PerformanceTest 7.0.1002

PerformanceTest 7.0.1002 is fast, easy to use, PC speed testing and benchmarking. PerformanceTest ™ allows you to objectively benchmark a PC using a variety of different speed tests and compare the results to other computers.

• Find out if your PC is performing at its best.
• Compare the performance of your machine to similar machines.
• Measure the effect of configuration changes and upgrades.
• Avoid paying big bucks for poor performance.
• Make objective independent measurements on which to base your
• purchasing decision.
• Use the advanced tests to create you own benchmark scenarios

Twenty-eight standard benchmark tests are available in six test suites plus there are seven advanced testing windows for custom benchmarking.

Standard test suites:

• CPU tests Mathematical operations, compression, encryption, SSE, 3DNow! instructions and more
• 2D graphics tests Drawing lines, bitmaps, fonts, text, and GUI elements
• 3D graphics tests Simple to complex DirectX 3D graphics and animations
• Disk tests Reading, writing and seeking within disk files
• Memory tests Allocating and accessing memory speed and efficiency
• CD / DVD test Test the speed of your CD or DVD drive

Advanced configurable tests:

1. Advanced Disk

This Advanced Disk Test, which is part of PerformanceTest, measures the data transfer speed when reading or writing data to one or more disks. The speed that data can be transferred between memory and a hard disk drive is one of a system's most important performance aspects. There are quite a few factors which have a bearing on this speed and the Advanced Disk Drive Test allows the user to vary most of these factors and compare the results.

The test supports any drive that can be mounted under Windows. Including IDE drives, SCSI, RAID, USB key drives, SATA, networked shared drives and external drives.

Users have the ability to test multiple drives at the same time using multiple threads, and specify:

• The size of the test file used. Larger files mean that the system cache has less of an effect on the test types, which use caching (see below).
• The size of the data block used for each read or write request. Larger blocks mean less requests and can lead to an improvement in performance.
• The choice of four access methods - C/C++ API, Win32 API cached / uncached and raw disk access.
• Sequential or random access (seeking plus reading and writing)
  Synchronous and Asynchronous access
• The split between reading and writing
• The results of all completed tests may be graphed using our custom graphing components.

2. Advanced CD / DVD

This test (part of PerformanceTest), allows the data read speed from a CD or DVD drive to be measured. Measuring the write speed to CD-Rs and CD-RWs is also available in PerformanceTest 6.0 (on Windows 2000, XP and 2003 Server).

The rate at which a CD Drive can read data from a CD ROM varies about many factors. Firstly, and most importantly, is the speed of the manufactured drive. Older drives list speeds of 2X or 4X, (1X = 0.1536 MB/Sec), whereas top end drives at time of writing are now advertised as having speeds of 48X and 56X.

Another large influence on the data transfer rate from CD/DVD is the system cache and the part it plays in storing frequently accessed data. The cache is a section of memory Windows uses to store data for fast access. The first time, for instance, a 10 MB file is read from a CD / DVD ROM, it is likely that Windows will copy it to the cache, recognizing that the data may soon be requested again. Upon subsequent requests for the same file, Windows will simply read the file directly from the cache and hence bypass the bottleneck of reading from the CD/DVD ROM again. If the data hasn't been used, after a certain period of time and/or a certain number of I/O requests, it will be replaced in the cache with more recent or essential data. Requesting the file at this stage, will mean Windows must go directly to the CD/DVD ROM once more. Obviously, whether the file data on the CD/DVD ROM is cached or not, has a large impact on tests which use the cache.

The Advanced CD/DVD test allows users to change the following test parameters.

• The size of the data block used for each read request. Larger blocks mean less requests and can lead to an improvement in performance (CD-ROM test)
• The choice of four access methods - CLIB, WIN32 API cached/uncached and raw disk access (CD-ROM test).
• The duration to carry out the test for.

The results of all completed CD ROM, CD-R and CD-RW speed tests may be graphed using our colourful custom graphing components.

3. Advanced 3D graphics

3D Graphics technology has come on in leaps and bounds over the last few years and this test measures how fast 3D images can be created and displayed.

Microsoft provides a set of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) called DirectX, which allow developers to create games and other high-performance multimedia applications. DirectX provides support for two-dimensional (2-D) and three-dimensional (3-D) graphics, sound effects, music, input devices, and networked applications such as multiplayer games.

The Advanced 3D Graphics Test has been designed to benchmark the how well your video card performs when using the most common features of DirectX. It renders a number of spheres to the screen in windowed or full screen mode. As such, PerformanceTest requires DirectX version 9 or above.

Apart from individual graphics card speeds and abilities, the test illustrates a single video card's drop in performance as the rendered scene becomes more complex. A scene with more objects, more textures and more DirectX features implemented may well look more impressive, but will more than likely result in a reduction in frame rate

Many of the rendering options for the scene can be selected by the user.

