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Benchmark Software For Windows 7 Rollout?
tdisalvo writes "We are doing a Windows 7 rollout and I will have to compare major PC vendors. I am looking for vendor-neutral tests that will give me the data I need to present an educated opinion to my CIO. Clear, pretty charts are nice since it is for C level execs, and we need to make it understandable for nontechnical as well as technical people. More specifically, I am looking for something that will clearly show how the same processor performs (better or worse) with a particular build, motherboard, RAM, power supply, etc. My plan is to get very similar machines from major vendors and see which one's build has the highest independent benchmarks. Something with which I could test multiple computers and report on the differences in score would be ideal."
As usual, free is an advantage.
Is this really necessary for a Windows 7 rollout with corporate desktops? Most machines are already overpowered for the average user using Office and what not.
I'd think the cost per machine for good 3-4 year warranties would be more important. At least, it has been in my experience.
I could see doing something like this just for developer machines, but general roll-out? I dunno. Seems like you'd just compare pricing and go with the one that makes the most budget sense.
Phoronix Test Suite ( http://www.phoronix-test-suite.com/ ) supports Win7 now. It also allows comparison against OSX and Linux ( http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=linux_windows_part3&num=1 ).
It's Free, it's Open Source and has a bucketload of tests already. You can combine result sets and you can even get the results uploaded for comparison at http://global.phoronix-test-suite.com/
Creating your own tests is nice and easy too.
(Full disclosure - I am one of the project members).
Questions:
A. Do have the authority to make the decision?
B. Are you tasked with giving him your "expert opinion" on the matter?
C. Are you tasked to actually educate him enough about a technical decision that he has no technical skills to currently evaluate an answer?
Answers:
A. Evaluate on the specs you know are important on the job, give him a specific brand, and say "trust me, buy these"
B. Evaluate on the specs you know are important on the job, give him a specific brand, and say "trust me, buy these"
C. You're boned.
This is pointless. Really. All the machines will test within a few percent of each other. It's not like a Dell is significantly faster than an HP (especially if the software image is the same).
If the machines have different CPU/Chipsets/Video Cards, that's a different story, but a PC -is- really just the sum of its parts.
Tell the C-level execs that the best value would be to skip the benchmark and go right to the bidding, let the vendors undercut each other for an extra month.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
"Runs On Linux, OpenSolaris, Mac OS X, Windows 7, & BSD Operating Systems"
according to the link you posted
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
Why should C-level execs care about what model processor is used in their computers? Office users aren't looking for the absolute greatest performance, they're looking for reliability, manageability, and cost. I can guarantee that no typical* medium or large size business will make a decision on which vendor to use for office computers based on the performance benchmarks. Frankly, who gives a shit about the motherboard in a typical office user's computer. It doesn't matter, certainly not to upper management. Choose something that has a reasonable cost, a solid long term support contract, and is easy to manage in your existing environment. If anything, the support contract, expandability (adding dual monitors later, or adding more memory for heavy data analysts or future software upgrades), and the existing vendor relationships are far more important than performance benchmarks. *Assuming they're not using them to render lots of graphics or do other very specific, specialized tasks.
Every time you post an article on Slashdot, I kill a server. Think of the servers!
Performance? Really? Personally I'd want stability, reliability, and top notch support. Your average computer user loses far more productivity from downtime due to cheap hardware dying, unstable drivers, etc than to their machine starting (insert app of your choice) .2 seconds slower. I want to be able to order an exact replacement 2 years down the road if a machine dies. I want replacement parts available for the forseeable lifetime of the machines on which I standardize.
Here's what you do.
You go to techbargains.com slickdeals.net techdealdigger.com techdeals.net etc.
CTRL+F DELL
Note specs and prices.
Do this for a week.
Then next week, jump on the first deal that meets or beats the best deal from last week.
Then order up a bunch of machines.
If the number you're ordering is an issue, just call Dell, ask for the supervisor, and then get X machines at the quoted price after agreeing to upgrade them all to the 3-year, NBD warranty.
Corporate will love the price.
Whoever manages the machines (you?) will love the NBD warranty for when a PSU fails, or a fan starts getting noisy. (When, not if.)
You won't have had to do any real work.
Everyone wins.
Not only were the machines similar they were virtually identical. Unless you were looking at the case badge, or the PCI vendor strings, you would have been hard-pressed to tell which was which. Same intel silicon, very similar HDDs and optical drives(not that that really mattered, neither party was willing to quote anything other than a capacity, so the brands we got in the test boxes were assurances of nothing). The RAM was within spitting distance of one another and(again), the vendors would assure us of nothing other than "X capacity, verified compatible) so it wasn't as though the specifics of the test samples told us much.
We ended up going with Dell, just because they were cheaper, their driver download pages are modestly less unpleasant, and their "ImageDirect" tool is actually pretty handy.
Unless you have particular reason to believe otherwise, exhaustive benchmarking will be a waste of your, and the exec's time. The only exception that I can think of would be if you were advocating for something unusual but potentially interesting(ie. Most corporate desktops are brutally I/O bound, straining under the load of A/V, constant patches and updates, and so forth. SSDs would make them fly, comparatively. Particularly if your company actually has a lot of expensive people running around, a "number of minutes from cold boot to productivity" benchmark could be eye-opening.)
What a waste of time and effort. Firstly some machines will perform better on some benchmarks than others. Secondly there are costs, availability, configuration, reliability and many other factors to evaluate. Its hard to believe you are going to look at a few percent performance differences (if that much). After all, PCs are practically the definition of a commodity market. You might be better off picking the machines with the best paint jobs. You ought to get a job at the Pentagon where they specialize in meaningless power point slides.
Yeah I have to agree with this, came here to say the same thing. Benchmarks have their uses, but chances are the real world difference between similarly-built machines is not going to be significant. Let's be honest here: Unless you're doing a roll-out to a bunch of coders or CIA Photoshop experts, chances are most of these PC's are going to be running a web browser, a groupware client, and a document/spreadsheet editor like 75% of the time.
Choosing a PC vendor based on price, reliability, and service is going to be far more useful and have a far greater RIO than picking the one that scored 5 points higher on 3DMark or whatever. There have to be much better uses of your time.
Well I use PCWizard from the guys at CPUID. While it isn't fancy, and you'll have to take the data and make your own pretty charts, but to stress the basics (CPU,RAM,GPU,HDD,etc) and give you straight data it is pretty good. Then if that doesn't give him enough raw data to use he can always run separate tests.
But unlike some of the others I have tried data doesn't seem to skew towards one CPU or another. Maybe it is because it is from a little bunch and they aren't being used for big reviewers benchmarks, who knows, all I can tell you is the results seemed to be pretty accurate, at least for me.
So why not give it a try? It's free, they have a portable version so you don't even have to install it on the PC you're testing, just launch, pick which test you want to run, and let her go. At the end it'll give you the raw numbers as well as show how the PC matches up to various other builds. Not a bad little tool to have on your flash stick if you need to know how a machine runs or get a full list of what hardware it has.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.