Everyone wanted the fastest computer. The problem was how to measure what fastest meant. Was is how fast information could be retrieved from a hard disk. Of course, the answer depended upon what job you were asking the computer to perform. To make comparisons easier, suites of tests were developed to provide a total speed assessment.
Computer manufacturers are smart people.
They tried to ace these tests. There is an analogous concern about proposed national educational performance tests. This, however, is precisely the point. Moreover, people relatively quickly learned that small differences in computer speed are not noticeable in actual operation. There need to be significant differences before such differences are important.