How to benchmark your gaming PC

Whether you’ve purchased a pre-built gaming rig and want to measure its performance, or you want to see just how far you can push your custom-built gaming machine, benchmark software is crucial to understanding the power of your gaming rig.

Benchmarks are used to test the effect of overclocks, relative gaming performance, and the power of both graphics cards and processors.

We’ve put together some basic information to get you started on measuring the power and capabilities of your hardware.

Graphics Card

Synthetic Benchmarks

Synthetic benchmarks refer to standalone software designed to give you a standardised measure of performance against other hardware.

This software is built to measure performance across a variety of factors and gives a detailed analysis of your hardware’s advantages and bottlenecks.

3DMark and Unigine Heaven are two of the most popular synthetic benchmark tools.

Real-world Benchmarks

Gamers can also make use of in-game benchmark tools to measure real-world gaming performance in frames-per-second.

Below are some of the games which feature dedicated benchmarks:

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

Processor

There are also dedicated processor benchmarks for hardcore gamers or overclockers who wish to measure their CPU performance.

These CPU benchmarks provide a more in-depth concept of a processor’s performance than 3D benchmarks and can measure the many different factors of processor power.

Below are a few of the more popular processor benchmarks: