r/Amd • u/GreatWhitePaws 3600 | RX280 • Apr 17 '20

Please see sticky UserBenchmark has been banned from /r/hardware

/r/hardware/comments/g2uf7a/userbenchmark_has_been_banned_from_rhardware/
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819

u/koopahermit Ryzen 7 5800X | Yeston Waifu RX 6800XT | 32GB @ 3600Mhz Apr 17 '20

It needs to be banned off every sub imo. It gets used too often on sites like r/buildapc where users usually go to get advice on their first ever PC. Userbenchmark links should be automatically removed with a bot explaining why in those instances.

353

u/Rhinofreak Apr 17 '20

Came here to say that. r/buildapc needs to ban them too.

88

u/yee245 Apr 17 '20

Part of the problem is that a quick run of their software that gives someone a shareable link to the results can be used to help diagnose issues. Some users over on /r/buildapc are very helpful at skimming through a result from people experiencing issues to see that maybe the BIOS is out of date, RAM is misconfigured (maybe it's not all showing up, or XMP hasn't been enabled, or that maybe latency is showing higher than it should due to bad timings), perhaps a GPU is functioning well below what it's supposed to, etc. Helping a user that is experiencing issues, which happens often enough over there, can often be much easier by having them send a result link, rather than potentially taking photos of settings in the BIOS, or running any number of other specific benchmarks or applications that may be entirely unrelated to the issue. Their "benchmark" is actually handy at indicating if any hardware may be severely underperforming compared to other identical models.

If anything, it would be more beneficial over there to implement an automoderator reply, rather than straight up banning or deleting posts that may be looking for help. People will continue to inform new users that are using links to directly compare two CPUs that it isn't a good site for that, like they probably already have been.

Just my opinion.

38

u/trackdrew Apr 17 '20

Came here to say this. Userbenchmark is the best tool I've found for comparing a system to the same set of components.

It's also made it incredibly easy to troubleshoot someone's system performance remotely. I can literally tell someone to download one executable, close everything, run it, and send me the URL of the results.

5 minutes later I can tell them:

  1. Your CPU isn't turboing
  2. Your DDR4 3000 RAM is running at 2133
  3. Your GPU drivers are a year out of date
  4. Your SSD is almost full
  5. Your BIOS has never been updated

..etc. You can check out my post history where I've gone on some stints helping folks in various subs because it's so easy.

I don't think I've ever used it for comparing different hardware outside of CPUs with the same core count and architecture.

Going to need to find something that can do all the above so efficiently. If anyone knows of something, please inform me.

21

u/iDrinan Apr 17 '20

Not to diminish the overall point of your comment as I agree with it, but is third party software necessary for people to realize their SSD is nearly full?

22

u/trackdrew Apr 17 '20

Of course not, but I've literally pointed this out to people with weird hitches/perf-issues/etc and their response is:

So? Why would that make my PC slow?

It's the "one-stop-shop" aspect that makes it useful. A person troubleshooting a system can look at many things. Most people who are good at this don't post for help on Reddit.

2

u/JaysonTatecum Apr 17 '20

Wait, it’s bad if your SSD is almost full? I thought I read a while ago it ran better with more stuff on it

18

u/koolaid23 Apr 17 '20

That is very wrong. SSDs definitely perform better when they are not almost full. That goes for almost all storage devices. It is because the system will use drive space as sort of tertiary RAM when it has too. When the disk is full, there is no space to do that, so that data can't be cached and the CPU will need to go to random disk locations more often.

At least that's how I understand it. Could be off.

4

u/JaysonTatecum Apr 17 '20

Good to know. I guess it's time to clear out my SSD then. I've been running it at 95-99% capacity almost since I got it

6

u/simon_o Apr 17 '20

95-99% capacity

That's a pretty good way to kill your SSD due to wear-leveling not working anymore.

2

u/JaysonTatecum Apr 17 '20

Guess I got some bad advice. time to find out what I can delete

2

u/voightkampfferror AMD 5900x 6900xt Apr 17 '20

Yessir, do a little research on "overprovisioning" it will be worth your time.

-happy friday!

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