Is there any standard to measure the computing power?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Maxwell2006
  • Start date Start date
M

Maxwell2006

Hi,

Is there any standart performance measure or performance benchmark tool that
shows me the computing power of my system?

I know there is a "windows experience index" concept, but I don't care about
graphic card sound card power. I need to measure RAM+CPU+HDD performance.

Any help would be appreciated,
Max
 
Computing power compared to what? Pick any benchmark program you want.
They all work on the principle of comparing A to B.
 
Maxwell2006 said:
Hi,

Is there any standart performance measure or performance benchmark tool that
shows me the computing power of my system?

I know there is a "windows experience index" concept, but I don't care about
graphic card sound card power. I need to measure RAM+CPU+HDD performance.

Any help would be appreciated,
Max
Click to expand...
Hi Max,

I do not believe you could create such a 'standard' benchmark test.
The reason I say that is because different people use there
computers in different ways for different purposes.

Let me give you a good real-world example;

About three months ago, I needed a new development laptop. So I did
my research on the Internet (man you wouldn't believe the number of
laptops and configurations). I basically said I have $3,000 to spend
what is the best specs I could get. I basically was looking at a
couple of different Core-duo laptops from HP and Dell. Then before I
plopped down my hard earned cash, I called a couple of programmers I
know and asked them the same question. They were split down the middle.

Then I did a check on the software I was using. 70% of the work I do
is in an IDE called Clarion. Softvelocity the makers of Clarion has
set the IDE so that it will ONLY use one processor in the Core-duo
(I didn't even know that was possible but they did it).

What that basically means is that the SOFTWARE I am using would not
use the hardware up to its capabilities. I checked, and a couple of
other pieces of development software that I use does the same thing.

The end result is I bought a high-end Turion 64bit processor.

At the end of the day in my opinion you want to know if the project
you are doing is running to the best of its ability.

One last thing, how you configure the OS makes a very big difference
when you are talking about performance. When my machine boots, it
loads 76 processes. 28 of them are processes for TSRs that I use to
make navigation and development simpler. Those 76 processes eat up
618MB of RAM (Fortunately I have 2GB). Now I have people tell me on
a regular basis that I have to many processes running and that I
should only be loading programs and processes as I need them. I
tried that for about 6 months and got so tired of interrupting my
train of thought to load something that I needed at that moment,
that I now just have them all load on start-up.

The computer is a tool and productivity should be the ultimate goal
not performance of the hardware.

Ciao . . . C.Joseph

"When hope is lost . . . the spirit dies."
-- Lao Tzu

http://blog.tlerma.com/
 
Maxwell2006 said:
Is there any standart performance measure or performance benchmark
tool that shows me the computing power of my system?
Click to expand...


There are lots, but none of them is necessarily meaningful. How fast your
computer is is a mixture of several different things: CPU speed, hard drive
speed, video speed, internet connection speed, etc. Benchmarks add all these
together in a way their writers think is appropriate for the majority of
users. But since we all use our computers differently, any benchmark may not
match my particular use, or yours, and be very misleading to at least one of
us.

As a single example, video performance is typically very important to those
who play games, but much less important to those who just do word
processing. So your computer with its fast video subsystem may be faster
than mine to you if you're a gamer, but because other aspects of it are
slower, may be slower than mine to me.
 
Bob said:
Computing power compared to what? Pick any benchmark program you want.
They all work on the principle of comparing A to B.
Click to expand...

B being the unit of measurement (kg, m, $...).
 
Back
Top