Benchmarking is when you run a program or other type of operation in order to test the general performance of the object. In this case, CPU benchmarking is running set tests in order to see just how well the CPU of a computer is performing.

A useful piece of software for this task would be CPU Rightmark. This tool will greatly assist in finding benchmark information on your CPU, and is also designed to work with future CPU’s as well.

Here is the CPU Rightmark utility better explained, via cpu.rightmark.org:

“The CPU RightMark (CPU RM) benchmark is meant for objective performance measurement of modern and future CPUs in various computational tasks such as physical process modelling and 3D graphics issue solving. The emphasis is placed on testing under the load of a CPU-RAM bundle and FPU/SIMD units.

What is pure performance?

When applications are tested to measure processor performance, test results are often affected by other subsystems such as video or storage. Sometimes operating system interaction with peripherals effects as well. That is why even if we compare identical systems on different processors it would be difficult to get just a comparative assessment of pure processor performance instead of general software/hardware performance.

The CPU RM benchmark eliminates influence of all subsystems, except for memory and CPU-RAM bus, at the expense of measuring performance of different test application parts, which operation time is not related to “external” task execution time. For example, video pages changeover and hard drive access. Only processor operating time is considered.

What is the purpose of pure performance?

Why do we need pure performance results, if they are different from those obtained in real applications anyway? For example, what is the purpose of pure performance in graphics applications, if the general performance depends mostly on a graphics card? And it’s necessary to choose a processor to match the graphics card. As an example let’s estimate 3D game performance in 1024×768x32bpp at the highest detail level. Let’s assume that systems on 2GHz and 1GHz processors have identical results. We would choose a 1GHz processor as it is cheaper. When a new computer game arrives, the central processor unit becomes a bottleneck in any resolution, because this game, for example, uses tricky algorithms of objects visibility, dynamic detail levels, and utilizes very complicated and realistic physics model.

Overall system performance would be a function of processor and other subsystems performance. That is why it’s necessary to measure pure performance of processor not affected by any other system components or software to understand their pros and contras.” - The Manifesto of CPU Rightmark

Download CPU Rightmark here!

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