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Category: Performance benchmarking

A clarification from Brett Howse

A couple of weeks ago, I described a conversation I had with Brett Howse of AnandTech. Brett was kind enough to send a clarification of some of his remarks, which he gave us permission to share with you.

“We are at a point in time where the technology that’s been called mobile since its inception is now at a point where it makes sense to compare it to the PC. However we struggle with the comparisons because the tools used to do the testing do not always perform the same workloads. This can be a major issue when a company uses a mobile workload, and a desktop workload, but then puts the resulting scores side by side, which can lead to misinformed conclusions. This is not only a CPU issue either, since on the graphics side we have OpenGL well established, along with DirectX, in the PC space, but our mobile workloads tend to rely on OpenGL ES, with less precision asked of the GPU, and GPUs designed around this. Getting two devices to run the same work is a major challenge, but one that has people asking what the results would be.”

I really appreciate Brett taking the time to respond. What are your thoughts in these issues? Please let us know!

Eric

TouchXPRT 2016 is here!

Today, we released TouchXPRT 2016, the latest version of our tool for evaluating the performance of Windows devices. The BenchmarkXPRT Development Community has been using a community preview for several weeks, but now anyone can run TouchXPRT 2016 and publish their results.

TouchXPRT 2016 is compatible with systems running Windows 10 and Windows 10 Mobile. The new release includes the same performance workloads as TouchXPRT 2014, but with updated content and in the form of a Universal Windows app.

TouchXPRT 2016 is available at TouchXPRT.com and in the Windows App store.

After trying TouchXPRT 2016, please submit your scores and send any comments to BenchmarkXPRTsupport@principledtechnologies.com. We’re eager to find out how you’ll use this tool!

The XPRT Women Code-a-Thon

As Justin explained last week, we’ve resolved the issue we found with the TouchXPRT CP. I’m happy to say that the testing went well and that we released CP3 this week.

It’s been only three weeks since we announced the XPRT Weekly Tech Spotlight, and we already have another big announcement! Principled Technologies has joined with ChickTech Seattle to host the first ever XPRT Women Code-a-Thon! In this two-day event, participants will compete to create the best new candidate workload for WebXPRT or MobileXPRT. The workloads can’t duplicate existing workloads, so we are looking forward to seeing the new ideas.

Judges will study all the workloads and award prizes to the top three: $2,500 for first place, $1,500 for second place, and $1,000 for third place. Anyone interested can register here.

PT and the BenchmarkXPRT Development Community are committed to promoting the advancement of women in STEM, but we also win by doing good. As with the NCSU senior project, the BenchmarkXPRT Development Community will get some fresh perspectives and some new experimental test tools. Everyone wins!

So much has happened in 2016 and January isn’t even over yet. The year is off to a great start!

Eric

TouchXPRT 2016 Community Preview 3 is available

Today we are releasing TouchXPRT 2016 Community Preview 3 (CP 3). As we discussed in the blog, CP 3 resolves an issue reported on some systems, where the Create Slideshow test would take longer than expected to complete due to the output video not rendering correctly.

As with all community previews, TouchXPRT 2016 CP 3 is available only to community members. Members may download the preview from the TouchXPRT tab in the Members’ Area.

For more details about TouchXPRT 2016, please consult the release notes for further details (login required).

After you try out CP 3, please send us your comments. Either post them to the forum or mail them to BenchmarkXPRTsupport@principledtechnologies.com. If you send us information that’s relevant to the entire community, we may post an anonymous version of your comments to the forum.

Thanks for your participation!

TouchXPRT 2016 Community Preview 2 is available

Today we are releasing TouchXPRT 2016 Community Preview 2 (CP 2). As we discussed in the blog, some systems with newer AMD graphics drivers have trouble rendering the Create Slideshow from Photos output video. CP 2 includes a validation feature that produces an error when this problem occurs. This is the only change from the first community preview.

As with all community previews, TouchXPRT 2016 CP 2 is available only to community members. Members may download the preview from the TouchXPRT tab in the Members’ Area.

For more details about TouchXPRT 2016, please consult the release notes for further details (login required).

After you try out CP 2, please send us your comments. Either post them to the forum or mail them to BenchmarkXPRTsupport@principledtechnologies.com. If you send us information that’s relevant to the entire community, we may post an anonymous version of your comments to the forum.

Thanks for your participation!

Question we get a lot

“How come your benchmark ranks devices differently than [insert other benchmark here]?” It’s a fair question, and the reason is that each benchmark has its own emphasis and tests different things. When you think about it, it would be unusual if all benchmarks did agree.

To illustrate the phenomenon, consider this excerpt from a recent browser shootout in VentureBeat:

 
While this looks very confusing, the simple explanation is that the different benchmarks are testing different things. To begin with, SunSpider, Octane, JetStream, PeaceKeeper, and Kraken all measure JavaScript performance. Oort Online measures WebGL performance. WebXPRT measures both JavaScript and HTML 5 performance. HTML5Test measures HTML5 compliance.

Even with benchmarks that test the same aspect of browser performance, the tests differ. Kraken and SunSpider both test the speed of JavaScript math, string, and graphics operations in isolation, but run different sets of tests to do so. PeaceKeeper profiles the JavaScript from sites such as YouTube and FaceBook.

WebXPRT, like the other XPRTs, uses scenarios that model the types of work people do with their devices.

It’s no surprise that the order changes depending on which aspect of the Web experience you emphasize, in much the same way that the most fuel-efficient cars might not be the ones with the best acceleration.

This is a bigger topic than we can deal with in a single blog post, and we’ll examine it more in the future.

Eric

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