Metrics software to monitor application and hardware handling for the purpose of evaluation

I am looking for metrics software to monitor application and hardware handling for the purpose of evaluating new hardware. The software would ideally monitor or measure application to hardware process. I need to know what applications will make use of with regards to certain parts of the hardware and at what measure. An example would be I have some 3d application software that will only use one processor core for rendering or another application that will use all the cores the machine would have, another would be wether application is ram intensive or processor intensive...These are the kinds of examples I would like to monitor.

Any suggestions would be most usefull and appreciated