UserBenchmark
UserBenchmark is a computer benchmarking website that provides users with performance scores for various hardware components. It offers user-submitted reviews and dedicated tools to evaluate and compare the performance of individual components based on system tests. It is known for its controversies for producing biased computer hardware ranking charts which unfairly favour Intel and Nvidia hardware, and disapproves of AMD hardware.
Features
UserBenchmark is a website which offers a benchmarking program to run on the user's PC and then allows them to upload the results on the website. The website provides performance comparisons for CPUs, GPUs, SSDs, HDDs, RAM, and USB drives. It works on a similar concept to 3DMark, another popular benchmarking tool.
As UserBenchmark allows users to upload their hardware score results to the website, it makes it a frequent source of unreleased hardware leaks. For example, Intel's engineering samples have been created with the designation of Intel 0000 and are being differentiated based on their configurations of CPU cores and threads.
In 2024, UserBenchmark imposed a $10 per year fee to allow usage of the program during periods of high use.
Only a small subset of people can make use of free open testing slots unless they are subscribers. To test with the open free slots, non-subscribers must finish "a 3D captcha minigame" with the objective of shooting 13 ships to the ground.
Controversies
UserBenchmark has been accused of bias against AMD, notably facing backlash over its review of the Ryzen 7 9800X3D, in which the high-end CPU was called "pointless for gaming".
In July 2019, UserBenchmark updated how it calculates the effective speed index on its website's CPU hardware rankings, drastically affecting the ranking positions of CPUs, which penalized AMD processors. This resulted in backlash on social media, with some hardware enthusiast boards banning links to the UserBenchmark website.