When it comes to general performance, many things have to be tested. To start, we utilize AIDA64 Engineer to check on memory latency and read-, write-, and copy speeds; CPU Queen is used for a comparison across various processors.
Cinebench R15 offers a look into single- and mutli-core performance that is easy to understand and comparable across several generations of today's hardware.
With the release of PCMark 10, I have also included results here for the future changeover. Just like PCMark 8, PCMark 10 offers a look into general computing performance. However, it's a bit more modern, offers a few updates, and leverages the graphics processor by default.
AIDA64 Cache and Memory Benchmark
AIDA64 CPU Queen
Cinebench R15
PCMark 10