Recently, a tester contacted us with details from a CrXPRT 2 performance test run that they’d successfully completed on… an Apple MacBook Pro! Because CrXPRT 2 is a Chrome Web App that we designed for Chrome OS, it was quite a surprise to hear that it is now possible to run CrXPRT 2 on non-Chrome OS platforms by using FydeOS.
FydeOS is an operating system based on a fork of the Chromium OS project. Developers originally intended FydeOS to be a Google-independent, Chrome-like alternative for the Chinese educational market, but FydeOS is now available to the English-speaking consumer and enterprise markets as well. FydeOS users can run a Chrome-like OS on something other than a Chromebook or a Chromebox, such as a PC, Mac, virtual machine, or even a Raspberry Pi device. Additionally, FydeOS supports Android, Chrome OS, and Linux apps, and users can run those apps at the same time on the same screen.
We have not yet conducted any testing with FydeOS in our lab, but we wanted to pass along this information to any readers who may be interested. If the OS operates as described, it may provide a way for us to experiment with using CrXPRT 2 in some interesting cross-platform tests.
People choose a default web browser based on several factors.
Speed is sometimes the deciding factor, but privacy settings, memory load,
ecosystem integration, and web app capabilities can also come into play.
Regardless of the motivations behind a person’s go-to browser choice, the
dominance of software-as-a-service (SaaS) computing means that new updates are
always right around the corner. In previous blog posts, we’ve talked about how 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 Microsoft Edge on Windows and Google Chrome on Chrome
OS.
Windows 11 began rolling out earlier this month, and tech press outlets
such as AnandTech and PCWorld have used WebXPRT
3 to evaluate the impact of the new OS—or
specific settings in the OS—on browser performance. Our own in-house tests, which
we discuss below, show a negligible impact on browser performance when updating
our test system from Windows 10 to Windows 11. It’s important to note that depending
on a system’s hardware setup, the impact might be more significant in certain
scenarios. For more information about such scenarios, we encourage you to read the
PCWorld article discussing the impact of the Windows 11 default virtualization-based
security (VBS) settings on
browser performance in some instances.
In our comparison tests, we used a Dell
XPS 13 7930 with an Intel
Core i3-10110U processor and 4 GB of RAM. For the Windows 10 tests, we used a
clean Windows 10 Home image updated to version 20H2 (19042.1165). For the
Windows 11 tests, we updated the system to Windows 11 Home version 21H2 (22000.282).
On each OS version, we ran WebXPRT 3 three times on the latest versions of five
browsers: Brave, Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox, and Opera. For
each browser, the score we post below is the median of the three test runs.
In our last
round of tests on Windows 10, Firefox was the clear winner. Three of the
Chromium-based browsers (Chrome, Edge, and Opera) produced very close scores,
and the performance of Brave lagged by about 7 percent. In this round of
Windows 10 testing, performance on every browser improved slightly, with Google
Chrome taking a slight lead over Firefox.
In our Windows 11 testing, we were interested to find that without exception, browser scores were slightly lower than in Windows 10 testing. However, none of the decreases were statistically significant. Most users performing daily tasks are unlikely to notice that degree of difference.
Have you observed any significant differences in WebXPRT 3 scores
after upgrading to Windows 11? If so, let us know!
Recently,
CloudXPRT testers have reported installation failures while attempting to set
up CloudXPRT on Ubuntu virtual machines with Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and
Microsoft Azure. We have not yet determined whether the installation process
fails consistently on these VMs or the problem occurs under only specific
conditions. We believe these failures occur with only GCP and Azure, and you should
still be able to successfully install and run CloudXPRT on both Amazon Web
Services virtual machines and on-premises gear.
We
apologize for the inconvenience that this issue causes for CloudXPRT testers
and will let the community know as soon as we identify a reliable solution. If
you have encountered any other issues during CloudXPRT testing, please feel
free to contact us!
This week, we
published an updated MobileXPRT 3 build, version 3.116.0.4, on MobileXPRT.com and in the Google Play Store. The new build addresses an issue we recently discovered, where
MobileXPRT was crashing after installation on some Android 11 phones.
Permissions requirements and a new storage strategy called scoped storage were causing the problem. By default, scoped storage restricts
an app’s storage access to app-specific directories and media, and prohibits
general access to external or public directories. It also prevents third-party
apps such as email clients or file managers from accessing MobileXPRT 3 results
files. This default setting requires an opt-in permissions prompt that
MobileXPRT 3 did not have prior to this week’s release.
MobileXPRT 3.116.0.4 points all of the benchmark’s file references to its private directory and allows users to zip results files and attach them to results submission emails. Neither change affects the testing process or test scores. If you have any questions or comments about the new MobileXPRT 3 build, please let us know!
We recently received a tech support inquiry about problems with new MobileXPRT 3 installations on some Android 11 phones. The tester installed MobileXPRT 3 on a selection of phones running Android 11, and the app crashed immediately upon opening. We were able to reproduce the issue on multiple phones in our lab, and currently know that the issue may happen on the Google Pixel 3, Google Pixel 4a 5G, Google Pixel 4XL, Google Pixel 5, and the OnePlus 8T (running Android 11 with an Oxygen OS skin).
MobileXPRT 3 continues
to run without issues on Android 9 and 10 phones. When we updated an Android 10
phone with an existing MobileXPRT 3 installation to Android 11, we found that
the benchmark ran successfully. This suggests a lack of fundamental
incompatibilities between MobileXPRT 3 and current versions of Android 11. Because
some of our lab techs experienced crashes immediately after the app asked for
permissions, we think it’s possible that new permissions-setting requirements
in Android 11 are causing the problem.
We’re currently
working to isolate the problem and identify a course of action. We’ll share
more information here in the blog as soon as possible. If you’ve encountered
this problem in your testing, we apologize for the inconvenience, and we’re
thankful for your patience as we work towards a solution.
If you have any information you’d like to share about running MobileXPRT 3 on Android 11, please let us know!
The CloudXPRT Preview period has ended, and CloudXPRT version 1.0 installation packages are now available on CloudXPRT.com and the BenchmarkXPRT GitHub repository! Like the Preview build, CloudXPRT version 1.0 includes two workloads: web microservices and data analytics (you can find more details about the workloads here). Testers can use metrics from the workloads to compare IaaS stack (both hardware and software) performance and to evaluate whether any given stack is capable of meeting SLA thresholds. You can configure CloudXPRT to run on local datacenter, Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform, or Microsoft Azure deployments.
Several different test packages are available for download from the CloudXPRT download page. For detailed installation instructions and hardware and software requirements for each, click the package’s readme link. On CloudXPRT.com, the Helpful Info box contains resources such as links to the Introduction to CloudXPRT white paper, the CloudXPRT master readme, and the CloudXPRT GitHub repository.
The GitHub repository also contains the CloudXPRT
source code. The source code is freely available for testers to download and
review.
Performance results from this release are comparable
to performance results from the CloudXPRT Preview build. Testers who wish to
publish results on CloudXPRT.com can find more information about the results
submission and review process in the blog. We post the monthly results cycle schedule on the results
submission page.
We’re thankful for all the input we received during the CloudXPRT development process and Preview period. If you have any questions about CloudXPRT, please let us know.
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