How We Test Processors

With a team of dedicated hardware experts behind Tech4Gamers, we have created a specific methodology dedicated to testing and reviewing processors. This process helps us comb through every nook and cranny of a CPU and test its real-world performance based on a variety of scenarios. Furthermore, following the same set of testing methods for each processor also helps us compare them on similar grounds, which is very useful in creating the best CPU roundups.

So in this guide, we will be lifting the curtains and giving you a behind-the-scenes of how Tech4Gamers tests its processors. The goal of this guide is to tell you about everything that goes behind reviewing and testing a CPU. In addition to that, this guide will also help you buy the right processor because after reading it, you will know the importance of each benchmark and how it affects a processor’s performance and usage.

Key Takeaways

• First off, we perform a 5-step performance analysis. It contains general tests, rendering tests, transcoding, web-based benchmarks, and gaming benchmarks. After the 5-step testing process is over, we have a complete overview of a processor’s performance.
• During the testing, we keep an eye on the frequency behavior of the CPU. It lets us understand how high a processor can clock under intensive workloads.
• We also monitor the temperature and power consumption of the processors we test. This way, we can determine the best CPU cooler and power supply for it.
• Lastly, we overclock the processors step-by-step to determine exactly how much more performance we can get out of them without running into stability issues.

How We Test Processors

Being the brains of your gaming PC, the CPU is practically the most important part of your build. It impacts not only your PC’s gaming capabilities but also its productivity performance and overall experience. As such, there is a lot to test to gauge a processor’s performance accurately.

In addition to that, a processor’s success (or lack of it) does not end at just sheer performance alone. There are several other key factors to keep in mind as well. The most important of them is the CPU’s thermal and power efficiency, as it ultimately dictates the overall cost of the build and the tier of components required to handle the processor.

Then comes another aspect that we always test in processors: its overclocking potential. While this factor is mostly aimed towards enthusiasts who love to push their components to their limits, just knowing how much performance you can get out of your processors helps us understand how much power and thermal headroom it has.

 With that said, let’s go through each step of our testing methodology.

Performance

First and foremost, we dive into the processor’s performance. But, there are several different performance tests and benchmarks that we check to evaluate a CPU over various use cases. We start off with general tests to check the overall performance and move our way towards finally testing the gaming performance with several AAA titles running at different resolutions.

General Tests

In our general tests, we aim to evaluate a CPU’s performance in everyday tasks and common computing scenarios. These tests encompass a range of benchmarks that assess the processor’s capabilities in file compression, data encryption, mathematical calculations, single-threaded and multi-threaded performance, memory speed, and overall system productivity.

By conducting these tests, we can gain insight into how well a CPU handles typical user activities such as web browsing, office productivity, digital content creation, and more. The results from these benchmarks provide us with a comprehensive overview of the processor’s efficiency, speed, and responsiveness in managing a variety of standard applications and operations.

Rendering Tests

In our rendering tests, we focus on evaluating a CPU’s performance in handling rendering tasks, which are particularly demanding and CPU-intensive. These tests involve using various benchmarking tools to measure how quickly and efficiently a processor can render complex scenes.

We assess the CPU’s ability to manage detailed tasks involving materials, lights, cameras, and intricate computations. By performing these tests, we can determine the processor’s speed and efficiency in producing high-quality visual outputs. 

Transcoding

CPU transcoding performance, also known as the CPU’s capacity to encode or decode media files using different codecs, plays a crucial role in efficiently and swiftly processing and converting media content, including videos and audio.

The significance of CPU transcoding performance extends to numerous scenarios where media files require transformation or compression. In the realm of video editing, for instance, transcoding becomes essential for converting videos into alternative formats or compressing them to ensure optimal storage or seamless streaming.

To test a CPU’s ability to quickly and efficiently transcode, we perform two benchmarks: x264 HD and x265 HD Benchmarks.

