New Build, what softwares needed for benchs etc

[bigpun69]

What software do you guys recommend for benchmarking, overclocking tools, temperature monitors and other usefull apps that I may need.

I guess the main things will be hard drive performance, cpu performance/stability/temps, gpu performance/stability/temps.

Any advice is appreciated as always

[GSte]

Off the top of my head....orthos, fraps, super pi, core temp, speedfan, cpu z, intel tat, sandra and 3dmark perhaps, depends what you want to do really.

[Blitzen]

Off the top of my head....orthos, fraps, super pi, core temp, speedfan, cpu z, intel tat, sandra and 3dmark perhaps, depends what you want to do really.

Most of those are OK.
I find that Speedfan and 3D Mark are way too 'ballpark' to take much notice of.

TAT, Sandra and Everest are very good though. CPU-Z is very reliable also. HDTach is excellent for Hard Drive testing.

[Clunk]

I think you said you were going quad core didnt you? We need to know what O/S you are using too, because some stuff doesnt play nice with Vista.

CPU-Z is invaluable and great for most things except CPU voltages.

Orthos is fine for dual core, but I had problems with it on quad core.

The latest Prime95 beta will run 4x threads, so that is perfect for stress testing.

Stress prime 2004 (SP2004) is also good, but you need to run 4 instances of it and set the affinity manually. You do have the advantage of seeing how long it has been running for though.

OCCT is another handy stress testing tool that produces a lot of heat, and has a few other functions to play around with.

Sandra is ok, I just use it for the memory bandwidth benchmark.

Everest, I find to be miles out on temps, voltages etc, but there are some benchmarks that are ok, not my fave that one.

Speedfan is another that is generally miles out (15c under) on the CPU temps, so I dont use that much.

3DMark05/06 are ok to give you a rough idea of how your system is behaving, but its not a definitive statement of stability (nothing is really).

TAT is no good for quad cores, but fine for dual cores.

Coretemp is my temp monitor of choice for use in XP, in vista x64, it can be used, but is a bit of a pain at the moment.

Winrar has a benchmark, might be worth a play around with that.

HDTach - hard drive benchmark util.

HDTune - Hard drive benchmark util.

IOMeter - advanced hard drive util.

[GSte]

I find that Speedfan and 3D Mark are way too 'ballpark' to take much notice of.

Not to mention the occasional scarily erroneous reading:

http://i180.photobucket.com/albums/x285/GSte306/1-1.gif

[Blitzen]

Not to mention the occasional scarily erroneous reading:

http://i180.photobucket.com/albums/x285/GSte306/1-1.gif

Jeeeezz.......that is poor from Speedfan.
5 pence ...10 pence ....... springs to mind when you first saw that

[GSte]

Jeeeezz.......that is poor from Speedfan.
5 pence ...10 pence ....... springs to mind when you first saw that

Indeed..... immediately took the side off my case and looked for the smoke. Luckily someone on here posted about the exact same reading an hour after I noticed it.