PerformanceTest 8.0 Beta Release

[Michael (Passmark)]

We are pleased to announce that PerformanceTest 8.0 has now entered beta and is available for download and testing.

Current Beta Version
Beta testing has ended.

Download Link
The final V8 release can be found on the product page.

What's New in Version 8.0

• New Single threaded CPU test.
• New 2D test that makes use of the Direct2D API.
• New DirectX 11 3D test.
• New DirectCompute test as part of standard GPU/3D tests.
• New DirectCompute advanced test suite.
• New memory latency test.
• Re-written standard RAM tests in assembler to be less CPU dependent and more RAM dependent.
• Advanced tests for Blu-ray & DVD burning on Windows 7 and later.
• Ability to automatically run tests multiple times and take the max result.
• Improved advanced disk test.
• Ability to run network test for much longer.
• Improved system information. Include RAM stick model and timing info, CPU temp & more.
• Re-balancing of instruction mix in the Integer maths, floating point maths and prime number tests.
• Encryption test now makes use of AES-NI CPU instructions where available.
• Faster start-up on launch despite additional system information collection.
• Better looking graphs / new charting engine in advanced tests.
• Support for testing more than 64 CPUs / cores.
• Better baseline search, both for basic and advanced search.
• Combining of baseline management windows, adding bookmarks, etc..
• User interface updates with 3D models.
• New baseline file format.
• Better video card model number detection, especially dual cards and Intel HD GPU.
• Removed bouncing balls 3D test.
• Improved SLI & Crossfire support.
• IPv6 support in network test.
• Official Windows 8 support.
• Official Windows Server 2012 beta support.
• Combining 32bit and 64bit releases into a single install package.
• Faster install after download by removal of some install dependences.
• Full list of changes can be found here.

Upgrades from Previous Version

• Any purchase of PerformanceTest 7.0 in the six months prior to the final release of V8.0 will be eligible for a free upgrade.
• Upgrades for version 7.0 licenses prior to this period will be available at half the retail price of a new version 8.0 license.

[KelvynT]

Looking very good - have the disk and networking test workloads changed from v7?

In terms of requests, it may be too late, but one thing I would dearly love is if a basic graph of the advanced disk/network results (these are the only tests I use) could be autosaved at the end of each test (copy, paste, save or export is a nuisance when lots of tests), or even just a single button to save a graph in a default location.

Also, on the advanced disk tests, it would be v. useful if the thread used could be shown on the graph (I know it's listed when the results are exported).

Keep up the great work!

[David (PassMark)]

The major changes to the advanced tests are,

• Complete overhaul of the graphing functions.
• The Advanced network test supports IPv6 (would be good if you could test this out).
• New Advanced direct compute test (all on the GPU). This window still needs some tidying up however before the final release.
• Memory latency test was added
• Overhaul of the advanced 3D test window.
• We will be adding a field to select the data randomness (which impacts on compressibility) before the final release. This is not there yet however.

For the new graphing functions the major changes are,

• The auto saving of the advanced test results. Results are autosaved to the following folder in YAML (text) format.
  C:\Users\<Username>\AppData\Local\PassMark\Perform anceTest
• The ability to modify the look of the graph
  
  • Colour schemes
  • Grid marks
  • Background images
  • Line colour and width
  
  
• The ability to select saved results (series) and graph them on the same graph
• More relevant system information being displayed for each graph type.
• Having a 'Save As 'button on the graph window.

So it doesn't auto-save the graph itself as an image. But you could now, for example, run all the tests & then put them onto the same graph and save a single graph.

[David (PassMark)]

Details of the PerformanceTest V8 3D Tests.

For those who are interested in some of the internals of PT8 here are some details of the new set of 3D tests in PT8. There four tests defined, two DirectX 9 tests of varying complexity, a DirectX 10 test and a DirectX 11 test.
DirectX 10 and 11 tests can only be run on Windows Vista or later, additionally not all video cards support all DirectX levels and as such your PC may not have the hardware to run all the tests. Only the newest video cards can do DirectX11.

	DirectX 9 -Simple	DirectX 9 - Complex	DirectX 10	DirectX 11
Objects	1 plane, 300 trees, terrain, water, sky	7 planes, 500 trees, terrain, water, sky	10 Islands, 20 Meteors	50 Giant Space Jellyfish
Mode1	Windowed 1024x768 4x Anti-Aliasing	Full screen 1024x768 4x Anti-Aliasing	Full Screen 1680x1050 8x Anti-Aliasing	Full Screen 1920x1080 8x Anti-Aliasing
Feature Highlights	A bare bones DirectX 9 Test.	Makes use of Vertex and Pixel Shader 2.0 techniques to generate realistic water as well as texture the ground based on the height above the water.	Vertex and Pixel Shader 3.0 effects. Uses DX10 instancing.Uses geometry shader.	Vertex and Pixel Shader 5.0 effects.Unordered transparency technique used on jellyfish.2Tessellation technique used to produce terrain.
Resources information	The terrain is formed by 32,258 triangular polygons The water surface has 512 triangular polygons Each plane object has 560 polygons. Each tree has either 2214 or 1978 polygons(depending on which type)	The terrain is formed by 32,258 triangular polygons. The water surface uses 260,610 triangular polygons. Each plane object has 560 polygons. Each tree has either 2214 or 1978 polygons (depending on which type)	Meteors are made up of a maximum 100,000 particles across all meteors. Each tree has 2497 instanced leaf polygons.	Each jellyfish has 8244 polygons. The space station has 2843 polygons. Each of the approximately 10,000 stars is a polygon. The terrain is made up of a variable number of polygons based on distance and wether it is in the cameras view by use of DX11 tessellation techniques.

1.	This is the mode that the test attempts to run in by default, if the video card or monitor do not support this mode the test will be attempted to run at a lower resolution or anti-aliasing level, in these cases the test score will be penalized.3

2.	This technique relies on the video card supporting 8x anti-aliasing. If your video card does not support this another method will be used but the test score will be penalized.3

3.	In the case that a test score is penalized the score in frames per second will not match the actual frames per second the test ran at.

While they may sometimes work, 3D tests are not explicitly supported under virtual machine environments or remote desktop connections.

[David (PassMark)]

PerformanceTest V8 has been released today.

The final list of changes can be found on the What's New page.

If you purchased PerformanceTest V7 in the last 6 months you can pickup a free V8 license key from this upgrade page. You'll need the E-mail address used to place the original order.