• A "Bouncing balls test" or a 'game like' "Terrain and water test".
• Whether Vertex Shader and Pixel Shader effects are applied to the "Terrain and water test" (only available on newer graphics cards).
• The number of objects displayed in the test.
• Whether the scene is lighted or not and the option to choose specular lighting (Specular lighting gives the objects an appearance of being 'shiny').
• Whether random alpha blending is used to give some objects a sense of transparency.
• The choice of a wireframe mode.
• Control over how the objects are moved - Rotation, and/or movement in each direction (X, Y and Z).
• The screen mode and resolution.
• No texturing, a single texture or multi-textured to be applied on objects.
• The duration to carry out the test for.

4. Advanced Networking (for Ethernet, Internet and Wireless)

Almost all computers these days have a network connection of some description. Whether it be a modem connection to an ISP, or an Ethernet connection to a corporate intranet, sending and receiving data to and from other computers is an essential part of day to day operations. A myriad of applications use TCP/IP networking technology - Email, Web browsers and games to name a few popular applications. In most cases, there is one performance factor the user is most concerned with - the speed or transfer rate.

The PassMark Advanced Network Test (which is part of PerformanceTest) is designed to test the data transfer rate between two computers both of which must be running PerformanceTest. One of the computers must act as the server and will sit waiting for a connection. The other computer acts as a client. It connects to the server machine and sends data to it for the duration of the test.

The network benchmark test will work with any type of TCP/IP connection. Including ethernet, dial up modems, ADSL, cable modems, local area networks (LAN), Wide area networks (WAN) and wireless networking (WiFi). The software has been optimized to use a minimum amount of CPU time, allowing even high speed gigabit ethernet connections to be benchmarked.

Users have the ability to change the following test parameters.

• The IP address of the machine acting as the server and the port number used for the test to help with firewall issues.
• The size of the data block used for each send request. It is also possible to select variable sized blocks to measure performance deltas as block size increases or decreases.
• The duration of the test.
• The protocol, either TCP or UDP. The TCP protocol is when data integrity is important (Errors are corrected using data re-transmission). UDP is used with applications that are tolerant to data loss such as video streaming.

The results of all completed tests may be graphed using our custom graphing components.

5. Advanced Memory

The Advanced Memory Test is part of the PerformanceTest application, and it is designed to test several factors which affect the speed of which data is accessed in PC memory.

You can think of computer memory as a long continuous strip. The strip is composed of millions (sometimes billions) of slots. Each slot has a unique identifying value called its address. On 32 bit Windows platforms the size of each slot is 32 bits or 4 bytes ( 1 byte = 8 bits ). Windows moves data onto and off of this strip as required. For instance, running an executable file from a disk causes Windows to copy the file from the disk to memory and then run the executable from there.

One principle of memory design is known as Spatial Locality. It says that memory addresses which are near each other tend to be referenced close together in time. Memory is designed with this principle in mind and so, we should expect to see a decline in memory access time if we continually request addresses that are far apart from each other.

Users can choose between two types of test - Memory Speed Per Access Step Size and Memory Speed Per Block Size

Memory Speed Per Access Step Size. The first test type, 'Memory Speed Per Access Step Size' accesses a large block, of memory in various sized steps. First, it runs through the block of memory sequentially, accessing every value. Next it runs through the same block again, except this time it accesses every second value. On this occasion, it runs through the block twice in order to access the same amount of data as the initial step. Next it runs through the same block again, except this time it accesses every fourth value and so makes four passes. And so on, until a certain maximum step size is reached.

The size of the block of memory used for this test is one quarter the amount of system RAM. The size of the steps vary from 1 (continuous sequential access), to one quarter the size of the block of memory ( i.e. one sixteenth of the system RAM ).

Memory Speed Per Block Size. When a computer program wants to use a section of memory to store data, it makes a request to Windows for the amount of memory it requires. Windows allocates the memory to the program ( unless system resources are very low ) and returns to the requesting program the address of the first memory slot in the allocated block. It is possible that some programs may request very large amounts of memory. The 'Memory Speed Per Block Size' test like the 'Memory Speed Per Access Step Size' test, is composed of many steps. During each step of the test, PerformanceTest requests a block of memory and runs through the block measuring the average access time. However on each subsequent step the size of the requested memory is increased, until finally a block close to the size of the system RAM is requested. In this way it is possible to observe the different access speeds for the different sizes of blocks.

Typically it is possible to see very fast memory access for blocks which are small enough to fit entirely into the L2 RAM cache, and slower access times for larger blocks accessed from main RAM. In the case where system resources are low, swapping to the disk may even be required for very large blocks.

RAM type compatibility. The PerformanceTest memory test works will different types of PC RAM, including SDRAM, EDO, RDRAM, DDR and DDR2 at all bus speeds.

Graphing RAM speeds. The results of all completed tests may be graphed using our colourful custom graphing components.

