Frequently Asked Questions

What's this site all about?

When planning a workstation purchase or upgrading memory/CPU, it's not always clear how much bang for the buck any given system configuration will give. By browsing the data on this site, it's possible to get a fairly good idea of exactly how fast a particular system will render a standard 3D scene. It's not scientific by any means, but interesting trends do emerge.

This site has been around a while, huh?*

Yup. The site launched on July 26th, 1997, with my own 'screaming' computer as the first entry into the database. (It was a Pentium 133, if that gives any indication as to how long ago it really was.)

Why did you make this site?

Way back in 1997, there were a ton of people posting times for the benchmark scenes on the LW mailing list. It was tough to compare the times to each other, and I thought it would be a good idea if there was a central repository for all the information. Since the whole web thing is my full time job, I figured I'd put something together. I did, and many people contributed to the database.

Can you tell me how fast a machine with xxx would be?

Not really, since I don't own the machines benchmarked. The times are contributed by people all over the world. Besides, there are many variables that contribute to a machine's speed - a single component is not enough to determine the final speed. Of course, if anyone would like to send me a super, ultra, ultra, speedy mega-workstation, I'd be happy to run some benchmarks on it for ya!

I made a mistake in an entry. How can I fix it?

Easy, just contact me, and I'll be happy to make the changes to the database.

Where can I get more info about PC or Mac hardware?

Just click on over to the Links page for a list of some popular and informative web sites.

How do you know people aren't lying?

Basically, I don't. This is a community-driven site that's based on trust. For whatever reason, some people feel compelled to post bogus times. I don't understand why - it's not like I'm giving out prizes for the fastest computer or anything. In any case, when I do see a time that looks a little unbelievable (like an Amiga doing the raytrace scene in 4 seconds), I delete it. However, with over five thousand entries, I'm bound to miss a few. If anyone happens to notice a posting that looks a bit too good to be true, just drop me an email, and I'll be happy to take a look at it.

How does this site work?*

The Lightwave Benchmarks site launched in 1997 as a couple of Perl CGI scripts and a few flat files. However, it soon became clear that the site needed a database to handle the growing amount of benchmark data that users from around the world were contributing to the site. The transition to a mySQL datbase and updated Perl code happened in April 1999, and resulted in faster searches and easier maintenance. A complete redesign of the interface and massive rewriting of the backend code took place in March 2001. Another redesign took place in July 2006, this time using valid style sheets and XML. Normal maintenance consists of occasionally scanning entries to see if they appear to be valid benchmark times and deleting the obvious bad posts. Other than that, the site pretty much runs itself - data backups, logging, and comments all take place automatically. Automation is good.

* Not an actual frequently asked question.