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Category: Cross-platform benchmarks

The AIXPRT learning tool is now live (and a CloudXPRT version is on the way)!

We’re happy to announce that the AIXPRT learning tool is now live! We designed the tool to serve as an information hub for common AIXPRT topics and questions, and to help tech journalists, OEM lab engineers, and everyone who is interested in AIXPRT find the answers they need in as little time as possible.

The tool features four primary areas of content:

  • The Q&A section provides quick answers to the questions we receive most from testers and the tech press.
  • The AIXPRT: the basics section describes specific topics such as the benchmark’s toolkits, networks, workloads, and hardware and software requirements.
  • The testing and results section covers the testing process, metrics, and how to publish results.
  • The AI/ML primer provides brief, easy-to-understand definitions of key AI and ML terms and concepts for those who want to learn more about the subject.

The first screenshot below shows the home screen. To show how some of the popup information sections appear, the second screenshot shows the Inference tasks (workloads) entry in the AI/ML Primer section. 

We’re excited about the new AIXPRT learning tool, and we’re also happy to report that we’re working on a version of the tool for CloudXPRT. We hope to make the CloudXPRT tool available early next year, and we’ll post more information in the blog as we get closer to taking it live.

If you have any questions about the tool, please let us know!

Justin

The XPRTs can help with your holiday shopping

The biggest shopping days of the year are fast approaching, and if you’re researching phones, tablets, Chromebooks, or laptops in preparation for Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales, the XPRTs can help! One of the core functions of the XPRTs is to help cut through all the marketing noise by providing objective, reliable measures of a device’s performance. For example, instead of trying to guess whether a new Chromebook is fast enough to handle the demands of remote learning, you can use its CrXPRT and WebXPRT performance scores to see how it stacks up against the competition when handling everyday tasks.

A good place to start your search for scores is our XPRT results browser. The browser is the most efficient way to access the XPRT results database, which currently holds more than 2,600 test results from over 100 sources, including major tech review publications around the world, OEMs, and independent testers. It offers a wealth of current and historical performance data across all the XPRT benchmarks and hundreds of devices. You can read more about how to use the results browser here.

Also, if you’re considering a popular device, chances are good that someone has already published an XPRT score for that device in a recent tech review. The quickest way to find these reviews is by searching for “XPRT” within your favorite tech review site, or by entering the device name and XPRT name (e.g. “Apple iPad” and “WebXPRT”) in a search engine. Here are a few recent tech reviews that use one or more of the XPRTs to evaluate a popular device:


The XPRTs can help consumers make better-informed and more confident tech purchases this holiday season, and we hope you’ll find the data you need on our site or in an XPRT-related tech review. If you have any questions about the XPRTs, XPRT scores, or the results database please feel free to ask!

Justin

Using WebXPRT 3 to compare the performance of popular browsers (Round 2)

It’s been nine months since we’ve published a WebXPRT 3 browser performance comparison, so we decided to put the newest versions of popular browsers through the paces to see if the performance rankings have changed since our last round of tests.

We used the same laptop as last time: a Dell XPS 13 7930 with an Intel Core i3-10110U processor and 4 GB of RAM running Windows 10 Home, updated to version 1909 (18363.1139). We installed all current Windows updates and tested on a clean system image. After the update process completed, we turned off updates to prevent them from interfering with test runs. We ran WebXPRT 3 three times on five browsers: Brave, Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox, and Opera. The posted score for each browser is the median of the three test runs.

In our last round of tests, the four Chromium-based browsers (Brave, Chrome, Edge, and Opera) produced scores that were nearly identical. Only Mozilla Firefox produced a significantly different (and better) score. The parity of the Chromium-based browsers was not surprising, considering they have the same underlying foundation.

In this round of testing, the Chromium-based browsers again produced very close scores, although Brave’s performance lagged by about 4 percent. Firefox again separated itself from the pack with a higher score. With the exception of Chrome, which produced an identical score as last time, every browser’s score was slightly slower than before. There are many possible reasons for this, including increased overhead in the browsers or changes in Windows, and the respective slowdowns for each browser will probably be unnoticeable to most users during everyday tasks.

