Not necessarily. A sort of test with a somewhat random computation where implementations have not specifically tuned for said test can provide beneficial inform

Not necessarily. A sort of test with a somewhat random computation where implementations have not specifically tuned for said test can provide beneficial information. If you have enough of such tests, one can get a broad idea of the performance of such systems. The worst case is when people hyperoptimize for a particular benchmark, which tells you nothing. You see this especially in the Benchmarks Game.