- New Single threaded CPU test and corresponding chart.
- New Direct 2D graphic test. Direct 2D is the relatively new hardware accelerated, immediate-mode, 2D graphics API from Microsoft. It requires Vista SP2 or above to work.
- New DirectX 11 3D test. To run this test a video card with DirectX 11.0 support is required, along with Vista SP2 or above as the O/S. This test exercises new video card features like Vertex and Pixel Shader 5.0 effects, Unordered transparency techniques (in the Jellyfish) and Tessellation technique to produce the detail in the terrain
- New DirectCompute benchmark test as part of standard GPU/3D tests. DirectX 11.0 video card support is required for some of the DirectCompute tests. Thanks to Jan Vlietinck & Keenan Crane who wrote some of the code we used in this test.
- New DirectCompute advanced test suite.
- New memory latency test, both as a standard test and advanced test.
- Re-written standard RAM tests in assembler to be less CPU dependent and more RAM dependent. We are also going to be making available some RAM performance charts
- Advanced tests for Blu-ray & DVD burning on Windows 7 and later.
- Ability to automatically run tests multiple times and take the max result.
- Improved advanced disk test. It is now possible to specify the level of randomness in the data, which can be useful for testing drives that compress the data.
- Scripting of the advanced disk test is now possible.
- Ability to run network test for a much longer period of time.
- IPv6 support in network test.
- Improved system information. Include RAM stick model and timing info, CPU temp & more.
- Re-balancing of instruction mix in the Integer maths, floating point maths and prime number tests.
- Encryption test now makes use of AES-NI CPU instructions where available.
- Faster start-up on launch despite additional system information collection.
- Better looking graphs / new charting engine in advanced tests. Can now graph multiple data series and customize the look of the graphs
- Support for testing more than 64 CPUs / cores.
- Better baseline search, both for basic and advanced search.
- Combining of baseline management windows, adding bookmarks, etc..
- User interface updates with 3D models.
- New baseline file format. We are now using the ".ptx" file name extension for PT8 baseline files. New format is effectively compressed YAML. It should be much more extensible than the older binary file format.
- New backend database structure for storing results. This was required as we expecting to get to around a million baseline results next year.
- Each uploaded result now gets a web page that displays the summary of the submitted results.
- Better video card model number detection, especially dual cards and Intel HD GPU.
- Removed the old bouncing balls 3D test as it was looking a bit lame.
- Modified the existing DirectX 9 and DirectX 10 3D tests to have better textures, use better models and improved shaders.
- Improved SLI & Crossfire support. SLI & Crossfire should now produce some performance improvements. We would have liked to do more here but nVidia and AMD were not able to provide any assistance.
- Official Windows 8 support.
- Official Windows Server 2012 beta support, with full support upon the Server 2012 release.
- Combining 32bit and 64bit releases into a single install package. The correct executable is autoselected at install time.
- Faster install after download by removal of some install dependences.
- More options for exporting, and copy / pasting the benchmark data into other applicaitons, like Excel.
- As an experiment we are relaxing 30 day trial period, so that the core function can continue to be evaluated beyond 30 days. So rather than it just stop working after 30 days, the software will continue to run, with cut down functionality
- Bug fixes, of course.
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