Others may use them for bragging rights on that new top-of-the-line gaming machine. Whatever your interest, computer benchmarks certainly are fun. However, obtaining system benchmarks can be tedious. In the past, installing benchmarking applications could be expensive or, with some systems, difficult and time consuming.

Phoronix has been providing free and quality benchmarking software for Linux for several years and adding support for other architectures since. Free BSDs, OpenSolaris, and MacOS are among those supported and Windows support is in the pipeline. As nice as these packages are, they still require time and the right software support in order to install and function.

One way to address these inconveniences is to use PTS Desktop Live, a live CD built on Ubuntu containing the test suite which removes any operating system or software requirements for the target machine and avoids having to install any extra software permanently onto your system. Just boot the live CD and you’re ready to go.

The Phoronix Test Suite live CD comes with 52 individual tests and 10 different preconfigured profiles to test the different elements of your system hardware. Profiles, which can be toggled from the menu, are a subset of tests geared toward one particular area such as testing database performance, video encoding, or BSD systems. You can run one test, a subset of tests, or a batch of tests and options.

The point-and-click interface makes obtaining your computer benchmark so easy to do, even for the average Joe. Just in case, an introduction opens at boot with basic information and links to the home site where much more information is found. But no special information is really needed. Just click on the big green “P” on the panel or “Phoronix Test Suite” in the Applications menu under System Tools. At that point merely click on any of the tests to get basic information as to what it benchmarks and then click Install to download and install the test.

Since using Ubuntu as its base, the tools are now delivered as binaries eliminating the need to compile making the process much quicker. The user will be asked if and where to store the results and if they’d like to upload to Global. Remember that this is a live CD and all data will be lost upon shutdown unless moved to a more permanent storage medium. All computer benchmark information is stored in the .phoronix-test-suite directory.

One of the recommended Profiles is Favorites. This is a nice collection of general purpose tests commonly used by Michael Larabel, the founder and lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite. When the test suite is installed, just click the “Run Test” button. When asked what to name this particular test and the Test Identifier, just pick something you’d remember easily.

After completion of the tests, data can be viewed in the included Web browser and displayed in easy-to-read graphs. You can choose to compare the results with other machines listed on the Phoronix Global site and you can upload your results for others to use for comparison or for future reference.

One of my favorite activities is to compare new hardware with old after an upgrade. One of yours might be to show your best friend how much better your machine rocks than his (or vice versa). Remember, the best feature of the Phoronix Test Suite Desktop is the FUN!

What benchmarking tools do YOU use? Let us know all about them in the comments.

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Although Windows comes with a built in system information tool, it doesn’t provide ‘the complete picture‘ by any stretch of imagination. Some time back we looked at System Information Tool for Linux. Here is one you can use with Windows – it is called PC Wizard.

PC Wizard is an advanced system information utility and it provides you with loads of information relating to hardware, software and certain computer benchmarks. It is available both as an installable exe file and a portable zip file. Once you have it on your computer, go ahead and fire it up.

PC Wizard starts collecting information as soon as it loads. It will display the hardware information summary by default. This contains information about the processor, motherboard, RAM, hard disk, network cards and so on. You can get additional detailed information on any hardware component using the toolbar on the left

.

Click on configuration from the toolbar to get system configuration information. Here you can get information about the operating system such as windows uptime, which includes the number of times the operating system has been booted, and no bluescreens encountered. In addition you can also find Outlook, Internet Explorer and other passwords, file associations, list of updates and patches that have been installed and much more, like startup applications, services that are currently running and DirectX information.

The System Files section lets you view the contents of important system files and information like boot.ini, autoexec.bat, environment variables and event log to mention a few.

PC Wizard also lets you run computer benchmarks on Processor (namely Dhrystone (MIPS), Whetstone (MFLOPS) etc), L1, L2, L3 Cache, RAM, Hard Drives, CD/DVD Rom, DirectX 3D, Video, Removable/Flash Support. Note that some computer benchmarks requires a good amount of time for completion, during which you might not be able to work on your computer, so you might want to run them when the computer is idle.

