Tom's Hardware Wants You: CPU Benchmarks 2011/12
We're looking for a few good suggestions as we revamp our processor testing suite for the next 12 months. Is there something you'd like to see heading into 2012? If we get this hammered out fast enough, it might even happen in time for Bulldozer!
Almost a year ago, I started a thread just like this one to elicit your thoughts on the way we test CPUs. Based on your responses, we made a number of changes to our test suite. Of course, we weren't able to accommodate every request. But each suggestion that made sense received careful consideration.
Well, it's that time again. We want to know how you want to see processors evaluated as we alter the benchmark suite.
As before, I think we have a reasonable mix of gaming-, productivity-, media-, and synthetic-based tests in our automated CPU software package. With that said, our ears are always open.
Now, keep in mind that we’d prefer to use free/trial/open source software, making reproducibility an option for as many of our readers as possible.
Here’s our current list of metrics. We aren't doing much with OpenCL or DirectCompute right now, preferring to save those tests for the graphics suite. With that said, feature like Quick Sync and AMD's Fusion initiative merit a reconsideration about folding in benchmarks with unique support for architecture-specific optimizations. This is something we want to be very careful with, though, as to not bias the weight of our evaluation toward any one company. Keep that in mind as we open up the dialogue to accelerated apps.
- Apple iTunes
- Lame MP3
- HandBrake CLI
- MainConcept Reference v.2
- WinRAR
- WinZip
- 7-Zip
- Autodesk 3ds Max
- Adobe Premiere Pro CS5
- Adobe After Effects CS5
- Adobe Photoshop CS5
- Cinebench
- Blender
- ABBYY FineReader 10
- PCMark 7
- 3DMark 7
- SiSoftware Sandra 2011
- Metro 2033
- F1 2010
- Aliens Vs. Predator
- Just Cause 2
Occasionally you’ll see us swap out a game, exclude a more workstation-oriented app in a mainstream, or add something like Fritz, but that’s the lineup I’m using as of…well, now. So, give us some suggestions on what you’d like to see over the next year. Bear in mind that the apps we pick from the comments you leave will likely be the ones most applicable to the largest number of people, though there is room for a handful of more fringe tests, too.
Thanks again for the input. I’ll be stopping by the comments section here, of course. And if you want to reach me directly, you're always welcome to hit me up on Twitter.
Chris Angelini
Worldwide Editor-in-Chief, Tom’s Hardware
- cpu ,
- benchmarks ,
- test ,
- performance ,
- testing
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Hmm......I say use Crysis.
Yea definitly need Crysis in that list also.
Use Minecraft, set 20,000 TNT and go!
See if your computer can handle that.
If you can find a way to standardize the test, I think StarCraft 2 deserves a shot. It's probably the most-played RTS in the world today, and your list needs an RTS. Besides, it can be quite CPU intensive, and there are plenty of "can my PC run SC2" posts on the forums.
The community has spoken.. :-)
How about a compilation speed test using Visual Studio 2010 SP1? Using an SSD, this should really be a benchmark of how the CPU performs in operations that many, many developers perform many times every single day.
Use Crysis 2 as a benchmark.
How about a compilation speed test using Visual Studio 2010 SP1? Using an SSD, this should really be a benchmark of how the CPU performs in operations that many, many developers perform many times every single day.
I agree and as a developer I would like to see those sorts of tests.
Aren't iTunes and Lame MP3 singlethreaded? If so, I'd remove them until they can be bothered to change them. Put HAWX 2 back in - APU performance here could be key.
Battlefield Bad Company 2 (or even BF3). Not only is this the game that everyone is/will be playing, its also very very taxing on the CPU in a way that few games are. It not only eats processor cycles but scales well across four cores. You would be mad not to include it.
World of Warcraft and Civilisation V. Two very common games that can bring a computer to it's knees.
Crysis 2, SC2 and in the future - HotS. Put in some more hardcore video encoding and transcoding. As for testing the integrated graphics of Intel and AMD I suggest to use League of Legends, WoW, Aion, Lineage II. Hardcore for the discrete GPU, more mainstream for the integrated one. Oh, also please include how does a system performs with open 10 tabs browser with google, youtube, facebook game and some news sites (the browser grand prix winner), 5 word files, 5 excel spread sheets, a movie, skype conversation, antivirus (AVG for example), a defragmentation and a backup going on. It would show the ultimate office workload and will be a good idea what to get and what is an overkill for an office PC. Or what is the bare minimum.
Shogun 2 because it is very CPU intensive for a game.
Maybe add little daily annoyances like installing all the goodies from MSFT on patch day, boot time, analysis time for Synctoy on a large music collection or running a virus scan.
Source code suggestion for compilation test:
Try the .NET 4 framework. Shared source code available from http://referencesource.microsoft.com/netframework.aspx
Thanks
Aion on integrated? Interesting. Getting Aion to work properly requires a decent CPU and decent graphics, so it'd be nice to see what APUs need to aspire to in order to get decent performance out of that sort of game and future games of that ilk.
WoW should end up in there for the mass-market appeal.
Why not ArmA 2 Operation Arrowhead? You can make your own benchmark scenes, it's multi-threaded, and supports DX11. Plus there are mods to display framerate in realtime.
There must be a reason that FSX never gets used for benchmarking. But in my opinion if you want to see a CPUs performance, run FSX. Most of the time it will bring a system down to its knees with everything set to the max.
So test with FSX please. Thanks