Benchmarking hardware allows one to judge the performance of a component or various components on their system by comparing them against similar hardware. Some of the most popular benchmarking utilities out there, which Neowin also uses for its tests and reviews, are 3DMark, CrystalDiskMark, and Cinebench, among others.
There are also other lightweight software programs like PassMark (free), which, although not quite as modern as something like 3DMark or Procyon, allows a user to run a quick pass to gauge the system performance.
We strongly urge you to avoid UserBenchmark, which, despite appearing to be helpful at first glance, has a serious bias against AMD hardware, and that means their performance assessments for non-Intel and non-Nvidia gear are not accurate and truthful.
Instead, you can try CrystalMark Retro, from Crystal Dew World, the creators of CrystalDiskMark. The app has received its latest update, and it supports Windows OS, including Windows 10/11, all the way back to XP, 95, and 98.
The release notes state:
This is a comprehensive benchmark software that runs on Windows 95 and Windows NT 3.51 or later. It supports (x86) , 64-bit (x64/ARM64), many-core, and multiple languages (over 48 languages), and can measure CPU, disk, 2D, and 3D performance with a single click.
CrystalMark, like PassMark, is not going to be the best tool out there if you want to know how good your hardware is in modern workloads. However, it can still give you some idea. For example, the utility uses OpenGL to assess GPU performance for 3D workloads.
However, that should not matter given that CrystalMark Retro is more geared towards users who are still running really old systems, and that is not an option on its alternatives since legacy support is mostly dead elsewhere.
I ran it on my own PC consisting of an AMD Ryzen 5700G (Zen 3) and the Radeon RX 6800 XT (RDNA 2). As you can see below, it does not test memory, so my 32GB Gskill DDR4-3600 CL16 kit was not given a workout.
Aside from this, the latest version also fixes a compatibility issue with the FM (Fujitsu Micro) TOWNS 32-bit retro PC that was released back in 1989:
It has been discovered that CrystalMark Retro 2.0.0 does not work properly on FM TOWNS + Windows 9x.
- CrystalMark Retro 2.0.1 released! https://crystalmark.info - Fixed a bug that did not work with FM TOWNS
You can download CrystalMark Retro from its official website here, where it is hosted on SourceForge.
Source: @openlibsys (X)
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