Benchmarking programs - which one should I use?

[silentmemories]

What benchmarking programs can I use to see the capabilities of my hardware? (Are Futuremark's stuff any good? Which one should I use?)

 

[Blue Shift]

In short, none of them. What should matter to you is how your hardware performs in the games you want to play... While synthetic benchmarks do assign a score to your hardware which is easy to use for comparison purposes, if you've already built your rig then they're basically just a form of pissing contest.

If you're interested in a benchmark that looks and runs like most of are hoping all games will soon (aka a good future predictor with eye candy), then Unigene Heaven might be worth checking out.

 

[Lemon law]

Maybe you miss a point here, if you have a new new PC, one can either go with monitor all aspects of hardware or a subset. But still the main guideline of hardware monitoring programs is to establish the new new new PC baseline of performance.

When later in the PC life, performance degrades, temps start rising, performance starts falling, you have a baseline to compare to.