Do these results mean that Mozilla Firefox will provide you with a speedier web experience? As we noted in the last comparison, a device with a higher WebXPRT score will probably feel faster during daily use than one with a lower score. For comparisons on the same system, however, the answer depends in part on the types of things you do on the web, how the extensions you’ve installed affect performance, how frequently the browsers issue updates and incorporate new web technologies, and how accurately each browsers’ default installation settings reflect how you would set up that browser for your daily workflow.

In addition, browser speed can increase or decrease significantly after an update, only to swing back in the other direction shortly thereafter. OS-specific optimizations can also affect performance, such as with Edge on Windows 10 and Chrome on Chrome OS. All of these variables are important to keep in mind when considering how browser performance comparison results translate to your everyday experience.

What are your thoughts on browser performance? Let us know!

Justin

A first look at the upcoming AIXPRT learning tool

Last month, we announced that we’re working on a new AIXPRT learning tool. Because we want tech journalists, OEM lab engineers, and everyone who is interested in AIXPRT to be able to find the answers they need in as little time as possible, we’re designing this tool to serve as an information hub for common AIXPRT topics and questions.

We’re still finalizing aspects of the tool’s content and design, so some details may change, but we can now share a sneak peak of the main landing page. In the screenshot below, you can see that the tool will feature four primary areas of content:

  • The FAQ section will provide quick answers to the questions we receive most from testers and the tech press.
  • The AIXPRT basics section will describe specific topics such as the benchmark’s toolkits, networks, workloads, and hardware and software requirements.
  • The testing and results section will cover the testing process, the metrics the benchmark produces, and how to publish results.
  • The AI/ML primer will provide brief, easy-to-understand definitions of key AI and ML terms and concepts for those who want to learn more about the subject.

We’re excited about the new AIXPRT learning tool, and will share more information here in the blog as we get closer to a release date. If you have any questions about the tool, please let us know!

Justin

We’re working on an AIXPRT learning tool

For anyone interested in learning more about AIXPRT, the Introduction to AIXPRT white paper provides detailed information about its toolkits, workloads, system requirements, installation, test parameters, and results. However, for AIXPRT.com visitors who want to find the answers to specific AIXPRT-related questions quickly, a white paper can be daunting.

Because we want tech journalists, OEM lab engineers, and everyone who is interested in AIXPRT to be able to find the answers they need in as little time as possible, we’ve decided to develop a new learning tool that will serve as an information hub for common AIXPRT topics and questions.

The new learning tool will be available online through our site. It will offer quick bites of information about the fundamentals of AIXPRT, why the benchmark matters, the benefits of AIXPRT testing and results, machine learning concepts, key terms, and practical testing concerns.

We’re still working on the tool’s content and design. Because we’re designing this tool for you, we’d love to hear the topics and questions you think we should include. If you have any suggestions, please let us know!

Justin

Coming soon: a white paper about the CloudXPRT web microservices workload

Soon, we’ll be expanding our portfolio of CloudXPRT resources with a white paper that focuses on the benchmark’s web microservices workload. While we summarized the workload in the Introduction to CloudXPRT white paper, the new paper will discuss the workload in much greater detail.

In addition to providing practical information about the web microservices installation packages and minimum system requirements, the paper describes the workload’s test configuration variables, structural components, task workflows, and test metrics. It also discusses interpreting test results and the process for submitting results for publication.

As we’ve noted, CloudXPRT is one of the more complex tools in the XPRT family, with no shortage of topics to explore further. We plan to publish a companion overview for the data analytics workload, and possible future topics include the impact of adjusting specific test configuration options, recommendations for results reporting, and methods for analysis.

We hope that the upcoming Overview of the CloudXPRT Web Microservices Workload paper will serve as a go-to resource for CloudXPRT testers, and will answer any questions you have about the workload. Once it goes live, we’ll provide links in the Helpful Info box on CloudXPRT.com and the CloudXPRT section of our XPRT white papers page.

If you have any questions, please let us know!

Justin

Check out the other XPRTs:

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