This page shows a list of benchmark programs I use to test my hardware. In case you want to see results click here for VGA and here for CPU results.

3DMark2000 is a synthetic DirectX 7 benchmark and doesn't always represent real-life performance. It's very CPU-limited so you'll need a fast CPU to max out your graphic card. This means a GeForce4 Ti4200 will probably get the same results as a Radeon 9800 Pro if you benchmark it with a slow Pentium... > Read more

This is a popular benchmark because it is not CPU-intensitive. Some benchmarks are limited by the CPU because the CPU cannot feed enough data to the graphic card. When this happens the graphic card cannot show it's full potential. The nature demo from 3DMark2001 doesn't use much CPU-power. Of course... > Read more

Aquamark is based on the game Aquanox and uses a default resolution of 1024x768 with 4xAF (Anistropic Filtering, it will enhance image quality). As I benchmark with default settings the 4xAF setting is enabled.

Aquamark 3 is pretty straight forward. After installation click on the first option in... > Read more

This benchmark is suitable for CPU's from 2000 and upwards to modern dual and quad-core CPU's. It will run quite slow on an Athlon 500 or similar but it can give a good picture of the performance between a single CPU of dual CPU (or either dual-core) system. Cinebench 2003 is great of testing perfor... > Read more

Codecreatures is a DirectX 8.1 benchmark written by Codecult in 2002 that involves vertex- and pixelshaders. I use it to benchmark cards starting from the GeForce 4 Ti era. Codecult doesn't seem to write new benchmarks so this will be the only program I will use for older generation of graphics card... > Read more

For me this was an unknown benchmark. I downloaded a few benchmarks because I needed various programs to test performance. After benchmarking for a while I noticed this benchmark doesn't stress the FPU much but rather goes to integer performance. Based on my feeling the score seems to represent the ... > Read more

This benchmark runs a series of tests and seems to indicate general performance. It doesn't stress a specific part of the processor so the results aren't representative for 3D-games like Quake or Half-Life or any other specific task/application. I will use this benchmark for CPU's between Pentium 10... > Read more

A single-threaded benchmark that is around for quite a while. Many people used it in the past and it seems like a good benchmark to test integer performance. Note that CPUMark '99 likes L2-cache while a large L2-cache doesn't always improve performance in, for example, office applications.

I have... > Read more

This ALU benchmark is part of CrystalMark 2004 and uses four (Fibonacci, Napierian, Eratosthenes, QuickSort) ALU benchmarks.

My benchmark method

Launch CrystalMark 2004 and press ALI. Let the four sub-benchmarks run and note the ALU (not the final) score. It's advisable to run this benchm... > Read more

This FPU benchmark is part of CrystalMark 2004 and uses four (MikoFPU, RandMeanSS, FFT, Mandelbrot) FPU benchmarks.

My benchmark method

Launch CrystalMark 2004 and press FPU. Let the four sub-benchmarks run and note the FPU (not the final) score. It's advisable to run this benchmark more ... > Read more

This game is practically forgotten but was 'the' Unreal of the arcade racing games back in the old days. It run's fine on 3dfx cards so I used it primarily as a 3dfx-benchmark. According to the readme.txt it can also works good on the ATI Rage Pro, Intel i740, Matrox G200, Matrox Mystique / MY220, N... > Read more

This is a synthetic benchmark that runs on DOS to benchmark integer performance. Dhrystone was very popular but today people use 'SPECint' instead. Dhrystone is the opposite of Whetstone which stresses the floating point unit (FPU).... > Read more

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Doom is a classic DOS game. Back in 1993 this caused a revolution in the 3D-shooter world! Because it's an old benchmark it's suitable to measure the performance of 486 CPU's. Luckily Doom scales up quite well so you can easily use it to benchmark up to fast Pentium, Cyrix 6x86 or AMD K6 CPU's. Be s... > Read more

A little benchmark program I wrote by myself in Turbo Pascal 7. I wrote it to create a benchmark that would run on 8086/8088 and 286 systems. The algorithm is quite simple as it only does a few mathematical calculations. Because there are some floating point calculations systems with a floating poin... > Read more

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The brother of CPUMark '99. This benchmark tests the FPU (floating point unit) rather then integer performance. Because games like Quake use the FPU a lot the scores of FPUMark '99 should be pretty much the same.

My benchmark method

Start Winbench '99 and select FPU WinMark. The final sco... > Read more

Does this game need an introduction? Half-life is released in 1998 and a popular 3D-shooter. It runs on a modified Quake engine and allows people to customize the game by using 'mods'. These mods (modifications) often feature new models, maps, sounds or code for enhanced (on-line) gameplay. Due to t... > Read more

Hexus PiFast! calculates Pi and is quite a popular program to measure performance. Websites or forums about overclocking often use PiFast! to indicate the performance of CPU (and RAM) setups. The application is CPU and memory intensive and lower scores are better.

My benchmark method

Unpa... > Read more

A real-life single-threaded benchmark. This benchmark isn't L2-cache intensive so a Duron or Celeron can be as fast as their more expensive Athlon or Pentium counterparts if other factors like the front side bus (FSB) are the same.

This benchmark is suitable for anything between 500MHz sixth gene... > Read more

A DOS game that needs a Pentium-class (fifth generation) CPU to run at all. You can run it on the Cyrix 5x86, Pentium-class or newer CPU's.

The demo version, though being 3D-rendered, doesn't use 3D accelerators. In case you use a decent PCI graphics card this game is excellent for benchmarking C... > Read more

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Another classic DOS game that uses the floating point unit (FPU) intensively. This is why you need a FPU to run Quake at all.

The benchmark results will be quite predictable in the long run. The Intel Pentium is known to have quite a decent FPU while the non-Intel parts like Cyrix 6x86, IDT Winch... > Read more

I used Quake II to test performance of CPU's under Windows '98. Because I used Quake at 320x200 for 386, 486 and fifth-generation CPU's I thought Quake II at a higher resolution would be great to indicate performance of lower-end fifth-generation CPU's up to faster 1000MHz CPU's.

To benchmark I i... > Read more

A classic benchmark! It has been used a million times in the past to benchmark cards like the Voodoo5, GeForce 2,3 and early Radeon cards. It's suitable for faster cards as well but then you have to crank up the resolution (and perhaps detail or Anti-Aliasing settings) to prevent the CPU from being ... > Read more

A game from 1998 with lot's of graphical features. Because it runs great with 3dfx Glide and OpenGL I selected it to benchmark graphic cards.

Notice that the 640x480 benchmarks are interesting for the lower end graphic cards like the Voodoo 1 that can only run at 640x480. For faster cards the ben... > Read more

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Whetstone is the opposite of Dhrystone and instead of integer performance it tests floating point performance. This is why CPU's without a FPU or a decent FPU score very low. For example and as seen in the benchmarks: a 386DX25 with FPU installed can easily beat a 486SX2/50 with a big margin.... > Read more

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Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory is a free multiplayer game from ID software. It's available for both Windows and Linux platforms and includes a timedemo function.

My benchmark method

I used a demo I found on the internet which is suitable for version 2.60. To run the demo I open up the con... > Read more