Which BenchMark SoftWare/Game for Testing CPU/GPU BottleNecks?

[UaVaj]

looking for benchmark software that tests scaling of "both" CPU and GPU.

for GPU heavy / CPU light - heaven seem to do a good predictable job. if not. then which benchmark?

for CPU heavy / GPU light - which benchmark?

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yes. actual playing and paying attention to cpu/gpu meters is best.

however looking for a static benchmark so the testing is unbias and true.

 

[Termie]

You actually need software that stresses both the CPU and GPU to determine a bottleneck. Heaven, for instance, uses almost no CPU power, and so you'll never know if there's a bottleneck slowing down the system. Typically, synthetic benchmarks will never be a good test of bottlenecks, only real games will.

If, on the other hand, you just want a pure GPU benchmark, then Heaven is very good, as it scales fairly linearly with GPU power.

 

[UaVaj]

always thought heaven did a decent job of stressing the CPU while maxing out the GPU.

keep the recommendation coming- if any?

 

[Termie]

Among games with built-in benchmarks, I've found Hitman: Absolution to need quite a bit of both GPU and CPU power.

A while back, I used Batman: Arkham City to test for bottlenecks on dual-core CPUs. I haven't looked at whether it's picky among quad-cores.

Crysis 3, which doesn't have a built-in benchmark as far as I know, is an excellent test of both GPU and CPU power. In addition to pushing GPUs very hard, it responds very positively to CPU clock speed and core count.

A few other games that respond positively to CPU power are Deus Ex: Human Revolution and Far Cry 3. Deus Ex in particular loves both core count and hyperthreading, while Far Cry 3 is essentially unplayable on two threads, but becomes GPU-bound on four.

 

[Cerb]

Task Manager and MSI Afterburner are going to be the easiest to measure with.

The testing itself should be playing your games.

Included game benchmarks aren't always indicative of play--sometimes for good reason, sometimes not. Coming up with a useful set of test benchmarks, that can be run across PCs, and actually do a decent job of predictive overall gaming performance, is no small task.

 

[Jaydip]

Crysis 3 comes to mind.This is a game which benefits greatly from HT and requires exorbitant amount of gpu power.

 

[frozentundra123456]

Task Manager and MSI Afterburner are going to be the easiest to measure with.

The testing itself should be playing your games.

Included game benchmarks aren't always indicative of play--sometimes for good reason, sometimes not. Coming up with a useful set of test benchmarks, that can be run across PCs, and actually do a decent job of predictive overall gaming performance, is no small task.

This is the way I test as well, although since I have only an hd7770 with an i5 2320 I am gpu limited in most every case. Its still fun to look at CPU load, and in SC 2 I was able to Max out the CPU in a 10 player skirmish map.

I agree that you pretty much have to test on a the specific game you are interested in though.

 

[lehtv]

Battlefield 3 64-player Conquest is a good test for a CPU bottleneck, as it is CPU intensive and scales well with multiple threads. Just turn down resolution and if your frames don't increase (in inverse proportion to pixel count) you're CPU bottlenecked

 

[BrightCandle]

Arma3 tends to scale pretty decisively with CPU performance as well.

Bare in mind you should be able to take almost any GPU test, drop the settings and get a CPU limited test out of it. You can't take a CPU limited test and make it a GPU test however.

 

[sm625]

I use furmark, along with X instances of superpi, where X = # of cores - 1

While all that is running, I play a video and make sure it drops no frames. IGPs fail this test.

 

[lehtv]

sm625 how does that in any way test for a bottleneck in any real world situation?