We’ve gotten reports that HDXPRT 2014 no longer works on newer versions of Windows 10. We ran tests in our labs and found that to be true.
At least one user has reported that the problem may be the version of CPU-Z the benchmark uses.
We’re working to track down the problem and hope to provide a workaround in the near future and a more definitive fix (if necessary) later.
Please let us know if you’ve encountered this issue and if you’ve found any ways to work around it.
Eric
Today we formally released HDXPRT 2014. The BenchmarkXPRT Development Community has been using a community preview for several weeks now. Now that we’ve released the benchmark, anyone may freely use it.
HDXPRT 2014 address the most common comments we had about the previous versions. It is a much smaller and faster benchmark. Instead of taking over five hours to get a result, as HDXPRT 2012 did, you can now install the benchmark and get a result in less than 2 hours. Also, because we were able to trim the benchmark size considerably, you can download HDXPRT directly from our site via a compressed install file. See the HDXPRT 2014 User Manual, available in the download and at HDXPRT.com, for installation instructions.
The HDXPRT 2014 source code will soon be available to the community. Remember that community members have access to the source code, but it is not available to the general public.
Although HDXPRT is much smaller and faster than HDXPRT 2013, we worked hard to make sure than we did not compromise the results. Give it a try and let us know what you think!
Eric
Two weeks ago, I began explaining how benchmarks keep score (http://www.hdxprt.com/blog/2011/08/17/keeping-score/). HDXPRT 2011 fundamentally measures the time a PC required to complete a series of tasks, such as editing photos and converting videos from one format to another. It uses the times of three sets of tasks to come up with three use case times (Edit videos from your camcorder, Create memories from your digital camera, and Prepare media for on-the-go). Because an early version of the benchmark took too long to run, we trimmed the size of the workloads (such as the number of photos) to make it complete more quickly. Because we believed the size of the original workloads was realistic, we extrapolated (multiplied by the difference in size) what the time would have been. That process results in times in minutes.
We could have simply combined the three times into one total time, but doing so would have created a score where smaller is better, which can be confusing. To avoid this, HDXPRT 2011 normalizes the three times to the times a calibration, or base, system required to complete the same work. The benchmark then calculates a geometric mean of those three normalized scores and multiplies that number by 100 to create the overall Create HD Score. This scoring method sets the calibration system’s score to 100 and makes it easy for you to compare multiple systems. For example, if PC A gets a score of 200, and PC B gets a 400, PC B is twice the speed of PC A (and four times the speed of the calibration system) at creating HD content.
The term “geometric mean” might be unfamiliar. One way to get benchmark geeks arguing is to ask about the correct mean for combining results. (Yes, there really are enough of us for an argument.) At the risk of inflaming my fellow benchmark geeks, I will give a quick summary of the main ways people combine results.
An arithmetic mean is a simple average, where you add all the numbers and divide by the number of numbers. It is good for combining amounts, such as gigabytes of RAM, across multiple computers.
A geometric mean is more mathematically complex. You compute it by multiplying all the numbers and then taking the nth root, where n is the number of numbers. This kind of mean is appropriate for combining normalized numbers. Its advantage over the arithmetic mean is that it keeps one really good number from drowning out all the others.
The final mean is the harmonic. You calculate it by dividing the number of numbers by the sum of 1 divided by the square of each element. (If that makes little sense to you, don’t worry about it!) The harmonic mean is appropriate for combining rates, such as megabytes per second.
I should also mention one other result from HDXPRT 2011, the Overall Play HD Experience score. This is a very different kind of score that uses one to five stars to indicate the quality of three HD video playbacks. HDXPRT uses mean opinion scores (MOS) based on smoothness of playback to compute these results. (I’ll discuss MOS in more detail in a future blog.) With this kind of score, a four-star rating is better than a two-star rating, but it is hard to say how much better. The MOS research indicates that people would rate the four-star playback as good and the two-star playback as poor, but you can’t say that one is twice as good as the other because the relationship is not linear.
What do you think of the metrics that HDXPRT 2011 provides? Are there others you would find more useful or meaningful? Your input is vital to improving the benchmark and making sure it does what you want it to do.
Bill
Last week, I hosted a Webinar on HDXPRT. We’ll make a recording of it available on the site fairly soon. Multiple members attended. As I was going through the slides and discussing various aspects of the benchmark, a member asked about installing the benchmark from a USB key or a server. My response was the simple truth: we hadn’t considered that approach. As I then elaborated, we clearly should have thought about it, because those capabilities would be useful in just about every production lab out there, including ours here at PT. I concluded by saying that we’d look into it.
I’m not naming the member simply because with big companies I’m never sure if doing that will be good or will cause someone trouble, and I don’t want to cause hassle for anyone. He should, though, feel free to step forward and claim the well-deserved credit for the suggestion.
Less than a week after the Webinar, I’m happy to be able to report that the team has done more than look into these capabilities; it’s implemented them! So, the next Beta release, Beta 2, which we’ll be releasing any time now (maybe even before we post this blog entry), lets you install the benchmark from a network share or a USB key.
I know this is a relatively small thing, but I think it bears reporting because it is exactly the way the community should work. A member brought the benefits of his experience to bear in a great bit of feedback, and now the benchmark is better for it—and so are all of us who use it.
Keep the good ideas coming!
Mark Van Name
