NEED HELP IN ANALYZING PC PERFORMANCE

[Rednie]

Hi!

I'm in need of guidance and help here...

In high-school we have to do something by the end of the May to graduate, so I chose to build a custom PC that is powerful and esthetical. 

 

 

The PC components are:

• i7-6700k 4.0Ghz
• ASRock Z270 Extreme 4
• Nvidia Geforce GTX 1060 6GB Super Jetstream
• G.Skill Trident Z RGB 16GB (2x8) 3200MHz
• Samsung EVO 850 SSD 500GB SATA III
• Corsair Hydro H80i V2 (CPU heatsink)
• Chieftec ATX 2.3 ECO 700W
• In Win 303WHITE ATX Mid-Tower

 

 

My goal is to analyze the performance of the built PC and give it a rating, but here is the problem. I don't know how to analyze PC, run tests or overclock (I intend to overclock to write more about the topic in my essay).

I would be more than grateful if anyone could guide me and explain how to fully analyze PC, run tests on CPU or GPU, optimize voltages and temperatures. I promise to credit anyone who will truly help!^^

 

Thank you in advance!

[Jasun]

Unigine Heaven Benchmarks will work for your GPU. It basically stress tests it and gives you a score. You can analyze it by running it without an OC and run it again with the OC and then compare them. 

 

Edit: If you're new to overclocking, I would not reccomend you touching the voltages, it'll just decreaes your hardware's life if you increase. Just don't worry about voltages for now. 

[Jasun]

Useful video for GPU overclocking: 

 

[hconverse02]

Cross compare results by changing settings (ie making an independent variable like gpu clock, cpu clock, ram clock) and make a range of specs that you can test with.

[SilkyDistress]

5 minutes ago, Rednie said:

-snip-

Benchmark it with 3dmark, unigine heaven, unigine valley and record fps of some heavy demanding games.

Overclocking is based on pushing frequency on set voltage without hitting thermal limit or destroying anything.

[COUPER MILLAR]

There are a lot of ways you could analyze a computer. Gaming benchmarks or other stand alone benchmarks like unigine, pc mark, and furmark would be some great options to test system performance and stability. Aida 64 would be a good option for testing cpu overclock stability and temperatures. If I were you I would read some of the in depth hardware benchmark articles done my gamers nexus. They are ridiculously through in their testing methods and describe them in a fair amount of detail as well. 

[Damascus]

Monitoring software:

• Rivatuner
• msi afterburner
• Realtemp
• Hwbot/gain to

Gpu Benchmarking software

• Unigine Superposition/heaven/valley
• 3dmark timespy/firestrike
• Vr mark
• Furry donut of death (furmark)

Cpu Benchmarking

• Aida64
• P95

[Jasun]

Games that have benchmarking tools built-in: 

• BioShock Infinite
• Metro 2033
• Metro: Last Light
• Shadow of Mordor
• Thief
• Tomb Raider
• Sleeping Dogs
• Batman: Arkham City
• Dirt 3
• HAWX 2
• Crysis 3
• Grand Theft Auto 5
• Etc. 

[Godlygamer23]

12 minutes ago, Jasun said:

Games that have benchmarking tools built-in: 

• BioShock Infinite
• Metro 2033
• Metro: Last Light
• Shadow of Mordor
• Thief
• Tomb Raider
• Sleeping Dogs
• Batman: Arkham City
• Dirt 3
• HAWX 2
• Crysis 3
• Grand Theft Auto 5
• Etc. 

Tomb Raider's benchmarking is terrible for performance analysis because there's nothing going on in the benchmark compared to what you would experience in-game(no gunfights or explosions. It's literally just circling around Lara). Batman Arkham City is a little better, but still not that great. 

 

Each benchmark would have to be analyzed for real world performance expectations in order to be considered valid.

[Nocte]

3DMark gives your PC a score and takes into consideration all components (mainly GPU, but still). Maybe consider Cinebench for CPU. 

 

Try to run everything at stock, and see what score you get. 

Then overclock the RAM from 2133 to 3200 and see the difference. 

Once you get back the RAM to 2133, overclock the CPU, and so on for all components. 

Finally, see what score you get with all components overclocked. 

This should give you enough data for your essay. Make sure to add context to it such as voltage changes, clock changes, how you did it etc. 

[SageOfSpice]

I normally use:

 

OCCT, UserBenchMark, MSI Afterburner, HWInfo, and LatencyMon.

 

OCCT is a pretty flexible stress testing program that'll stress everything from your CPU to your power supply, and it'll record and monitor power usage, utilization, clockspeed, temperature, and much more so you can see what's happening while it's being stressed, and what happened if it failed. It isn't the best for full stability testing on a CPU or GPU, but if you do other tasks in the background to get a more dynamic load, it does well enough. It'll automatically stop if it detects CPU errors, and tell you if it detects GPU errors.

 

UserBenchMark is a fairly simple little program with a very nice website that gives you a rating for the relative performance of your hardware configuration compared to similarly tested configurations. It tests your entire system, and provides some useful information about how your changes have improved, or decreased your performance. It also stores logs on their website with a unique identifier for your computer so that you can see performance logs for the last few months. I like it because it's simple, quick, and it's got a nice interface. It's also fun to see what you can do to make your computer perform the best on the list. As far as grading components, they've pretty much already done all the work for you.

 

MSI Afterburner along with Rivatuner Statistics Server is an invaluable little program that will allow you to set up a custom fan profile for your GPU, as well as set up all sorts of statistical information in an on-screen display so that you can see what's happening with your hardware and utilization in real time while in games, or stress testing. This is important for diagnosing issues, as it gives you a clue as to what the computer is doing which can help to point you in the right direction when it comes to diagnosing problems, or improving the performance on your computer.

 

HWInfo is a pretty powerful tool, as well. It will basically give you all the sensor information on your computer that it has access to. For better or worse. Once you figure out what you're looking at, it gives incredibly in-depth information with regards to voltage, clockspeeds, and it will even show if there are any GPU or Hardware errors reported in Windows which is especially useful when it comes to overclocking. Too many times have I settled on an overclock after stress testing it for days, only to later down the line, run into an issue due to a slight instability. This program will allow you to see if your computer is having issues BEFORE it creates issues for you. Very, very useful.

 

Lastly, LatencyMon. You can technically get latency information through Windows performance monitor, but this is a much nicer GUI in my opinion. LatencyMon measures DPC, or the lantency created by defferred procedure calls. These calls occur when tasks must be delayed in order for more critical information to be managed. The problem with this is that nothing you really care about is considered critical, so quite often this will cause video and audio to skip and clip. This program will help narrow down the cause, and point you towards to problem driver or program. It's use in overclocking is helping ascertain system stability. As certain components of your computer become unstable, they may become unresponsive in which case, they will need to be restarted. This can introduce latency. This latency isn't always something perceptible, but noting huge spikes in latency after testing a seemingly stable overclock could indicate that it isn't as stable as you may think.

 

Oveclocking is fairly easy. Just know your limits, and play within them. Make sure that you fully understand the temperature and voltage limits for your components, and ensure that the sensors that you're using to determine these things are accurate. It's easy enough to just go out and pick up an IR temp gun for like $5-$10 to ensure that nothing is cooking. There are also many IR cameras that would functionally do the same. All in all, be smart, start slow. Learn from other people, read lots. All hardware will have it's quirks, and even different batches of the same hardware can be made with different components, so just be mindful and know what you're dealing with. Most importantly, have fun.

 

 

Good luck.