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⚡ HardView Benchmarks & Comparisons

This document presents feature comparisons and qualitative performance notes between HardView and other popular Python hardware/system info libraries.

1. 🚀 Why is HardView Faster?

  • Written entirely in C and interacts directly with system APIs (WMI/Win32 on Windows, sysfs/proc on Linux).
  • Competing libraries (e.g., psutil, wmi, py-cpuinfo) are Python-based or wrappers, adding overhead.
  • Optimized for batch queries and returns all results as JSON strings or Python objects.
  • Performs especially well with large or repeated hardware queries.

2. 📋 Feature Coverage Comparison

Feature / Library HardView psutil py-cpuinfo platform dmidecode (Linux)
BIOS Info ✅ ❌ ❌ ❌ ✅
System Info ✅ ❌ ❌ ✅ ✅
Baseboard Info ✅ ❌ ❌ ❌ ✅
Chassis Info ✅ ❌ ❌ ❌ ✅
CPU Info (detailed) ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅
GPU Info (detailed) ✅ ❌ ❌ ❌ ❌
RAM Info (modules) ✅ ✅ ❌ ❌ ✅
Disk Info (detailed) ✅ ✅ ❌ ❌ ✅
Partitions Info ✅ ✅ ❌ ❌ ✅
SMART/Advanced Storage ✅ ❌ ❌ ❌ ❌
Network Info (detailed) ✅ ✅ ❌ ❌ ❌
Real-time CPU Usage ✅ ✅ ❌ ❌ ❌
Real-time RAM Usage ✅ ✅ ❌ ❌ ❌
System Performance Monitor ✅ ✅ ❌ ❌ ❌
JSON Output ✅ ❌ ❌ ❌ ❌
Python Object Output ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ❌
Cross-Platform ✅ ✅ All All Linux only
Native C Speed ✅ ✅ ❌ ❌ ❌
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3. 📈 Qualitative Performance Notes

  • HardView is consistently faster due to its C backend and direct system access.
  • Most operations complete in < 0.5s, some even in < 1 ms.
  • HardView and dmidecode are the only tools providing full BIOS/baseboard/chassis info on Linux.
  • Only HardView offers SMART data, detailed GPU info, and real-time monitoring in one API.
  • Supports both JSON and Python objects, making it easy to integrate.

4. ✅ When to Use HardView?

Use HardView if:

  • You need detailed and accurate hardware info (BIOS, SMART, GPU, etc.).
  • You require fast queries and native C speed.
  • You want real-time performance monitoring.
  • You prefer structured JSON or Python object outputs.
  • You want a single cross-platform solution for both Windows and Linux.

5. 📚 See Also

  • What.md: Full API and output examples

HardView: The fastest, most complete hardware info library for Python.