PC Wizard monitors the computer for changing information like CPU core temperatures, hard disk temperatures and CPU utilization. This information can be displayed on your desktop when PC Wizard is running in the background.

You can customize various aspects of PC Wizard via Tools > Options. In here you can customize the user interface, choose additional information you want to view as well as configure the monitoring and benchmarking options.

The tool also allows you to save the reports in a variety of formats such as text, HTML, PDF or CSV. You can also generate a comprehensive report and print or email it. You can also use PC Wizard from the command line which would generate a report in the specified format without firing up the interface. The readme file contains a list of switches and options you can use on the command line.

PC Wizard provides you with exhaustive information about your computer in one place. Gathering such information without PC Wizard wouldn’t only require lots of work but might not be possible for the average user. The monitoring and benchmarking features are a welcome addition.

Give it a try and let us know what you think about it. In case you know of similar or better software used for the same purpose, we would love to know about it.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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Hardinfo is a Linux application. To install Hardinfo, look inside your distribution’s package manager. Ubuntu users can install Hardinfo via the terminal using:

sudo apt-get install hardinfo

Once installed, go ahead and run it. You will be greeted by various parameters towards the left and you can get more information by clicking on them.

The information is broadly classified into 3 categories: The computer, devices and benchmarks. You can get a information summary about your computer or detailed information about the Operating System, Kernel Modules, Filesystems, shared directories, network interfaces, monitors, languages installed and a log of system boots. In addition, you can also get detailed information about the processor, memory, PCI device, USB devices, battery, printers and storage etc.

All this information is neatly organised and you can copy any one of them to the clipboard with the click of a button or generate a report to post on forums for help. You can pick and choose what information is to be included in the report by un-checking the modules you want to exclude.

Hardinfo also provides you with benchmarking that allows you run certain tests and see how well your computer does! Hardinfo benchmarks your CPU with zlib, fibonacci, md5, sha1, blowfish and FPU raytracing tests. It displays the result as well as how other common CPUs performed on the same test.

If you are unsure about how to interpret the results, Hardinfo displays a line towards the bottom – giving you some additional information about the test results. You can also synchronize the benchmark tests with the Hardinfo server to receive updated results for other CPUs and submit your own results if you so please.

Do you know of similar profiling and benchmarking tools? Please recommend them in the comments!

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Some of it can be put on the shoulders of brand marketing, but mostly it is the difference in specifications and features that accounts for the toll on your wallet.  Some come bundled with security software offering iron-clad privacy and some have memory capacities to tout. But hidden among these is the value of data transfer rates (reading and writing) capable from these flash devices.

So how do we go about checking the speed of USB flash drives? Maybe the following light and free software can lend a hand?

Check Flash

The Check Flash website is in Cyrillic (there is an English option too) but it shouldn’t stop anyone from downloading this light and free USB flash drive speed testing and error checking software.

With Check Flash you can test, manage and format your USB flash drive.  You can also run a read-write cycle on your USB flash drive, which returns not only the speed but also any errors (read/write or physical) in your USB drive. The software does not rectify the problem but merely reports it.

Check Flash v1.07 runs as an 812KB sized executable and does not require an installation.

HD Speed

HD_Speed is a pint sized software that can be used to gauge the speed of data transfer on your hard disks, CD/DVD ROMS and USB flash drives. This program is compatible with Windows 2000, XP and Vista only, though it supports both FAT and NTFS volumes.

The 80KB utility does not require installation and runs with a click. Select the drive and hit start. The read/write results show up as a graph and also as real values.

Crystal Disk Mark

Crystal Disk Mark is another disk benchmarking tool that can double up as a USB flash drive speed tester. The screen is simple and gives readouts according to the type of tests performed.

Crystal Disk Mark can carry out sequential read/write tests (i.e. read/write data in order) or random 4KB/512KB reads/writes or text copy. The speed test results are displayed as large numerical in MB/s.The 396KB software runs as a standalone executable straight from the box and is compatible with Windows Vista/2003/XP.