Web-Based Benchmarks

All of the above tests were related to productivity workload. However, when you build a PC, you don’t use it just for work. You also browse the internet and perform general browsing tasks. When we review processors, we test them for all of the real-life scenarios to stay as thorough as possible, and that includes testing their web-based performance.

It might seem obvious that if a CPU nails productivity tasks, it can easily handle web-based tasks as well. But, we believe in showing our readers the complete picture, and that includes telling them about each and every aspect of a processor’s performance.

Gaming Benchmarks

These tests involve running a series of benchmarks and games at different resolutions to measure the processor’s ability to handle gaming workloads. We start with software tests like Fire Strike and Time Spy, which assess the CPU’s performance with DirectX 11 and DirectX 12 technologies, respectively.

Following these, we run various AAA titles at 1080p and 1440p resolutions with ultra settings to record framerates and overall gaming performance. By conducting these tests, we can determine how well a CPU manages gaming tasks, ensuring smooth gameplay and high performance.

Frequency Behavior

During our performance testing, we also keep an eye on the clock speeds of the processors we are testing. We review how the frequencies behave under different workloads and how the processor reaches its boost clock speed as we ramp up the loads. It should be noted that there are a ton of factors that have an impact on a CPU’s ability to reach its turbo frequency. However, considering the fact that our test build and workload remain the same throughout different processors, these factors are minimized to some extent.

Nevertheless, analyzing the frequency behavior helps us check whether a given processor is performing at its rated speed or not. Furthermore, many times we have noticed that our units actually boost at clock speeds higher than their rated ones, which is always a good sight.

Thermal And Power Efficiency

It is integral to test the power consumption and heat output of processors. The new generation of CPUs from both Intel and AMD consumes lots of power and, in turn, generates quite some heat. Thermal and power efficiency are two fundamentals that must always be reviewed thoroughly when testing processors.

These two factors not only impact performance and overclocking but also dictate the tier of PSU and CPU cooler you will need in your PC build.

First, to set the base, we leave the test bench idle for exactly 30 minutes and then note down the temperature and power consumption. After that, we run a 30-minute Cinebench R23 test to test the power consumption and thermal efficiency of the CPU.

We perform this test for both single-core load and multi-core load.

Overclocking

Once we have complete data about the CPU’s performance, power consumption, and temperatures, we move towards the final phase of our thorough testing, and that is overclocking. It wouldn’t be a true processor review if it didn’t involve overclocking. This test puts into perspective exactly how much performance you should expect from your processor and how much more juice you can squeeze out of it.

With that said, we gradually overclock the silicon die and check its stability by running some of the above-mentioned benchmarking tests along with a few games. If the CPU maintains its overclocked state without running into any errors or crashes, we take things another step further by pushing it even more.

This way, we determine exactly how much performance you can get out of a given processor. Of course, at each step of the overclocking phase, we monitor the performance gains, power consumption, and temperatures. Doing so helps us figure out the sweet spot between running at the stock configuration and overclocking to the extreme.

Summary

The Tech4Gamers hardware reviewers follow a specific guideline to test and review processors. This guideline is created to keep the readers as informed as possible while also maintaining authenticity and reliability. As such, we test our processors over a series of benchmarking tools along with games to judge them based on their real-world performance.

From day-to-day tasks to CPU-intensive rendering, transcoding, and web-based benchmarks, we leave no stone unturned in testing our processors. We also benchmark high-end games at 1080p and 1440p resolutions to review the gaming performance of our processors.

To ensure accurate performance representation, our testing rig is equipped with state-of-the-art equipment, including the GIGABYTE RTX 4090 Gaming OC 24G. Rest assured that the figures you see reflect the actual performance you can expect from these processors.

Apart from processors, we also test a variety of gaming hardware. If you want to learn more about our testing process, be sure to check out the following guides:

• How We Test Motherboards
• How We Test GPUs
• How We Test CPU Coolers
• How We Test Peripherals
• How We Test RAM
• How We Test PC Cases