Benchmarking - How do I get started?

[bmwbaxter]

Someone might turn up, I was all alone unless I wanted to drive to one (1) person six hours away.
Then a n00b showed up 6 miles south of me!

Noob with a 5.9 SB

 

[bennoculus]

Just clock that SB up high and bench hard!

 

[Seebs]

Like pretty much everybody said, the first step is to do some benching on air and get familiar with the software end of things.
Seeing that you have a SandyBridge CPU at a decent speed, see if you can find a cheap 8800 series nvidia GPU or ATI 4850/4870 (you want a reference design, feel free to post pictures/links to cards you find and we'll tell you), those two classes of GPU are quite cheap by and large, and are satisfying to bench as you can get some points on hwbot without having to use extreme cooling or risk your CPU's life.

Of course you get a lot more points with extreme cooling and danger zone type voltages/speeds, but best to save that for when you have a bit of experience IMO.
(That said, I benched for ~3-5 weeks before I bought my CPU pot and ran dry ice the first time. I tend to ignore my own advice.)

Sorry... It had to be done.

 

[Mikester70]

For now I will just be benching on air not a problem, i'm not too confident though that I will be able to earn many points with my current settings.

 

[bmwbaxter]

For now I will just be benching on air not a problem, i'm not too confident though that I will be able to earn many points with my current settings.

just clock up your 2500k and even on air you should be able to get half the required points just in 2d benches.

 

[bennoculus]

For now I will just be benching on air not a problem, i'm not too confident though that I will be able to earn many points with my current settings.

Push that CPU of yours, push that 570, and you'd be surprised. That chip looks decent if it does 4.5GHz at 1.27vCore. That's impressive. Try for more clocks!

Alternatively, you can grab yourself a cheap 8800 card, push your CPU, bench the card, bam.. points points points.

Good luck!

 

[Bobnova]

Hell with a cheap 8800 card 4.5ghz SB is enough for a good number of points

 

[bennoculus]

Or he could go the old 775 route.. My, the possibilities are endless!

 

[TsunamiJuan]

Someone might turn up, I was all alone unless I wanted to drive to one (1) person six hours away.
Then a n00b showed up 6 miles south of me!

There's one guy in central SC. Isn't very active, but having someone nearby might help.

Ooh I can feel the love in this post, no more ln2 for you

 

[Bobnova]

I'm not concerned, you'd miss having a pour slave