OS customization for benchmarking

GUIDE - Prepare your OS for benchmarking

In order to have the best results when benchmarking you need to have the lightest OS installation possible. Extra processes and services running in the background will only add unnecessary load to your hardware. For this reason you need to have a separate partition dedicated to benchmarking because the extend of customization performed here will prevent it from any other kind of usage. So instead of messing with your working OS installation create a second one and experiment as much as you want.

Step 1
Clean Windows installation.
In my system I have a SSD and a HDD. I have my working OS located on the SSD so I prefer not to mess with it and create new partitions. Instead I used the second disk to create a partition and perform a clean Windows installation there. The reason I did that is because I didn’t want my SSD performance to degrade and I don’t like the OS bootloader to appear after every boot/reboot for every day usage. When I run benchmarks, I simply enter the BIOS and choose the disk I want to boot. After I am finished, I simply select my SSD to be the first in the sequence and everything is back to the way it was.

Step 2
Drivers installation
Before you begin with the Windows installation enter the BIOS and disable all the unnecessary devices. This way Windows won't detect those devices and try to install the drivers everytime you boot. After finishing with the Windows installation, we need to install only the completely necessary drivers in order to have a light but functional OS. Chipset drivers have to be the first in order and second to come are the display drivers. In order to activate Vantage we need to have internet connection so install the wifi drivers as well. Do not create an internet connection though and don’t connect to the internet yet. You won’t have to install any other driver because we don’t need any other device like sound or infrared or card reader, etc…

Step 3
Programs installation
After finishing with the drivers it’s time to install the benchmark programs, as well as the programs that are necessary for monitoring the health and the status of our hardware. Don’t use the benchmarking installation to download anything. Have them all prepared and downloaded on a usb stick or an external HDD. Install all the programs that don’t require an internet connection in order to be activated and leave those for last. When you are ready, connect to the internet, activate/register the programs and deactivate instantly the internet connection. Then uninstall the wifi installation from the control panel/programs and features.

Step 4
OS customization
This is the tricky part. We need to deactivate as many services and processes as possible in order to have a light OS but we can’t deactivate all of them since the benchmarks or the other programs won’t run. We need to find the golden line that will allow us to take advantage of the OS’s capabilities with the minimum load possible. In this forum there are already existing threads in order to customize the OS for better SSD performance and those customizations apply in our case as well even if we install the OS on a HDD, so I won’t have to write again how to do them. Instead I will list them briefly and provide you with the links for instructions.

This is the post with the changes for the SSDs but it will also make the OS run faster and lighter
http://forum.notebookreview.com/6127614-post4.html
also disable the readyboost:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/6210740-post157.html
These are the rest of the services to be disabled:



You can disable more services than what I suggest, especially those that are set to manual. For those who want to experiment, before you do so, visit this site:
Windows 7 Service Configurations by Black Viper
Disable all the notifications from action center



Set the power options




Change the personalization settings

Set the display resolution to 1280x1024 with 16bit color depth

Change the visual effects

Disable Windows features


Change system properties




Disable unused devices


Step 5
This is what you should see before starting a benchmark.




This is the time where you apply all the settings of the 3rd party applications. I.e. AMD GPU clock tool, setfsb, throttlestop, eleet, etc…
Then set the priority of the benchmark program to realtime

Stop the monitoring programs and kill the explorer.exe


Close the task manager and you are ready to start benchmarking

Step 6
After the benchmarking program has successfully finished, you need to take screenshots of the score with a couple of monitoring programs. In order to do that you need to start the explorer.exe again. So, press CTRL-ALT-DEL and start the task manager. Then go to: FILE -> NEW TASK (RUN… -> and type explorer.exe
Now you are able to open the programs that you want and do what you have to do.

Enjoy your higher scores

Please feel free to suggest new customizations and I will add them to the post

Keep in mind that you need to disable a couple of things in the BIOS as well

DISCLAIMER
Apply the following changes on your own responsibility.

 

well then we are talking about hard tweak. now i can understand why you get such high scores. i personally and i think many other just closed the some of processes just before running the benchmarks and i had all apps-programs-games installed. even the antivirus. i use nod32 smartsecurity and i ony closed the egui.exe that removes the antivius from the taskbar but it still runs.

anyway this guide just gives us a standard point for comparisons. thus it looks like that everytime we run a benchmark we have to clean install windows. i wont do this everytime really.

a guide for setfsb and throttlestop would be appreciated too. i think those two are the most important.

 

When it comes to benchmarking, it's always about hard tweaks. No pain no gain.
And that's why you need a separate disk or partition. It will be for that purpose only (benchmarking). You can do the installation on an external HDD or usb stick if you don't want to use your internal disks.

There is a guide about setfsb already, no need for another one. About ThrottleStop, it's just a program, simply adjust the values to the point you want to push your CPU and that's it... (try no to burn your CPU though)