What is the best CPU benchmark for programming

[zipswich]

A computer is used primarily for programming (e.g. running Microsoft Visual Studio, Android Studio all day), and it is never used for games. Most CPU benchmarks seem to be geared toward gaming. Is there a good CPU benchmark for programming?

Someone asked this question at SO. I don't think the answer is that useful. I want to give it a shot here in case some gurus can shed some light on this.

I am asking this because I am thinking about building a PC to replace my current one with an Intel i5-3570K.

 

[Karsten75]

Programming is not typically a resource-intensive application. An i5-3570 (or any more recent i5) should be perfectly adequate. The only resource-intensive component is perhaps the build process. Not sure any current development environment manages to multi-task that significantly.

 

[k1114]

You can see your cpu usage. Your specific workload is going to be a better picture than any benchmark. If it's using 100% then you know a cpu with higher multithreaded capabilities is needed. Or if io is the issue then a better cpu won't help any. Typically going with the best you can afford is what happens. But most cpu benchmarks are not gaming. Most reviews are going to be content creation and computation, the cpu heavy software, not games.

 

[zipswich]

You can see your cpu usage. Your specific workload is going to be a better picture than any benchmark. If it's using 100% then you know a cpu with higher multithreaded capabilities is needed. Or if io is the issue then a better cpu won't help any. Typically going with the best you can afford is what happens. But most cpu benchmarks are not gaming. Most reviews are going to be content creation and computation, the cpu heavy software, not games.

Thank you for the elucidation. Perhaps I should go with a CPU with more cores (i.e. from the current 4 to 8).

 

[zipswich]

Programming is not typically a resource-intensive application. An i5-3570 (or any more recent i5) should be perfectly adequate. The only resource-intensive component is perhaps the build process. Not sure any current development environment manages to multi-task that significantly.

My current machine with i5-3570 and 24GB RAM is fine generally speaking, especially for Visual Studio. Android Studio often spends one or two minutes to build a package or perform some other gradle tasks. I wish this could be improved.
The computer has a 480GB Micron SSD as the primary disk, and a 2TB Toshiba HD

 

[k1114]

I don't know what all your usages are but don't forget to look at ram, storage usage, as well as the cpu per core. It should be easy to figure out what the weakest link is. Typically yes, a higher end multicore cpu will be faster as compiling would use all 4 cores.