Good stress testers and before/after overclock programs?

[dBo]

I know of Prime95 and its stress testing abilities.

What are some good programs to check system performance numbers? I want to test my system before I try any overclocking .. and after ... to see the benefits of what I'm really doing.

 

[chocoruacal]

PCMark
3DMark01
3DMark03
PiFast

Read any hardware reviews lately? They are chock full of programs you could try.

 

[Henny]

Prime
Memtest
Sisoft Sandra Burn In utility
Fish or Seastorm screensaver
Downloading a large .pdf file also seems to stress out CPU's

Some people suggest running these utilities for hours and hours at a time but that's not always a good test of system stability. Go ahead and run these utilities but a few passes of usually enough then switch to a different utility. Once these utilities seem happy the next step is to just put your system to varied use.

Having a system take whatever you "throw at it" is the only reliable stress tester.