Benchmark Your PC - How Do You Stack Up?

Benchmarking and testing a PC falls into 2 categories;
Within a running PC or via a bootable disk.
The Inquisitor Hardware Testing and Certification System falls in both categories.

You can download the scripts to your PC and run them within your booted system or you can download the Live Cd and run the tests from a stable environment. I say 'stable' because you won't have a lot of background processes running in the Live environment then you would in a fully booted PC.

Another problem with running these tests inside a booted up PC is that the OS won't allow certain tests or portions of the test to access all of the hardware.
That's where the Live Cd comes in handy.

The Live Cd contains 25 various hardware testing modules. Each test has user configured parameters to allow for custom hardware testing.
Be advised!!!
The tests consist of destructive and non-destructive tests. The destructive hard drive tests will wipe your hard drive of all data. The other destructive tests have the potential of destroying your hardware.

It is recommended that the casual user selects the non-destructive tests and sets the time and cycle parameters to a low amount the first time they use this software.
That should not put any user off as these tests can be a very good tool for checking out a new computer or finding a premature hardware failure in an older system.

The Live Cd also has the benefit of not being tied to a certain O.S. or version.
It will boot up on almost any system that has sufficient Ram.
The installable test scripts are only available for Linux systems which makes the Live Cd the preferred usage.

Inquisitor also has an Enterprise version that allows the tests to be deployed over a network to 100's or 1000's of PC's in need of testing. This is geared towards the PC or hardware manufacturer who needs a quick and standardized method of testing their equipment before shipping.

So go and grab the scripts or Live Cd and see where your PC stands.
Test your friend's computer and see if it's as good as yours! LOL!!
Get the details and the files from their website found here;

Inquisitor Hardware Testing Website

Good luck and may your numbers be in specs.

TaZMAn

Check Your Hard Drive Smart Status Using A GUI

Checking your hard drives Smart status is preventive damage control.
It lets you see if your hard drive is slowly failing or is healthy.
But in Linux the standard smartmon tools can be a bit of a hassle to set up and interpret the results.

I have my smartmon tools set to do a Smart scan once a day and send the results to a log file.
That means remembering to open the log file and read it. Something I neglect to do on a regular basis. Also setting up the smartmon tools in the command line may be a bit over the top for the new user. Many new users are terrified of the terminal and don't want to be bothered wading through log files.
I needed something that allowed me to check the Smart status on demand and provide the results in 'Real' time with a Graphical User Interface (GUI).

GSmartControl (GSC) fills all those needs plus adds a few other features.
Each time you open GSC it does a check of the hard drives installed in your system.
You can view the capabilities of each hard drive, attributes, error log and self test log.
It also has 2 test modes that allow you to run a diagnostic test on the hard drive to make sure it is good.

GSC can be downloaded from it's home page found here;
GSmartControl Website

http://gsmartcontrol.berlios.de/home/index.php/en/Home

They have packages for all the popular Linux distros and an exe installer for Windows users although they will need to install GTK+ first.

As Linux matures we will find more software that provides the user with a GUI.
Some purists may not be happy with the proliferation of GUI's and tend to snub them as the GUI is not true Linux but the mainstream user wants or even demands a GUI.

Now go and grab this nice utility and know that you can now easily check your hard drive for possible problems.

Enjoy!

Verizon Speed Test Lies

I decided to try Verizon's speed test found here;
http://www2.verizon.net/micro/speedtest/hsi/

They sure like to lie!
Why do I say that? Well the results are skewed to say the least.
Here's what I mean.

The results from Verizon's test page;







Download speeds seem a bit low considering I have a 5 Mbps connection.
The upload speed is way out of line. My ISP caps the max at 384 Kbps.


So I go to www.speedtest.net
This looks more like it should be;











To verify it, I go to www.testmy.net

Here are the results;

:::.. Download Stats ..:::
Download Connection is:: 4817 Kbps about 4.8 Mbps (tested with 6144 kB)
Download Speed is:: 588 kB/s
Tested From:: http://testmy.net/ (Main)
Test Time:: 2008/07/06 - 1:43pm
Bottom Line:: 84X faster than 56K 1MB Download in 1.74 sec
Tested from a 6144 kB file and took 10.448 seconds to complete
Download Diagnosis:: Looks Great : 9.53 % faster than the average for host
User Agent:: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.1.15) Gecko/20080625 Ubuntu/7.10 (gutsy) Firefox/2.0.0.15 [!]

:::.. Upload Stats ..:::
Upload Connection is:: 356 Kbps about 0.4 Mbps (tested with 1013 kB)
Upload Speed is:: 43 kB/s
Tested From:: http://testmy.net/ (Main)
Test Time:: 2008/07/06 - 1:46pm
Bottom Line:: 6X faster than 56K 1MB Upload in 23.81 sec
Tested from a 1013 kB file and took 23.322 seconds to complete
Upload Diagnosis:: May need help : running at only 76.89 % of your hosts average
User Agent:: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.1.15) Gecko/20080625 Ubuntu/7.10 (gutsy) Firefox/2.0.0.15 [!]


Let's verify it one more time from here;
http://myspeed.visualware.com/

The results are as follows;

Download speed 4668 Kbps
Upload speed 364 Kbps
QOS 96 %
RTT 22 ms
Max Delay 113 ms


From 3 other testing sites my download range is 4668 Kbps to 4817 Kbps
and my upload range is from 356 Kbps to to 367 Kbps yet Verizon says
my Download speed is 2861 Kbps (2.86 Mbps) and
my Upload speed is 476 Kbps.

So what's the deal?
Why does Verizon cook the speed test?
I think I know why.
The download speeds are different because Verizon's packages have a max download speed of 3 Mbps.
They probably use a random generator to pick out numbers when the speed is near or over 3 Mbps.
In the case of the upload speeds, it is considered a low speed for their
specs (768 Kbps) so they juice the upload numbers to make it look
like you are uploading files faster then you actually are.
In this case, they are saying my upload speed is about 25% higher
then the max allowed by my ISP.

You can bet that if you call them up with speed issues they will direct you to their speed test site.
And I will also bet you a cup of coffee from my company's cafeteria (It's free!) that they won't even listen to you should you quote speed test results from other sites.

Ah! The joys of manipulating numbers.
It makes the customer feel good while he's getting screwed.
LOL!


TaZMAn