Confused about benchmarks?

Benchmarking is done in order to compare how fast/slow your setup, which includes OS and hardware, is to similarly configured systems. This will show if you have optimized your system as much as you can to get the best possible performance from your rig. Applications such as PCMark and 3DMark allow you to benchmark your system painlessly.

But why the differences between benchmark scores of similar or even exact same systems?

PC World says: “Most media outlets that run performance tests do so on optimized computers with fresh installations of their operating systems and with few, if any, processes running in the background. Of course, that’s not the way most people tend to use their machines. You are likely to have processes running that we always disable for our performance tests—things like the Windows Automatic Updates process, for example.

You probably have software installed that we don’t, such as office apps, drivers for your mouse or joystick or printer, peer-to-peer apps, Adobe Reader, QuickTime Player, and so on. A great many applications leave small chunks of code in the background that will minutely affect benchmark-test results by hogging CPU cycles.”