shake the cobwebs out Theres a new benchmark in town for measuring performance on Windows 95 PCs Did you want to see how fast your ancient computer was? Because now you can! Andrew Cunningham Mar 31, 2025 1:15 pm | 16 Credit: Microsoft Credit: Microsoft Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreIf you're still using a computer you bought during the Clinton administration, interesting news: Crystal Dew World, developers of apps like CrystalDiskInfo and CrystalDiskMark, have released an update to their CrystalMark Retro benchmark (as spotted by Tom's Hardware). The most interesting aspect of the update for retro computing enthusiasts is expanded operating system support: the app will now run on Windows 95, Windows 98, and old versions of Windows NT like 3.51 and 4.0. The previous version of the app only went as far back as Windows XP.The app spits out benchmarking scores for five things: single-core CPU performance, multi-core CPU performance, 2D graphics performance using GDI, 3D graphics performance using OpenGL, and disk speed (broken into four sub-benchmarks for sequential and random read and write performance).The app will also run on current systems, including 64-bit x86 and Arm-based PCs, and the results database is dominated by those modern systems. But searching by operating system allows you to zero in on those retro results, including nine (as of this writing) for Windows 95, six for Windows 98, and five for Windows NT 3.51. CrystalMark Retro running on a modern system inside a Windows 95 virtual machine. Credit: Crystal Dew World Benchmarks are often used to test brand-new components, so people can see how much faster their new PC is than their old one, or just for bragging rights. So why should retro computing enthusiasts care that they've got a new benchmarking app? As we've written, benchmarks are also a good way to make sure a PC is performing as expected, something that could be particularly useful for people building a PC out of heavily used hand-me-down parts. Vintage benchmarks also don't have the benefit of an online results database for easy comparisons to other people'ssystems.PCs running these operating systems are obviously far past their sell-by dates, but vibrant retro computing communities exist all over the Internet for virtually every era of MS-DOS and Windows. "New" systems like the Pocket386 and Book 8088 laptops also point to ongoing interest in '80s- and '90s-era PCs.If you're bringing an old Windows 95 or Windows 98 PC back online so you can run some benchmarks, remember to grab all the latest ancient updates for your operating system using something like the Windows Update Restored project. Or, better yet, please try to keep it from accessing the Internet directly, since it's not particularly safe and you won't be able to do much with period-accurate browsers and apps.Andrew CunninghamSenior Technology ReporterAndrew CunninghamSenior Technology Reporter Andrew is a Senior Technology Reporter at Ars Technica, with a focus on consumer tech including computer hardware and in-depth reviews of operating systems like Windows and macOS. Andrew lives in Philadelphia and co-hosts a weekly book podcast called Overdue. 16 Comments