Cinebench

Custom PC Benchmarks

Download from: bit-tech.net

We've developed our own suite of benchmarks using real-world and open-source applications to simulate how PCs are actually used. The suite comprises an image editing test using Gimp, a video encoding test using Handbrake, and a multi-tasking test using 7-Zip to archive and encrypt a large batch of files while a HD movie plays in mplayer.

A score of 1,000 means that the test system is as fast as our reference PC, which used a 2.66GHz Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 at stock speed, 2GB of Corsair 1,066MHz DDR2 memory, a 250GB Samsung SpinPoint P120S hard disk and an Asus P5K Deluxe WiFi-AP motherboard. The scoring is linear, so a system scoring 1,200 points is 20 per cent faster than our reference system. Equally, a system scoring 1,200 is 4 per cent faster than a system scoring 1,150.

Gimp Image Editing
Website: Gimp

Far from being some kind of pr0n-filtering tool, Gimp is an open-source image editing application - Gimp is an acronym of GNU Image Manipulation Program. Our test simulates how well a PC can manipulate a collection of large digital photos, and to achieve a low time requires a PC with a powerful CPU, plenty of quick memory and efficient access to storage.


Video encoding with Handbrake
Website: http://handbrake.fr

We use the open-source, GPL-licensed, multi-platform, multi-threaded video encoder Handbrake to encode a HD video using the H.264 codec. This primarily tests multi-threaded CPU and memory subsystem performance.

Battery Life

We normally run the industry standard benchmark MobileMark during our laptop testing but the notoriously temperamental program refused to complete a battery-draining run on the Alienware 14 so we had to resort to a 720p video playback test (at 40% brightness). However, our results from this test matched the projected results from MobileMark so we feel they are comparable to those of the P503 and P502 which were taken with the MobileMark Productivity test.