RealSpeed

Developers that aim to create important projects need to know how well the application can make use of a target machine's system resources. It's difficult to determine this from code writing, but there are other tools that can help in this regard. RealSpeed is only one of the many benchmarking applications that let you know if your CPU can handle what you throw at it.

Fortunately, the application does not take you through a setup process which means that system registries remain intact, as well as that you can simply keep it on a removable storage device. This makes it practical if multiple configurations need to be tested out.

Running it brings up a pretty compact window, with a meter set between several values depending on your CPU's power. Unfortunately, provided info only covers up significant usage values because it does not display the full Mhz range, also with no idea whatsoever regarding number of threads and distribution if the case applies.

The application itself uses little system resources to keep an eye on your CPU speed. This is because it was built to use as little cycles as possible so it leaves almost no impact on monitoring. What's more, the interface is also incredibly simple, with nothing more displayed other than the meter and helpful info, as well as an option to quit.

Unfortunately, you need to keep it on your desktop at all times to view even the slightest changes, and there is no option to make it stay on top of other windows. Nor is there an implemented function to hide it to tray or switch to a smaller window, since the existing one can be difficult to read if resized.

There's no possibility to export any data, with info only being displayed in real time. On the other hand, the application stopped receiving updates some time ago, and can come in really handy but with a lot more effort put into design and feature set.

All things considered, RealSpeed is not really what you'd expect from a system monitoring utility, leaving a lot more to be desired. It comes in handy because it takes little space, resources, and can be used on the go. It's only a shame the feature set is poor, but maybe to be blamed are the updates it stopped receiving.