Hard Disk Test

• The data rate of your hard disk drive (HDD) impacts how fast your computer is able to read and write files to disk. This data rate depends on several factors, including the drive speed and software optimizations as well as the connections used to attach the drive to your computer. Using hard disk benchmarks aggregates all of this information for you into a metric that is easy to understand and allows for comparisons.
  
  PCMark Vantage is a suite of benchmarking tests that includes six HDD benchmarks, including file write performance and data throughput.
  
  

Graphics Test

• Testing your graphics involves a process known as benchmarking, where you run a standardized benchmarking program on your computer and compare the results to others with similar computers.
  
  Popular graphics benchmark tests include 3DMark Vantage and Game Benchmarks. 3DMark Vantage is designed to test your graphics cards' ability to process and render DirectX10 content. This is an important metric for gamers. 3DMark Vantage also offers customers information on its website about popular computer setups among users of the program.
  
  Several popular PC games such as Crysis and Quake contain benchmarking applications that stress your computers' graphics card using the games' own graphics engine. These are popular metrics used on the Internet to define performance expectations for specific games as well as overall graphics performance.
  
  

CPU Test

• Speed is not the only metric used to benchmark CPU performance. In fact, speed is usually a known quantity advertised by CPU manufacturers. CPU stability, however, is a metric that will give you an idea of how well your computer will hold up under prolonged periods of stress.
  
  Popular CPU stress benchmarks include CPU Stability Test and Prime 95. CPU Stability test uses multiple threads to stress your computer's CPU as well as other system resources such as random access memory (RAM) and motherboard. Prime 95 is known for its stress test mode, which uses multithreaded processes to stress all available processor cores as well as system memory.