6. Advanced Multi-tasking

The Advanced Multi Process Test is designed to run a series of standard benchmark tests in parallel to examine the performance under these multitasking conditions. Multiple processor machines should excel under this kind of environment, as the load is split between the various CPUs. This test is also very useful to compare the performance of CPUs with hyperthreading and dual cores.

The tests include a number of the standard PassMark benchmarks along with some popular benchmarking algorithms and tests which emulate some day-to-day operations your CPU may be required to carry out which are particularly processor heavy.

Multiple process tests available

• Prime Number benchmark
• Sorting Random String benchmark
• Compression
• Encryption
• Memory Read
• Memory Write
• Maths Integer addition
• Whetstone benchmark
• Dhrystone benchmark
• Disk Access

7. Advanced Visualized Physics

This test allows you to view a visualization of what is happening in the standard CPU physics test. It also allowsyou to customize the test to produce different results.

The following parameters can be modified:

• Choose from a tower, a pyramid or one of four in built images to use as the start point for the simulation.
• The number of cubes to use in the simulation.
• Set the length of the test.
• Set the number of threads used.
• Customize physics properties such as gravity and air resistance.
• Cause an explosion at the start of the simulation for more impressive effects.

In addition to the standard tests, there are 7 summary results plus the overall "PassMark Rating" result. The benchmark results are presented as easy to read bar charts so that you don't need to spend hours studying the number to know the result. Timing for the tests is done using high resolution timers, which are accurate to approximately 1 millionth of a second on most PC's.

A major advantage is the support for built-in baseline results which allows you to compare computer systems (a baseline is a standard set of results from another computer). These baseline results can be used to determine how fast your computer is in comparison with other computer systems.

PerformanceTest comes with six baseline results as well as the ability to search and download thousands more from our online database of user submission.

No Nonsense Licensing. Flexible no nonsense licensing. Once purchased you can move the software between machines as required. There is no hardware locking, no online activation process, no time based expiry & no annual fees. The software can be run direct from a USB drive or CD drive, and a network connection is not required to use the software. Multi user and site licenses are also available. See the FAQ to work out how many licenses are required in various scenarios.

Advanced Testing. The seven advanced testing windows allow experienced users to create their own test scenarios and conduct an in-depth analysis of their hardware's behavior. Each advanced testing window allows the user to select from a number of parameters and when appropriate graph the results, export the results and measure the CPU load. By adjusting the input parameters is it possible to measure the optional performance under a variety of different scenarios.

• Advanced Disk Testing. Test the speed of your disk using different file sizes, block sizes and caching options.
• Advanced CD / DVD Testing. Test the speed of your CD or DVD drive using different test durations, block sizes and caching options.
• Advanced 3D Testing
  Test the speed of your 3D video card by selecting from options such as fogging, lighting, alpha blending, wire frame, texturing, resolution, color depth, object rotation and object displacement.
• Advanced Networking Test. Measure the network speed between any two computers using TCP/IP. The network speed test can be conducted across a company LAN or across the Internet to determine the point to point throughput. Adjust parameters such as the host name, IP address, port number and block size. Works with dialup modems, ADSL, cable and LANs.
• Advanced Memory Test. Measure the read and write speed of your RAM. Parameters include data size (8 bits to 32 bits) and a selection of two test modes. Linear sequential access across various block sizes or non sequential access with a varying step size. This allows both the effect of RAM caching and the optimizations in the memory controller to be investigated.
• Advanced Multitasking Test. Run a series of standard benchmark tests in parallel to examine the performance under these conditions. Multiple processor machines should excel under this kind of environment, as the load is split between the various CPUs.
• Advanced Visualized Physics Test. View a visual representation of what the standard CPU Physics test is doing. You can also tweak the simulation parameters to get different effects.

Major Features:

1. Comprehensive online help
2. Supports hyper-threading, and multiple CPUs testing
3. Detailed disk speed graphs
4. Supports printing results
5. The ability to save your benchmark results to disk as a new baseline
6. A customizable "Notes" field for storing your own information along with the saved Benchmark result.
7. Support for copying the results to other applications (eg. MS-Word)
8. Export results to HTML, text, GIF, and BMP formats
9. Single test execution, execution of a test suite or execution of all tests with a single mouse click.
10. A summary 'Mark' figure for each test suite plus the calculation of the PassMark Rating figure.
11. An easy to use point and click interface
12. A summary system information screen including CPU type, CPU speed, Total RAM, Video Hardware, Cluster size, etc..
13. The ability to compare the performance of your computer to multiple 'Baseline' computers at the one time.
14. Flexible license, move the software

Enhancements:

1. Minor bug fixes;
2. New DirectX10 3D test;
3. Major improvements to the user interface;
4. Multiple baselines can be view simultaneously;
5. Removed almost all restrictions in the trial version;
6. Added Visualised Physics Test;
7. Overhauled the 2D Test Suite.

Requirements:

1. 1024x768 pixel display,
2. DirectX 9.0c or higher,
3. 64 MB RAM,
4. 30 MB of free hard disk space

WareSeeker Editor