trying to work out which benchmarks we should retire, and which new ones are worth looking at seriously.
The point of any benchmark is, of course, to help the reviewer ascertain whether the object being reviewed is good or not. Or in the case of the monthly Build It, whether the system is actually working or not. Benchmarks are pretty good at bringing an overzealously overclocked system to its knees, too, which can make for interesting conversations with the system builder. They’re good for spotting problems as well, because we know when a figure is off the pace, and can try to track down what’s really happening.
We’re currently looking at our gaming benchmarks with a mind to retiring some of the older titles. TombRaider, in particular, has served us well since release, but now that Riseof the TombRaider has been updated to include a benchmark, that’s an upgrade you’ll see being used in coming months. If there are particular benchmarks you think we should use, though, drop us a line: maximumpc@futurenet.com.
One last point: There’s a reason we use publicly available benchmarks where possible—it’s so that you can play along with us at home. If you want to know how your hardware compares to the latest and greatest releases, you can run the same benchmarks and find out. We can give you our assessment of a new graphics card, for instance, but knowing how your own machine compares in a game you play puts a personal perspective on things.