Better Living Through Benchmarks
If there’s one thing that computer geeks and enthusiasts care about, it’s computer performance. The easiest way to measure computer performance? Benchmarks! Benchmarks provide a quick and (hopefully!) standard way of comparing performance between two (or more) computers.
One problem with existing benchmarks, though, is that while there are a lot of benchmarks available for Windows, Xbench is really the only benchmark available for Mac OS X. While Xbench is an interesting benchmark, we’ve noticed some limitations with it (such as SMP support).
Another problem is that there aren’t any general cross-platform benchmarks, making it difficult for the average user to compare performance between Windows and Mac OS X, and between different processor architectures.
We’ve decided to address these problems by writing our own benchmark: Geekbench.
Geekbench is a cross-platform benchmark that’s currently under development. It’s going to run on both Mac OS X and Windows (with the possibility of running on other operating systems, such as Linux, at a later date). Geekbench is also going to be SMP-aware (where possible), so the advantages of an SMP system are more clearly highlighted.
What we’d like to know, though, is what sort of tests you (our readers and users) would like to see in Geekbench? Is there any particular test (or kind of test) you’d like to see included? If there is, drop us a note at geekbench at geekpatrol dot ca.
Needless to say we’ll keep you informed as Geekbench progresses. Keep your eyes peeled for a preview of Geekbench in November!
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