PerformanceTest Version 7.0 Beta Release

[Michael (Passmark)]

A beta for the next major version of PerformanceTest is now available for download from;
32-bit: http://www.passmark.com/ftp/petst7beta.exe
64-bit: http://www.passmark.com/ftp/petst7beta_x64.exe

Update - 19 Feburary 2009
Beta 6 now available. Changes the way the Passmark rating is calculated in order to stop extremely high values on individual sub scores from having a disproportional affect on the overall score.

Update - 13 Feburary 2009
Beta 5 now available. Few more general bug fixes. Beta 4 also had a corrupted baseline format causing a bug in reading older PT7 baselines and causing submitted baselines to be corrupt. If you are using beta 4 please move to beta 5 (or at least don't upload any baselines from it), thanks.

Update - 11th February 2009
Moved to Beta 4, few more minor tweaks, new license key system in place. This new beta should give you another 30 days to play with, we should have the final release out before this expires.
There is now also a 64-bit Beta available.

Update - 4th December 2008
Moved to Beta 3, fixes CPU scaling issues in Beta 2. PT7 CPU scores are now more in line with PT6, however they are still not directly comparable due to changes in the underlying tests.

New Features for PerformanceTest 7 include:

• New DirectX 10 3D Test (Requires Windows Vista and a DirectX 10 compatible video card)
• Large improvements to the user interface, including near completely reworked main window.
• Can now view the system information from multiple baselines simultaneously.
• streamlined baseline selection dialogue
• Increased the default size of the main window to go along with the graphical improvements.
• Improved baseline search functionality.
• Removed almost all restrictions in the trial version, other than the 30 day limit.
• Increased the amount of system information gathered and displayed.
• Improved copy options for quickly getting system information from PT to the clipboard.
• /p option added to use the application directory instead of the user directory
• Added EXPORTBASELINE script option to export .pt file
• Overhauled most of the 2D test suite. Complex Vector tests and Image filtering tests now included.
• Changed fonts and text test to have text which is more representative of a real document.
• Increased intensity of "Windows Interface" test.
• Increased the resolution at which 2d and 3d graphics tests are run to place more load on the video card.
• Prime numbers test optimised.
• String sorting test intensified to use more memory.
• Image rotation test was moved from the CPU suite and added as part of the image filters in the 2D suite to show what is happening.
• Added CPU Physics simulation test
• Added Visualised Physics Test to advanced test suite. This is a customizable 3D representation of what the new physics CPU test is doing.
• Increased unchached memory test from 4MB to 64MB as many CPU's have 4MB caches now.
• Updated image export functionality.

We welcome any feedback you may have on the changes to PerformanceTest and the beta in general.



PerformanceTest will be a free upgrade for anyone who purchases V6 now, or during the 6 months before the V7 release.

This beta release is fully functional, except for the 30 day time limit.

[Jason Pearsall]

Like the interface, a question though; did V.7.0 create a new standard for computers to compensate for developments - In other words, my computer scored a 2374 in 6.0, then a 1581 in 7.0, a 2390 in 6.0 and then a 1579 in 6.0. Is this supposed to happen?

[Michael (Passmark)]

We tried to keep the individual sub-section scores roughly the same (we want to be able to include both V6 and V7 scores together in our CPU Charts) however there were some changes to the weighting of the overall Passmark Rating. Because CPU performance has increased a lot more over the years than the other components the CPU was starting to become a very dominating factor in the overall Passmark Rating, as such in V7 we reduced the weighting a bit to compensate for this. This will usually mean that systems with fast CPU's will get a lower overall score.

As the tests have changed (somewhat dramaticly in some cases) it's not advisable to do a direct comparison between V6 and V7 baselines where possible.

Out of interest, did any of your sub-section scores change significantly (CPU, 2D, etc). As I mentioned we have tried to keep these roughly equivelent and if there were any major changes in them there might be something else causing your change of overall score.

[Michael (Passmark)]

We have now moved to Beta 3. There were some problems with the CPU mark scaling in Beta 2 that have been addressed. PerfomanceTest 7 should now give CPU scores closer to PT6, however due to underlying changes in the cpu tests the two versions will still never be directly comparable.

[Windsurf48]

Is there a 64-bit version of V7 Beta? Also, are there V7 baselines available for download?

I have XP x32, XP x64, and Vista x64 in the three primary partitions on my hard drive. After changing to a x58 motherboard and Core i7 965, I ran Performance Test 6 x32 in XP x32 and the 64-bit version in Vista and XP x64. Predictably, both 64-bit operating systems and tests produced higher scores than the 32-bit version, with XP x64 200-600 points higher than Vista x64 at the same BIOS settings. I've only run V7 Beta in Vista x64, and obviously only the 32-bit Beta, getting a score of 4613, which at least sounds impressive compared to V6 scores, although it may not be once in the context of other V7 scores.

[Michael (Passmark)]

There is no 64-bit beta. The baseline search in PT7 does include PT7 baselines, however there is no easy way to find them amongst the PT6 ones at the moment. We plan on making changes to the baseline search to make it easier to separate v6 and v7 results before we get to the final release of PT7. For the time being if you're really interested you can search on filename. With PT7 we have started back at number 1 for the baseline file names, So if you search on "BL1." (the '.' is important) you should get only two results, one PT6 and one PT7, from there you should be able to tell which one is the PT7 baseline as it will be the more recently uploaded one. Note that this only applies to the search inside PT7, the web based baseline search has not been updated yet.

[Windsurf48]

Thanks. I noticed that the V7 baseline I uploaded had fairly low number (I think it is in the 500s and assumed that the numbers had been reset). I'll check the baselines when I'm back in my Vista partition.

[Richard Wolf]

Hi,

in Beta 4 I cannot save the results as a .csv file anymore. When I select this it creates a .csv.txt file. (PerfRes.csv.txt) and it is a simple textfile.

[Michael (Passmark)]

csv files are text files in effect. With PT7 we no longer output proper csv (comma separated value) files and instead use a semi-colon as the separator. We changed the extension to .txt because when excel is installed it tries to open csv files but imports them incorrectly due to them not being proper csv anymore. We will remove the restriction on pt forcing the file to be .txt for the final release of PT so that you can still csave them as such if you want.

[{SAS}TB]

wow, nice score increase with this, gone from 6300 odd to: