Category: Benchmarking

Activity all around

on October 2, 2014

It’s a busy time in XPRT land, and we wanted to share some news about upcoming events.

The first bit is an update about the CrXPRT 2014 Community Preview. We’ve been busy refining the benchmark, and feel like the current candidate build under test is likely to ship as our Community Preview. We’ll publish more details about the app and its workloads soon, but don’t be surprised to see a Community Preview announcement in the near future.

In Patching and future proofing, we discussed two potential problems while running MobileXPRT 2013 on some versions of Android 4.4 and the developer’s preview of Android L. The first problem involves the benchmark not showing scores when running on a Nexus 5 with the ART runtime enabled. The second problem was a failure of the Create Slideshow workload on Android L. In order to address the underlying cause of both problems, we’ll soon be issuing a patched MobileXPRT 2013 build. We’re still wrapping up our testing, but expect to release the patch at some point next week.

We’ll also be posting BatteryXPRT 2014 for Android APKs directly on the BatteryXPRT.com site. For users who have low bandwidth or trouble accessing the Google Play store, these APKs will make it easier to download the benchmark.

If you have any questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to contact us at BenchmarkXPRTsupport@principledtechnologies.com.

Justin

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Posted in Android, BatteryXPRT 2014 for Android, Community Preview, CrXPRT, MobileXPRT |

What do you think when you hear “Chromebook”?

By Justin Greene

on September 11, 2014

We’ve been thinking a lot about Chromebooks while doing all of our testing in preparation for the CrXPRT Community Preview. In both the models we’re testing and the ones announced in the press, we’ve seen just how much the Chromebook market is changing. Some folks even claim that Chromebook sales made up 35 percent of US commercial laptop sales in the first half of 2014. What’s even more interesting to us is the wide variety of Chromebooks on the market.

Choosing between Chromebooks these days is becoming more complicated than it used to be. There’s a greater range of hardware choices, and those choices can have a direct impact on performance and battery life. Some Chromebooks offer local storage up to 320 GB, touch screens, and 4G/LTE connectivity. Prices range widely, from $199 to $1,499. Even seemingly comparable systems can perform much differently when put to the test. For instance, we recently tested two Chromebooks separated by only $50 in price, but over 5 hours of estimated battery life!

Whether a consumer’s ultimate purchasing decision is based on price, specs, or a combination of factors, there are few things more valuable to buyers than reliable facts about performance and battery life. Benchmarking is ultimately about gaining useful data for decision making, and that’s why we’re excited about the value that CrXPRT will bring to the Chromebook discussion!

Justin

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Posted in Chrome OS, CrXPRT, Google Chrome, Performance of computing devices, What makes a good benchmark? |

Time to get creative

By Justin Greene

on September 4, 2014

The CrXPRT Community Preview is right around the corner, and there’s no sign of things slowing down. We’re exploring new opportunities on a number of fronts, and we’d love to hear what you think! We’re considering possible changes to WebXPRT and MobileXPRT, and since the mobile device market is changing all the time, we’re looking for the next great benchmark opportunity. In both cases, the development community is a rich source of ideas, so we’d like to tap into it one more time.

A while back, we added a new Web form in the members’ area for submitting benchmark ideas. Some of the ideas we have so far include:

A benchmark to evaluate camera features and photo quality on phones and tablets
A benchmark for measuring the performance of cloud services
A benchmark for measuring the performance and battery life of iOS-based devices

So, what would you like to see? Any of these, or do you have ideas we haven’t mentioned? Also, we’d love to hear your feedback on ways we can improve, both with the XPRTs themselves and with community life. Either way, send a message to BenchmarkXPRTSupport@principledtechnologies.com and let us know what you think!

Justin

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Posted in BenchmarkXPRT development community, Collaborative benchmark development, Community Preview, CrXPRT, MobileXPRT, WebXPRT, What makes a good benchmark? |

HDXPRT 2014 source code coming soon

By Justin Greene

on August 28, 2014

We’ve really been enjoying the smaller size and quicker install and runtimes of HDXPRT 2014, and we encourage you to give the benchmark a try if you haven’t already! Within the next week or so, we’ll make the HDXPRT 2014 source code available to BenchmarkXPRT Development Community members. Part of what makes the XPRT community work is the feedback we get from members, whether it comes in the form of new benchmark ideas, suggestions for improvement, or questions raised during community preview testing. Having members comb through the code is another aspect of that community model. We welcome any members with programming skills to comment on our code and submit their own code for review.

If you decide to submit code, please read the XPRT commenting conventions, which are simply brief descriptions of a few practices that will make it easier for us to read your code.

We’ll also post detailed build instructions for HDXPRT 2014 in the Members Area. When the source code is available, check it out and let us know what you think. If you have code to share, please post on the forums or send us a message. If you haven’t yet joined the community, we’d love for you to join now.

Justin

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Posted in BenchmarkXPRT development community, Collaborative benchmark development, Community Preview, HDXPRT, HDXPRT 2014, HDXPRT source code, Source code |

Seeing the whole picture

By Justin Greene

on August 21, 2014

In past posts, we’ve discussed how people tend to focus on hardware differences when comparing performance or battery life scores between systems, but software factors such as OS version, choice of browser, and background activity often influence benchmark results on multiple levels.

For example, AnandTech recently published an article explaining how a decision by Google Chrome developers to increase Web page rendering times may have introduced a tradeoff between performance and battery life. To increase performance, Chrome asks Windows to use 1ms interrupt timings instead of the default 15.6ms timing. Unlike other applications that wait for the default timing, Chrome ends up getting its work done more often.

The tradeoff for that increased performance is that waking up the OS more frequently can diminish the effectiveness of a system’s innate power-saving attributes, such as a tick-less kernel and timer coalescing in Windows 8, or efficiency innovations in a new chip architecture. In this case, because of the OS-level interactions between Chrome and Windows, a faster browser could end up having a greater impact on battery life than might initially be suspected.

The article discusses the limitations of their test in detail, specifically with regards to Chrome 36 not being able to natively support the same HiDPI resolution as the other browsers, but the point we’re drawing out here is that accurate testing involves taking all relevant factors into consideration. People are used to the idea that changing browsers may impact Web performance, but not so much is said about a browser’s impact on battery life.

Justin

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Posted in Battery life, Benchmark metrics, Google Chrome, Performance benchmarking, Windows 8 |

Looking for a bargain?

By Justin Greene

on August 14, 2014

There are many benefits to being a member of the community: the XPRT community previews, the source code for the benchmarks, the monthly newsletter, and more. To join the community, all you’ve had to do up until now is sign up and pay a one-time $20 fee. Our goal with the fee was to make sure that people who joined were serious.

Today, we’re announcing a change. We recognize that, for some companies, getting that $20 fee reimbursed can be a hassle. So, if you work for a device maker, OEM, chip manufacturer, or retailer, you’ll be able to join the community for free.

Here’s how it works: Simply fill out the form, use your company e-mail address, and click the option to be considered for a free membership. We’ll send you an email within one business day to verify the address is real and then activate your membership.

Simple, right?

Justin

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Posted in BenchmarkXPRT development community, Collaborative benchmark development, Community Preview, Performance benchmarking, Source code |

Category: Benchmarking

Activity all around

What do you think when you hear “Chromebook”?

Time to get creative

HDXPRT 2014 source code coming soon

Seeing the whole picture

Looking for a bargain?

Check out the other XPRTs: