Aida64 Extreme

I recently built a new PC on the X99 platform. Now I’d like to run some benchmarks. What should I use? My search lead me to Finalwire’s Aida64. I’ve heard of the tool before. Many of the bloggers and Youtube users I follow use it. I now have a reason to use it. I first started playing with the trial, but ended up getting a license. Some of my screenshots will have “Trial” watermarks to show limitations of the trial versus a licensed copy.

Interface

The interface itself is intuitive. I myself don’t do much benchmarking on a regular basis nor am I highly experienced with it, but the interface is not intimidating at all. In fact, it felt just like any other software. I was able to find things as well as things I didn’t even know it could do.

On the left you have two tabs. The menu and favorites. They are pretty much self-explanatory. Each section in the menu has a triangle to expand and reveal additional features. On the screenshot above, I am displaying the CPU information under the Motherboard menu. Here it shows different attributes of my CPU. I used to have to install CPU-Z to get such information, now I don’t have to since it’s included with Aida64. Also in the screenshot, you will notice that not all the information is available during the trial but you are still given a lot of functionality.

Benchmarks

So what exactly does Aida64 do? Well, it’s a benchmarking software. The software sends instructions to the computer and it measures its performance with a score. The scores are then used to compare between different systems. You normally would want to run the same benchmark a few times and calculate the average. Now these benchmarks are synthetic and may not represent “real world” experiences. Here are the different benchmarks you can do with Aida64.

I normally just use the following.

• CPU AES
• CPU PhotoWorxx
• CPU Queen
• CPU ZLib
• Memory Copy
• FPU Julia

You can read more about each benchmark from their websitehttp://www.aida64.com/products/features/benchmarking. You can display results with other CPU for reference and comparison. You can also just display your result.

Other Benchmark

Aside from running benchmarks on your CPU, it can run benchmarks on your storage, ram, and display. You can access these benchmarks under the Tools menu on top. When using the Disk Benchmark, you are able to run 6 different types of benchmark.

• Read Test Suite
• Linear Read
• Random Read
• Buffered Read
• Average Read Access
• Max Read Access

You can find more information for each benchmark by selecting the “About” on the drop down menu found at the bottom left of the window, right above the list of benchmarks. I tried out the Read Test Suite on both my Samsung 840 EVO and Samsung 830 Series SSD. Below is the result I got. Unless I missed it, but I didn’t find a benchmark for write.

Under the same Tools menu, you can run benchmark on your memory as well.

Finally, here’s a screenshot of the GPU benchmark you can do which is also found under the Tools menu.

System Stability Test

Yes, it can do more than benchmark. You can run the System Stability Test where it will run you computer to its limits to test stability. This is great when you are overclocking or changing bios settings and want to ensure that your components can handle it. I just did a quick 2 minute stress test and took a screenshot of it displaying the statistics. The other tabs actually display graphs.

Conclusion

In the past, I had to use many different tools to run different benchmarks and get hardware information. But now I don’t need to. Aida64 does most of what I need. I may still use another benchmark for my storage since I didn’t see it do any writing tests, but for CPU, it does everything that I’m looking for. The amount of details you get with hardware is impressive. The interface is great. The support staff so far have been responsive. I have been in contact with them via email regarding different topics and have received replies in a timely manner.

The version I tried out is 5.00.3300 and the build date is 12/8/2014. I tried it on three different computers, two are running on the X79 platform and the other on X99. You shouldn’t have any issues running it on other Intel platforms or AMD. Just check out their system requirements. You can find this at their product pagehttp://www.aida64.com/products/aida64-extreme. The $40 annual license cost is reasonable for the amount of features you get. If you are a student, they can offer you a discount by providing them some proof of eligibility – usually a copy of your student ID or other proof of enrollment. Just contact them to find out more information.

If you are interested in running benchmarks on your computer, you should try out Aida64 Extreme. As I mentioned, you can run a trial for 30 days with some limitation. It should be plenty of time for you to decide whether you want to buy a year’s license or not. You can download a trial copy athttp://www.aida64.com/downloads. They also offer a discount for the renewal license.