I want to check a few machines, how well they'd run semi-modern PC games.

What would be a good benchmark test to test both the CPU and GPU performance, at least roughly? I just need to see in what ballpark the said machines are, which has more performance? So it doesn't necessarily have to be THAT detailed, testing all possible areas including raytracing (neither of them can do RTX or any of that stuff) etc.

I looked at some GPU benchmark program but installing it seemed quite complicated, you had to install both the benchmark program and then some data files separately.

I would really prefer if the benchmark program was portable, ie. no need to actually install the benchmark program.

Alternatively, is some GOG game good for this purpose? E.g. Horizon Zero Dawn has some internal test, so at least it would tell how well said computers can run the game? I would prefer a benchmark which would give separate scores for both CPU and GPU performance, though.

You're going to have to narrow it down better than that...

In any case, have you considered UNIGINE Heaven/Superposition? (they are portable on Linux at least... and cross-platform, though they target different graphics APIs depending on the OS)

As you mentioned, there are games with built-in benchmarks too, such as Horizon Zero Dawn and Ashes of the Singularity - this having both GPU and CPU benchmarks, but it really depends on what type of systems you're planning to run these on (being in general pretty high end here).

Seven minutes too late. Another vote for Heaven. I have used them for eight years or so.

Oh, those stress the GPU. Did you want something to stress both the CPU and the GPU?

I have tried this one too. https://web.basemark.com At least very easy to use.

EDIT: So the company's name was Uniengine and the have made several different benchmarks. Oops!

I was writing about Unigine Valley, but wasn't sure if it did the CPU too.

Neither am I certain but I know for a fact their benchmarks put all graphics cards of yesteryear to shame.

Unigine Heaven is good to test GPU's, works on Linux too.

A simple and fast CPU benchmark is built in CPU-Z
Older Cinebench are good as well and easy to compare with others https://www.technikaffe.de/cpu_benchmark-cinebench_r15_multi_core-8/
EDIT: Cinebench R15 is portable, can do OpenGL, single core and multi core.

Never tested it but heard good things about geekbench, cross platform too.

Another good way to compare older to newer systems is web/javascript benchmarks, while not raw power indicative, they can indicate if the System is ok for web browsing and modern aplications.

https://webkit.org/perf/sunspider/sunspider.html
https://krakenbenchmark.mozilla.org
https://webglsamples.org

Have you tried Superposition? That makes my 2070s struggle!

Valley/Heaven use the CPU, although very little in normal conditions.

But here lies one of the problems with most "benchmarking youtube channels": benchmarking FPS's on ultra details is wrong in my perspective. Some GPU's need very high CPU cycles in order to do some instructions, a good and well know case is the Witcher's 3 nVidia HairWorks on GPU's that don't support them. Other older case is nVidia Physx that will be CPU emulated if not present.
Why is this relevant? Because Unigine Heaven has option for Tesselation and not all GPU's provide the same performance, on some cases will be CPU emulated, with correspondent increase in CPU "usage" and drop in fps's.

My take on GPU benchmarking is to increase the resolution to acceptable (comparable) levels, not the "setting details".

Yes, not for my poor GPU (RX 580).

https://www.gog.com/game/ashes of the benchmark

3D Mark is always a good option. Then there's Furmark to test your graphics card to a maximum extent. There are also Unigine benchmarks, as some of you noted. They're especially useful for GPU testing. Ashes of Singularity benchmark is a good way to test your CPU. There's also Cinebench strictly for testing CPUs under heavy load.

Mainly they are able to play something as recent as e.g. the aforementioned Horizon Zero Dawn (barely, with somewhat lowered details and resolution), but can't do e.g. any raytracing RTX stuff.

I just want some kind of view which of them is e.g. more powerful overall for gaming, because looking at their specs I can't really tell, and there are so many things that can affect it... It might be that is actually the one which I considered to be a bit complicated to install, but not sure...

Googling for it, I am unsure if GeekBench would be enough for my needs, but I am unsure how well it tests also the GPU, does it give a reliable view which system has more GPU power.

Naturally I'd like the benchmark program to be free, and if at all possible, portable, ie. it doesn't have to be separately installed. But I guess I can live with having it installed as well, as long as it can be easily uninstalled as well... I have run the HZD test on one system, but I don't now recall if it gave separate scores for CPU and GPU, or merely how high FPS scores the system got.

It doesn't really matter if the benchmark or game benchmark gives 10 or 5 fps on the target systems, as long as it can reliably calculate the system performance so that I can compare it to other systems directly. So the game (with the benchmark) does not necessarily need to run playably on that measured system.

IMHO you don't need to worry that much about the CPU then, unless you're into Anno like games. Just pick a good GPU benchmark and compare them based on that. If there's any bottle-necking at play, you'll see it in the framerate.

Heaven/Superposition do have installers on Windows, but they're basically the "extract into a directory" type, really non-intrusive.

IIRC it only gives you an FPS count and stats. In any case, careful with HZD, since it's DX12-only. Not all your systems may perform well on DX12, and that can be misleading, since older generation GPUs (even top end ones) have mostly been optimized and perform best with DX11.

3D Mark:
- It seems the free version is available only from Steam, so nope. I don't want to install Steam on each and every system just to run a benchmark.

GeekBench:
- I am going to try this shortly, even though it requires an installation. I guess they all do...
- I am unsure if it it good for generic GPU DirectX performance testing?

https://web.basemark.com
- Testing this right now, at least it doesn't need any installation...

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