Today's computers should be able to manage almost all software, even if you just open many programs together to see that the performance slows down and the PC is suffering. This can occur especially when playing or when using graphics or video manipulation applications. You can then decide to buy a new computer, or to change only the RAM, the video card, the disk or the internet connection provider to improve the situation. To do a PC test and understand exactly where it is necessary to improve, which piece is weaker or if after making a hardware change the situation has improved, there are the benchmark programs of the PC, CPU, GPU, Disk, Network and memory .
With the benchmark, in addition to testing each hardware component, you can also get a comparison with other PCs and then understand if you have a good computer or if you can improve because it is old or because there is some bottleneck at the interior that throttles performance.
READ FIRST: What's inside a computer "> the Windows performance index that I mentioned in the past and that, as written in the article, can also be read on Windows 8 with a command. The performance index is, in fact, a very vague test that gives scores on video card, cpu, disk and memory; however, it remains a good start in the sense that, if one of the values was very low, then it is already clear what is wrong and what needs to be changed.
2) SiSoft Sandra
Sandra is a suite of free benchmarking programs for non-commercial use and with many limitations, perfect for accurately testing the performance of one or more computers. CPU, disk, video card and network benchmarks can be made. In practice, you can test the whole PC even if you can do better with specialized software for discs and video cards. In Sandra, however, there is also the function of comparing the PC with that of others, in order to have a judgment based on what the market offers and which other users of Sandra have.
3) 3DMark
Futuremark Corporation is the leading company in the graphics benchmarks with its 3DMark program, a very deep and demanding test that tests the performance of the video card and its ability to withstand high demands. 3DMark can be used for free in a limited version, which however is sufficient for comparison since most users use the same version. The 3DMark score is automatically uploaded online to the site and ranked against the others.
3) FRAPS is a PC video card performance recorder that remains running during video game games. With Fraps you can see exactly what the computer can do in the intensive use of the graphics card. By taking multiple measurements you can see how the performance changes depending on the graphics parameters or after changing the video card. The downside of FRAPS is the lack of a comparison tool to understand if the results received are good or bad.
To compare the results it will therefore be necessary to write on the specialized forums.
4) NovaBench is a real PC benchmark program with tests for CPU, GPU (video card), RAM and disk speed . Unlike many benchmark suites, NovaBench is completely free with no paid versions (although unfortunately it hasn't been updated since 2011). After a quick analysis, a score is assigned that can be compared to that of other computers on the Novabench website.
5) UserBenchmark is a lighter program, which does not require installation and after the analysis it shows the scores and the comparison with the average of the benchmarks made by other people.
6) HDTune is one of the best and reliable programs to check disk performance, free, easy to use, to know everything about how fast the hard disk is and its health.
HDTune will take several minutes to run the test and, once completed, will offer a series of graphs to see how low the access time is and how fast the transfer speed is.
In addition to HDTune, you can also use other test programs for the hard disk, health status, performance and speed .
7) Unigine Heaven is an excellent benchmark program for graphics cards, useful for measuring current power, for comparing different models and also temperature measurements, before, during and after overclocking.
8) LAN Speed Test and Speedtest.net
We have already talked about these two tests related to:
- measurement of the speed of the ADSL internet connection
- measurement of the data transmission speed in the LAN
Needless to say, if the network connection is poor, because of the router or because of the supplier, you can also have the best PC of the moment, but in the end the websites and Youtube will be slow to load anyway.
9) In another article, Sites to compare processors, video cards and SSDs
READ ALSO: Measure computer power and hardware performance
