Was it almost 5 years ago when I last posted some system stress testing tools? Wow!
grand stream dreams: System Stress Testing Suites
Since that time I still find myself reaching for specialized tools to stress test system hardware and components when troubleshooting a system.
Being able to stress a system when you are looking for performance or stability issues is critical. Having tools that you can run while monitoring the system are super-useful to see if you can force a problem to exhibit or if you want to be certain your solution has fixed the issue.
Back in the day, I recommended Bart's Stuff Test 5 but it doesn’t say it supports “modern” Windows systems any longer.
Funnily enough, this post What is New in Windows Application Execution? from the SANS Digital Forensics and Incident Response Blog jogged my memory when it mentioned a new-to-me SuperFetch parsing tool.
That tool doesn’t necessarily apply here, but the developer TMurgent does provide a ton of updated free tools that fit great with performance testing and stressing Windows systems.
New and Updated (Free) Tools – Confessions of a Guru blog
Performance tools – TMurgent Technologies
- ATM: The Cache Machine – Monitor the System File Cache and Standby lists.
- Factorial: Eat up a CPU without really trying – eats up a singe CPU with repetitive math calculation.
- Launch Time Analyze – measures perceived performance (end-user perspective).
- Leak Memory – executes like an app that leaks memory.
- Load Dlls – measures the effect of application prefetching on Windows systems.
- SuperFetch Tools – used to extract info on SuperFetch stores.
Here are the other stress testing tools I keep on my USB stick
- Stress My PC - pc stress test software from SoftwareOK.com. Includes graphic stress, CPU stress, and HD stress. USB portable and free.
- HeavyLoad – JAM-Software – CPU, disk write, memory allocation, disc access, GPU stress. USB portable and free.
- VirtMemTest: a utility to exercise memory and other operations - Aaron Margosis' Non-Admin, App-Compat and Sysinternals WebLog – memory, CPU, hung UI, and App crash stress testing. USB portable and free.
- Prime95 Version 28.5 – GIMPS – stress testing CPU by Mersenne prime calculating. USB portable and free. Look for the “Just Stress Testing” option.
- IntelBurnTest - The new stress-testing program – CPU stressing app. USB portable and free.
- System Stability Tester – Download. USB portable and free.
- OCCT 4.4.1 – Download. USB portable and free for personal non-commercial use.
- FurMark - VGA Stress Test, Graphics Card and GPU Stability Test, Burn-in Test, OpenGL Benchmark and GPU Temperature - oZone3D.Net
- Valley Benchmark - Unigine: real-time 3D engine (game, simulation, visualization and VR).
- Download Auslogics Benchtown - MajorGeeks
More sources where I found some of these tools listed:
- Keep it stable, stupid! How to stress-test your PC hardware – PCWorld
- PC Stress Test free software for Windows 8 / 7 – The WindowsClub
- The 5 Best Free Benchmark Programs for Windows – MakeUseOf blog
- Five benchmarking tools to diagnose or compare PC performance - TechRepublic
- Download Benchmarking Tools for Windows - MajorGeeks
In addition to these Windows platform tools, LiveCD packages are available to boot your hardware system with a Linux-based OS and run additional stress test suites.
- PassMark BurnInTest Linux - Live Boot
- Stresslinux – StressLinux.org
- Inquisitor hardware testing platform – Inquisitor LiveCD
- Phoronix Test Suite - Linux Testing & Benchmarking Platform
- MemTest86 - Official Site of the x86 Memory Testing Tool
- Memtest86+ - Advanced Memory Diagnostic Tool
Happy Stressing!
--Claus Valca
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