You've just bought a new computer. Or better yet, you've just built one--or added some new hardware to your current PC. You want to know how fast it is; how it compares to other new or recently upgraded computers.

I found NovaBench to be reasonably accurate, but not definitive. There's only so much a program can do in one minute. It was least accurate with the hard drive. That's hardly surprising--a few seconds isn't enough to judge the speed of a mechanical device. I compared its performances against HD Tune--a hard drive diagnostic and benchmarking utility--using both a conventional hard disk drive and a much faster SSD. While NovaBench gave me a single MB/s number, HD Tune gave me three: Minimum, Maximum, and Average. For each drive, NovaBench's result came in between HD Tune's Minimum and Maximum, but nowhere near the Average. In other words, it was accurate, but hardly the big picture. On the other hand, HD Tune takes over three minutes just to benchmark the hard drive.

NovaBench has its limitations. But if you want a quick and simple way to benchmark your new PC and see how it performs against the competition, it still makes a good choice.

--Lincoln Spector