Cross-platform system load test utility?

[gmiles]

Hi all,
We're trying to test the average electrical load of our machines. We have a power meter that we'll be getting shortly, but I was wondering if you guys knew of a utility that could be used that would emulate a normal user's system load for testing purposes. What we'd like to do is get this running in our lab and test each of our test systems for a day or so.

It needs to run in Vista and XP, and preferably OS X & linux as well. I would think that something web-based would be the most likely method, but we wouldn't mind having to install something.

Any ideas?
Thanks!
-gmiles

 

[kmcferrin]

Well, the problem is that you have all of these platforms. You could run some benchmarking applications in a loop, like PCMark or something similar. But the non-Windows OSes will be trickier. Did you try looking at Sourceforge?

True load-testing applications usually cost a fair amount of money and are targeted at server load testing. So they may not apply what is representative of a normal user. When you say web-based load testing, you're usually going to get an application that can perform load testing on a web server or application (i.e., hit it with a gajillion page requests) to see what it can handle.

You could try stringing together some scripts and macros.

Sorry I'm not much help.

 

[SkipCox]

Try folding at home...runs on windows and linux at 100% cpu load.

http://folding.stanford.edu/

This software will not interfere with normal pc usage.

Skip

http://skipcox.net

 

[LawnBoy]

I would find a 3-d game that'll run on all platforms. Quake2 will, I think...

The games are the biggest continuous load. Proc, ram, graphics, disks, all execrcised well.

 

[gmiles]

Thanks for the tips, guys.
I spontaneously thought of Folding- at- Home about the same time you posted, Skip... We must be on the same frequency.

I'm not necessarily looking for something to max out usage, I'm more interested in emulating a typical load. I'll check out SourceForge and see if I find anything. I was thinking that the folks at Ars or somewhere used to have some sort of benchmark for Office utilities at one point. I haven't had any success at digging it up yet.
Have a good one,
-gmiles

 

[kmcferrin]

Back in the day there was Winstone, Winmark, etc, all put out by PC Magazine. I suspect that there are similar programs available now.

 

[MonkeyX]

could try:

http://www.stresslinux.org/index.php

meant to "burn-in" a system from a Live CD. just run a few of the basic tests to run a "normal" workload sim. As it is a live linux distro it doesn't make a difference what the host OS is.

 

[xwb]

If it is any help, for keyboard based stuff, Linux/OSX expect scripts are equivalent to Windows sendkeys using WSH.

If you want to load the 32-bit Windows OSs, put on a 16 bit game that uses getch, something like rogue. In a short while it will be running at 99%. If it is an HP, the fans will start going. This isn't normal loading but you'll notice it when all the fans start going.

Normal system load isn't so much of a problem electrically. Startup tends to be the major problem.