Utilities Poll - Week 7

profdlpprofdlp The Holy City Of Westlake, Ohio
edited September 2003 in Science & Tech
This week's topic: Benchmarks

Your input will determine which programs are chosen to bear the proud title "Short-Media Approved", so be sure to vote!

You've done the research, paid big money, and painstakingly built what you believe is a killer computer. You have spent hours tweaking every detail to wring maximum performance out of your new baby. You religiously run every optimization program you can find in order to keep it humming at full speed. You have spent days experimenting with BIOS settings in order to be sure that every last component is free to perform at peak efficiency.

Has all of that effort been worthwhile? How can you be sure?

Chances are, no matter how well things seem to be running, at some point you'll want to run a benchmarking program to see how your pride and joy stacks up against other machines.

Which Benchmark programs do you rely on?

Note: Since most of us can't get enough Benchmarks, feel free to vote for as many as you wish. Also, since there are many versions of some of the individual benchmarks, please comment on which you use.

Please add your comments and opinions in this thread! Once this project is complete there will be an article written detailing the "S-M Approved" utilities. Knowing "what" you prefer would be great. Knowing "why" you prefer it would be even better.

I will attempt to modify the poll if one of the "Other" votes gets way more votes than one I've already listed.

Thanks for the great response last week . Last weeks voting went against our recent trend - this time we had a clear winner. Your vote matters - all comments and all software receiving votes will be mentioned when the Short-Media Approved Utilities list is published.

Comments

  • GHoosdumGHoosdum Icrontian
    edited August 2003
    I've only used 3DMark...
  • SpinnerSpinner Birmingham, UK
    edited August 2003
    I use, ATTO and both 3DMARK's religiously, I occasionaly use Sandra, but only on special occasions.;)
  • QCHQCH Ancient Guru Chicago Area - USA Icrontian
    edited August 2003
    I use SiSoft Sandra... only because of some of the other tools, but the others may have them and I just never took the time to try them. I like the temp and total burn-in portions of SiSoft Sandra. What do you guys think?
  • mmonninmmonnin Centreville, VA
    edited August 2003
    Atto, 3dmark 2001, and Sandra.
  • ShortyShorty Manchester, UK Icrontian
    edited August 2003
    Atto, SiSoft and UT2K3 benchies :)
  • Geeky1Geeky1 University of the Pacific (Stockton, CA, USA)
    edited August 2003
    Atto, Sandra, 3DMark
  • EnverexEnverex Worcester, UK Icrontian
    edited August 2003
    I use glXS with Sandra, ATTO and 3DMark.

    NS
  • OuttherOutther Alabamee where family trees dont fork
    edited August 2003
    3D Mark and Sisoft Sandra

    I like the ease of use of Sisoft Sandra. You can hand it to an PC illiterate person and they can use it. Some other bench mark utilites are for more advanced users to interpet the data themselfs.
  • MERRICKMERRICK In the studio or on a stage
    edited August 2003
    Atto for me.
  • Mt_GoatMt_Goat Head Cheezy Knob Pflugerville (north of Austin) Icrontian
    edited August 2003
    I use:

    Atto......... Great for tweaking RAID arrays to get the most out of them and just for testing drives.
    Sandra.... One of the best all around utilities there is with all the different components it has.
    3DMark.... Gotttta have it if you are into benches!!!
    PCMark.... Nice to use to compare your past and present setups.
    Winbench Good for real life testing.

    And not onthe list:

    MBM......... This is a utility! I think we would all be lost without it.
    Prime 95... Not really a bench but a solid stress test. What good is fast if it won't run reliably?
    CPU-Z....... This or WCPUID. I prefer this one due to it including vCore.

    Edit:
    I like to use several different tests and compare the results of simmilar tests against each other since each is geared for something in particular. So many people just try to see how fast they can go but at what price? 250MPH is great as long as you don't get a flat or throw a rod.
  • SouriatSouriat Nottingham, UK
    edited August 2003
    3dmark mostly for me but also use some of the sisoft sandra tools sometimes :).
  • ThraxThrax 🐌 Austin, TX Icrontian
    edited August 2003
    SiSoft for memory, SuperPI for CPU, and 3dmark2003.

    Whilst 3d mark can be cheated on, I can still compare against myself when I make a tweak and the aggregate score of 10 runs is higher or lower than pre-tweak.
  • SimGuySimGuy Ottawa, Canada
    edited August 2003
    MadOnion's 3DMark99Max, 2000, 2001SE & 2003.
    GLExcess, Atto, SANDRA, WinTune (yep, good ol' WinMag lives on here), UT (the original), UT2003 and Quake II/III.
  • CyrixInsteadCyrixInstead Stoke-on-Trent, England Icrontian
    edited August 2003
    I don't use any benchmarks these days...

    Only when I get some new parts.

    ~Cyrix
  • RWBRWB Icrontian
    edited August 2003
    I forgot to check other in my vote, but I wanted to Add Planetside and BF42 for some real world performance stuff. PS uses pretty much 1GB of memory!
  • WuGgaRoOWuGgaRoO Not in the shower Icrontian
    edited August 2003
    i use 3dmark 2001 se...cuz im just that lazy
  • danball1976danball1976 Wichita Falls, TX
    edited August 2003
    I use ATTO and SiSoft Sandra. I might use 3DMark2K1 on occasion
  • TexTex Dallas/Ft. Worth
    edited August 2003
    Crap I use almost nothing on the list but Sandra and ATTO?

    When I load win2k or winxp

    I load the following things. I do this so often I could do it in my sleep.

    customizer XP
    Tweak XP and
    X-Setup There may be better tweaking progs but with those three I can get my setup perfect. Some overlap others functions but all have some unique tweaks. X-setup is the most awesome xp tweaker on earth by the way.

    Next throw in nortons 2003 and get all the virus updates
    hare
    regcrawler
    regcleaner
    WinInternals- Must have for anyone that manges or deals with a lot of boxs. It was on the SuperUtils CD with the forensic pacages, partion magic etc. Includes ERD commander and Disk comander, NTFS for Dos etc... which are priceless!
    Thene I load the slipsteamer software that automates putting extra stuff like sp2 onto your XP cds.
    Winrar
    Adobe acrobat
    Both EZCD and Nero for burning.
    PM8 and drive image
    Syscomander if its not running already.
    Then Office and Photoshop and I'm close to done

    And think all four my boxes dual or tripple boot OS's sp this is a royal pain in the butt.

    Tex
  • SpinnerSpinner Birmingham, UK
    edited August 2003
    You should think about designing a batch file mate. It would make your life so much easier.;)
  • TexTex Dallas/Ft. Worth
    edited August 2003
    And actualy I could make a CD that installed windows xp and all the apps one after another but most require reboots in between.

    I mean if you had one machine you could make a custom XP install cd with the drivers and all the questions answered for a silent install. All automated..... It would format and everything..... include sp2 and other updates like moviemaker, hotfixs etc... . But when I am installing to differant partitons and machines with differant names and IP's on the network etc... its to hard. Alll the apps sit on the network in install directorys and its not that hard. Its all the other tweaking and **** that takes forever yo get just right. Robin has a specail VPN program she has to have to get into work etc... what a pain in the rump roast.

    Tex
  • SpinnerSpinner Birmingham, UK
    edited September 2003
    Okay people, your week of voting and discussion is up. Time to move on to the next topic. Thanks to all of you for voting and posting your thoughts.

    SPINNER

    Week 8 can be found at the link below and the subject is 'Audio Playback Software':

    http://www.short-media.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=3231
This discussion has been closed.