Flash Memory Toolkit

Flash Memory Toolkit is advertised as a collection of utilities for flash memory devices. The toolkit includes options to get detailed device information, erase files and recover files lost after a format, hardware failure or an accidental deletion. Backup and restore functions along with our benchmarking task of measuring the read/write performance of the flash drive is available.

Unfortunately, the free standard version gives us only the ability to judge the Read speeds. To calculate both read/write speeds one has to upgrade to the Pro version. Even with this handicap, the ability to measure read speeds along with the File Benchmark feature (which calculates the time it will take to read or write files of various sizes to the device and returns the results as comparative graphs) is a nice help too.The 766KB software (v1.20) is installable on Windows 2000, XP, XP 64-bit, 2003 Server and Vista.

HD Tune

Similar to the aforementioned software, HD Tune also comes in the free and paid flavors. And again, the free version allows for only read speed testing of our USB Flash drives. It also gives a detailed disk information option along with an error scan.

For more advanced aspects one need to dole out for the pro version. If you disregard the missing features in the free version, it is a handy utility to have around because it gives us a lot of benchmarking information like the maximum, minimum and the average transfer rates (i.e. the read speed) along with access time, burst rate (defined as the highest speed at which data can be transferred from the drive to the OS).HD Tune v2.55 is available for Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows 2003 Server and Windows Vista.

USB 2.0 has a cutting edge data rate of 480Mbps, and it is rated 40 times faster than the now archaic, USB 1.1, which peaked at 12Mbps. Flash drives are catching up with most now hovering around the 30-40 MB/s mark.

So have you checked the speed of your USB flash drive lately? Which software have you used? Share with us in the comments…

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FreshDiagnose is a program that analyzes and benchmarks every aspect of your computer system. Analyzing and benchmarking seems like it would only provide you with just a few reports about your computer, but FreshDiagnose will provide you with just about every report you could ever want about your computer.

So let’s take a look at what it can do.

Why Analyze and Benchmark?

Analyzing and benchmarking your PC allows you to see the true settings and performance of your PC. This could be done just for fun or to compare against your friend’s computer to find out who truly has the better computer. Most websites that review computer parts will benchmark the parts in order to get the best comparison between products.

Overview

FreshDiagnose has two basic functions that we just talked about, analyzing and benchmarking. The analysis part will generate lots of reports about all of the different options your computer has from hardware to software. The benchmarking part will provide you with your computer’s performance statistics. These reports and benchmarks are easily navigated due to an intuitive user interface.

Reports

There are seven different categories of reports in FreshDiagnose, and they include:

• Software System
• Hardware System
• Devices
• Network and Internet
• Multimedia
• Database System
• Hardware Resources
• Snapshot
• Traces

Each category has an array of reports that could take all afternoon to look through, but the good part is that these categories are clearly labeled and easy to navigate. In order to show you a little more about the reports, I decided to provide you with an example.

I wanted to find out more about my computer memory. In order to find this report, I opened up the Hardware System reports and found the one on memory. The following is the report that came up. As you can see, the report tells me all about my memory and its settings.

Benchmarks

FreshDiagnose lets you run seven different types of benchmarks on your computer, and they include:

• Processor
• Memory
• Harddisk
• Network
• Multimedia
• Display Adapter
• CD

Each benchmark has various reports about the performance of that piece of hardware, and a comparison of your computer’s performance to that of some other computers. The only problem with this is that a lot of the systems it compares you to are older systems. In order to get newer comparisons, you may have to go search for some computer hardware review or benchmarking websites.

Downsides

There aren’t very many things to complain about when it comes to FreshDiagnose. Other than the lack of new benchmarks, the only thing I could come up with is that it nags you to register. If you don’t register, it takes longer and longer to open up the program and the benchmarks don’t work. This may be a minor annoyance, but it is a small price to pay for a nice piece of software.

Conclusion

Overall, FreshDiagnose is a great program that is worth checking out even if you aren’t a super techie. It is very cool to look around at all of the different options on your computer that you never knew you had and to find out what your performance under the hood really is.

What are your opinions on FreshDiagnose? Do you know of any better alternatives?

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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