PC TESTING AND PERFORMANCE
01
CPU-Z
Something everyone who’s even
tangentially interested in their PC’s
internals should have, CPU-Z pulls in
the tiny details about your CPU, chipset,
memory, and mainboard that Windows
doesn’t feel like sharing with you, and puts
them all in one handy place. It can make
a precise reading of your current clock
speed for both CPU and RAM, too—great
for overclockers. http://www.cpuid.com02
GPU-Z
Despite the name, appearance,
and incredibly similar functionality,
GPU-Z has nothing to do with CPU-Z—but
it does have permission from the CPU-Z
author to use its title, which is nice. It’s a
GPU monitor, which can offer insights into
both what you’re running and just how
well it’s running, with access to a whole
bunch of your graphics module’s on-board
sensors. http://techpowerup.com/gpuz/03
HWiNFO64
Where CPU-Z and GPU-Z are
specialized snipers, HWiNFO64 is
the buckshot-loaded blunderbuss of
hardware monitoring. If there’s a statistic
out there you want to discover, it’ll find
it—and it’s fantastic for overall system
monitoring, too, with customizable graphs
enabling you to track just about any metric
or sensor output. http://hwinfo.com04
Rainmeter
An odd choice for the system
testing section? Perhaps. But Rainmeter
sneaks in because, in the course of
making your desktop look incredible, you
can install a plugin like CoreTemp to hook
your pretty desktop graphics into the heatof your CPU, or use a skin such as s ysDash
to display a host of customizable stats
about your system. http://rainmeter.net05
CrystalDiskInfo
There are, for some unknown
reason, three versions of this disk status
monitor, but the only reason to grab
the Shizuku or Kurei Kei editions are if
you’re desperate to have a cute manga
girl next to your impossibly detailed drive
statistics. See also CrystalDiskMark,
which will thoroughly kick your SSD in the
teeth and see what it has to say about it.
http://crystalmark.info06
FurMark
A GPU benchmark that earns its
place here by virtue of its stress testingand burn-in capabilities. It will absolutely
hammer your GPU with its OpenGL
routine, so much so that the galler y on the
official website proudly includes images of
hardware that went bang when it couldn’t
keep up. There’s also an Asus ROG
edition available, which tests Vulkan, too.
http://geeks3d.com/furmark07
Prime95
FurMark burns in your GPU, but
Prime95 is a real CPU cooker. It hunts
through a bunch of possibilities to attempt
to find new Mersenne prime numbers—
something it’s managed 16 times since- It’s a computationally intensive
task like no other, and its torture test
mode can help you diagnose issues with
your processor, chipset, cache, and much
more. http://mersenne.org
08
Cinebench
Cinebench’s visual benchmarking
results make it a great tool for testing or
racing one machine against another—but
it’s the built-in leaderboards that’ll really
let you know when something’s up. If
you’re lagging behind a Core 2 Duo, either
they’ve got some serious overclocking
abilities, or there’s a bottleneck on your
end. http://maxon.net09
MemTest86
A very old-school tool with an
old-school approach, dragged into the
21st century by its USB boot capabilities
and support for just about every memory
type you could throw at it. Whether you’re
Brothers from a different mother, CPU-Z and GPU-Z check what you have and how it’s running. burning in your RAM or searching it forBe careful with FurMark—it’s a really demanding and possibly damaging GPU stress test.free software 2020
34 MAXIMUM PC MAY 2020 maximumpc.com
©^CPUID.COM,
GEEKS^3
D.COM/F
URMARK