Buying Computer Parts Based on Harware Benchmarks

In choosing which computer component to buy, one of the most prominent questions that come to mind is "Is this better than the other one?" Let's say you want to buy a video card. You probably have a selection of video cards and of course, you would want to know which among them performs better than the other with consideration to the price. The best way to compare their performance is by looking at hardware benchmarks.

A benchmark is usually a presentation that shows performance results from controlled computer hardware testing. Well, it basically shows their differences in terms of performance and is usually ranked according to how well the computer hardware performed. Thus, you'll have an idea which among them performs better.

Let's take video cards again as an example. In order to do a benchmark for a couple of video cards accurately, all other factors must be the same or almost the same. Thus, the testing platform (video game or a graphics card testing software), the processor, memory, motherboard, hard drives, screen resolution, graphics quality should all be the same. This should give you a comparison between the performances of the video cards. And as for video cards, they are measured through FPS or frames-per-second. The higher the FPS is, the faster the video card usually is.

Not all of the computer's components are benchmarked. These are usually done on important computer parts such as the processor, motherboard, memory, hard drives and video cards. Just remember, computer components are usually tested differently. Hard drives are tested based on how fast they read and write files, processors on how fast they can compute, memory modules on how fast they retrieve and read data, etc.

Now can you really rely on the results of a benchmark if you want to buy a certain computer component? I would have to say yes. The most important aspect here is that you have an idea which among them performs better. However, do not expect that you will have the same result as the one in the benchmark. If you see that your video card shows 150 FPS in a benchmark for a particular game, when you play that game yourself, do not expect that you'll have the same experience. It may be slower or sometimes faster.

If you're just an end-user, it would be very unfeasible to do benchmarking yourself. You just have to rely on benchmarks from computer websites or magazines. This is what I do most of the time especially when I plan to buy critical computer components. I make sure that the item that I am going to buy is among the top performers and as cheap as possible. But don't forget, high-performance computer parts are usually more expensive than their lower-end counterparts. But if you get lucky, you'll find that really cheap component among the top performers in a benchmark. Now that's a great buy.