BENCHMARK BOUNTY
In the world of system benchmarking, there are literally hundreds of possible options for testing your machine.
Even just game testing provides a vast selection of possible tests; more and more games ship with a built-in benchmark (or add one post-release, as CD Projekt Red did for Cyberpunk
2077 following user demand).
There is also always the option of using a framerate tracker—which is easier than ever now that Radeon and GeForce software includes it as standard—and simply playing a game to get an average framerate rather than running a benchmark test. This can serve to provide a better ‘real world’ framerate, but there are several potential pitfalls here; this method is sure to provide greater performance variation (particularly in online games), which is an issue for comparing framerates between systems.
There were some popular nongame benchmarks that we considered for our new tables but, ultimately, they didn’t make the cut. The first of these was PCMark 10, which bills itself as ‘the complete benchmark for the modern office’. Since a lot of our builds are gaming-focused powerhouses, we felt that it wouldn’t be the most useful reference point. It’s also from ULBenchmarks, the producers of 3DMark, and we wanted to avoid including multiple tests from the same creator.
Geekbench is another common test for CPU performance, frequently used since it offers compatibility with ChromeOS, Mac, and Android systems as well as Windows. We opted not to use this due to PCs being our main focus, although you may still see us reference it in some reviews (such as the Chrome tablet review in this issue!)
Lastly, SiSoft Sandra is a highly versatile tool for benchmarking every part of your PC, including some excellent memory performance tests. We decided that it was a bit specialized to use for general benchmarking purposes, although we’ve used it in the past for specific component analysis and may do so again in the future. If there are any benchmarks we haven’t discussed, but you think are relevant in today’s hardware-testing landscape, drop us an email to let us know!