What IS benchmarking?



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Game project(s):
www.fiend.cjb.net

A Benchmark is the method to see how long time a computer take to do a certain task. The most common heard, is monitoring the FPS-count for games and stuff. (FPS = Frames Per Second) This is for use when programmers try to optimize their code.
And now for the main Question:

An easy way of doing a benchmark over a bit of code, is something like this:


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unsigned long starttime = GetTickCount();
unsigned long endtime = starttime + 10000; //Set duration for 10 secs
unsigned long cycles = 0;
while (GetTickCount() < endtime)
{
/*
Place the code you want to monitor in here.
*/
cycles++;
}

float cycles_per_second = (float)cycles/10.0;
float cycleduration = 1/cycles_per_second;

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Now, cycleduration tells you how many seconds the code take to execute. For an easier way to look, multiply it by 1000 to view it in milliseconds.

Now, it''s up to you to optimize this code as much as you can. ie, to lower the value in cycleduration as much ass posible.
Good luck!

Electron

"Who need more than 640kb of RAM?" -Bill gates -89

Michael Abrash (one of the authors of Quake) has a very accurate routine he calls the "Zen timer" that is available in most of his books. It''s great for profiling small sections of code. It probably is available on the net, although I don''t know where offhand.

Most compilers (except the standard edition of VC6, unfortunately) come with a profiler that will do what you want as well.

aig