Any software to benchmark a CPU?

I want to benchmark my CPU, and need some sort of software that is common to do it with. I want to compare mine to a list of known benchmarks, to see if mine is the same, better/worse etc.

I have a 2.8 northwood, I'd like to see what it does, and if it's on par with what a typical 2.8 p4 would do with an intel base MB....

Any recommendations?

I've got about the same computer that you do. I have the Intel D865GBF motherboard..

It works fine but there are a couple of things about this mobo that annoy me.

I have two SATA drives and an optical drive on the secondary IDE channel. The mobo has many options for SATA/IDE legacy/enhanced. I can't find any setting that allows the BIOS to see both SATA drives and the optical drive at the same time. I have to set it one way so I can run an OS installed on the second drive. But when I want to boot from CD, I have to change it.

Someday I may get another mobo. Maybe an Asus or maybe an Intel D875. I'd like to get one with PCI Express, but I guess those don't exist for this 478 pin Pentium.

sisoft sandra is what i use

I second snakebite's suggestion. I also like SiSoft Sandra. It's a very complete package of system testers...good stuff.

I believe the 'Lite' version is free for non-commercial use.

For a basic test to just make sure everything is working as well as it should, pcpitstop is good and gives you other systems to compare yours against, but it's not very indept... It's mostly set up to ensure there isn't a major problem with your performance.

SisSoft Sandra here as well, been using it for years!!!

Take a look at www.pcpitstop.com

It's free and it stores your results so you can compare aganist it later.

Sandra is good.
Passmark's Performance test is very good with a HUGE database to compare
http://www.passmark.com/products/index.htm

All good suggestions! thanks! I'll check them out and report back in the thread..
I do have a question, can a CPU that got hot be damaged but still work fine, just slower? I walked away from my PC one day and the stock intel fan stopped spinning I guess because it got over 100c and shut off......

Eluminator: My MB is based on the intel 865PE and is MSI brand. 2.8g HT 800mhz P4 Northwood. I run a SATA WD drive, and 2 optical drives, a CDR/RW, and a DVD/R/RW/DLR. BIOS reconizes all drives, I have no problems booting to any drive, even USB.

Intel CPU's have thermal management (or are supposed to) so if they begin to overheat they will clock down to protect themselves (all the way down to a stop if they need to).

After a heat event you may be fine but if the chip got hot enough it could fail later or you could have cooked the thermal paste so now it's not making good contact.

So if it got hot it might shorten the life, but it will still operate just like normal though? I know it will throttle down, I could tell that when playing doom3 it got jerky as hell. Northwoods do that at 55C. I used Artic Alumina paste on the stock intel cooler.

I've got a Zalman on order and I'm going to use AS5 with that. So cooling will be take care of for good soon. I need to somehow check the temp of my geforce 5900XT too, I think it may be getting hot too.. even though it's got a fan and a big vent in the case right in front of it... grrr

IsaacHayes said:

Eluminator: My MB is based on the intel 865PE and is MSI brand. 2.8g HT 800mhz P4 Northwood. I run a SATA WD drive, and 2 optical drives, a CDR/RW, and a DVD/R/RW/DLR. BIOS reconizes all drives, I have no problems booting to any drive, even USB.

Click to expand...

Guess I should have used an MSI. I never could boot from USB with any of my computers.

IsaacHayes said:

I know it will throttle down, I could tell that when playing doom3 it got jerky as hell. Northwoods do that at 55C.

Click to expand...

Where did you see the 55º C? I found one site that tested a faster Northwood (3.2 GHz) and it apparently started throttling at around 70º C.
http://www.digit-life.com/articles2/p4-throttling/

When I starting building computers a few years ago I was thinking of using an AMD. From what I read on the internet, it seemed the Intel would cope better with loss of cooling, so I went with Intel. Also at the time the Intels ran cooler than the AMDs so they could be cooled with a quieter fan.

I don't use a cooling fan on the heatsink because they tend to be small, fast, and noisy. I use a big slow 12cm fan on the case that is fairly quiet and should last a long time.

Several sources on the internet. The prescots I think are higher at 60 or 65. Northwoods throttle back early, and I belive it. I'm getting these sudden jerks and slow downs in doom3 multiplayer for somereason now. my FPS doesn't go down but it jerks along like crazy. I defraged the HD and that didn't help any... It's starting to worry me.

I took off the HS and cleaned the CPU and re-applied some artic alumina. I just put a tiny ball of it in the center, and then sat the HS on top of it. Temps have now stabalized and are lower than before. I didn't think grease and aluminum oxide could "cook" and then not work well, but I guess it did, as it's performing better now with a fresh application. Temps now in D3 are 50C max according to MBM5. According to my software that came with my MB, temps in D3 are 55Cmax. Still an improvement over before it started getting hot. I haven't yet experienced the jerky slow downs in D3, but haven't played more than with 4 players at a time so...

Looking forward to finding out what it will do with the Zalman and AS5 grease..

IsaacHayes said:

I took off the HS and cleaned the CPU and re-applied some artic alumina. I just put a tiny ball of it in the center, and then sat the HS on top of it. Temps have now stabalized and are lower than before. I didn't think grease and aluminum oxide could "cook" and then not work well, but I guess it did, as it's performing better now with a fresh application.

Click to expand...

Glad my suggestion helped. I support laptops for the DOJ and this isn't the first time I've seen that happen though in my case it's usually someone trying to run a laptop that has been sitting in a 130 degree car and then wondering why thermal management kicks in

Yup, it appears it did. Thanks.