BurnInTest V9 Beta Release

[Tim (PassMark)]

BurnInTest V9 is now available for beta testing.

Current Version: V9.0 Beta 6
Date: 27/February/2018
Download link: BurnInTest V9 Beta

What's new

New User Interface
• New tile based user interface
• New logo image
• Tests will now run on top of their tile button in user interface (instead of a separate window) where appropriate
• Better scaling of user interface on 4K high DPI monitors

New TPM (trusted platform module) pre test
• Checks for presence of TPM, runs self test and queries for version.

CPU Test
• Added AVX, AVX2, FMA3 and FMA4 extensions
• Added checkbox for AVX, AVX2, FMA3 and FMA4 to test preferences
• Heat test, added new instructions to max heat test to maximize heat generation on CPUs that support FMA & AVX instruction sets

RAM Test
• Improved the speed of the test by enabling memory caching.
To replicate the V8 behaviour an option has been added to the test preferences to "Disable memory caching"

Bluetooth test
• Updated and improved Bluetooth test
• NEW Bluetooth Advance Loopback Test to send/receive with the current Endpoint Software.
• Added Loopback test for Serial Bluetooth Devices (Tested with HC-06, Power to VCC, Ground to Ground, RX looped to TX). Requires the device to be paired/authenticated prior to be used in

BurnInTest
• Bluetooth Loopback Test now supports up to 4 Remote Bluetooth devices.
• Added separate Duty cycle and preferences controls for Bluetooth test
• Added port range to Bluetooth test

2D test
• Added new EMC test pattern "Color bars with moving element", to comply with CISPR 32 (ITU BT.1729) standards
• Changed how example character is drawn on preferences window to better display large fonts (96, 120 etc)
• Removed font size limit (previously 8-16) on scrolling letter 2D tests
• Allowed different font sizes to be selected for the scrolling H test and adjusted the scroll speed to take into account monitor vertical resolution

USB3 Test
• Added slow speed threshold setting and warning message to USB3 loopback test
• Added a warning/error when USB3 plugs are not running at superspeed / 5Gb USB3 speed. This can be ignored by changing the BITErrorClassification.txt file
• Added ability to select USB3 plug connection speed for USB test
• Improved thread synchronisation when a large number of test plugs are connected. Many USB host controller's device drivers start to fail under high load (Open, Send and Re-enumeration requests fail if system is under high load). This works around most of the host controller flaws.

Disk Test
• Increased disk tests limit to 100 (from 80)
• Added a "max cycle" option to the disk test

Network test
• Added "Use 1st IP for all" network test option to preferences

Serial Port test
• Added separate options to disable RTS/CTS and DSR/DTR test phase

Serial Port test
• Improved threading of sound test to stop short system freezes during MP3 playback.

Help
• Moved to a new help format (ewriter) so that help topics can be opened directly in Windows 10

Temperature Monitoring & Charts
• Updated temperature graphs to be interactive and allow scrolling and zooming.
• Temperature collection and graphing will start by default when BurnInTest is first launched so temperatures can be monitored without any tests running.
On test start the graph will be reset and on test stop the temperature monitoring will be stopped to allow the graph from the test run to be saved.

Changed series colours to be more visually friendly
• Added checks for the maximum number of temperature sources to monitor
• Fixed scrolling/dragging issues
• Added zoom buttons
• Added support for multiple GPU temperature readings

Customer certificate template
• Added <!--TEMPERATUREGRAPH--> marker for inclusion of the temperature table chart

Scripting
• Added more USB options to scripting
• Added SETBLUETOOTH Scripting commands

Misc
• Added support for reading and logging fan speed from SpeedFan utility
• Fixed a bug when using the PHYSDISK command line parameter in WinPE where the physical specific disk patterns were not available in the select all drop down
• Fixed some problems displaying the FMA3 support for CPUs in system information
• Added way to disable stop button, disable time and cycle settings when using bitaccess.txt to prevent people changing the run time and stopping test early

Preferences
• Increased the size of Preferences window
• Changed temperature source/threshold combo boxes to editable list view with checkboxes
• Combined Pre-Test/Post-Test tabs. Combined Serial Port/Parallel Port tabs
• Added %MCMACHINEID% flag to logging file name preferences to allow management console ID to be used as part of the logging path

Management console
• Updated & rewrote central management console database to hold testing results.

[Nano]

Unable to Install. Its giving error in WIN XP.

[David (PassMark)]

We are dropping support for Windows XP in BurnInTest V9. You'll need to stay on V8 if you want to use XP.

We should have a beta release out tomorrow. It will fix a lot of bugs, but it won 't fix this.

[David (PassMark)]

A screen shot from V9 of the software,

[sarahtlee]

I met 2D and 3D error, want to use this version to test. But I can't use v8.1 Key on this version, how can I get the Key?

[David (PassMark)]

What were the errors and hardware spec for the machine? Did V8 also give the same errors?
Maybe you can E-Mail us a log file and / screen shots.

V9 will work for 30 days without a key. We should have the final release done in the next couple of weeks. When that happens everyone who has a support contract in place or purchased in the last 6 months will get free V9 key(s).

[Petermann]

Just downloaded and tested it out. Wow, good job! Very nice improvements all around.
Can I list suggestions for options and features that would improve my testing in this forum?

[David (PassMark)]

Yes, if you have any feedback let us know. We have a list of about 20 minor issues we found ourselves during testing, these are being fixed up at the moment.

[Petermann]

Great. I'll start posting them below. We really like Burn-in Test and thank you very much for how great of software it is. Also thanks for keeping the price and licensing low and reasonable. It really helps make a test tech's job a little better and makes me continue to recommend it to others. I will post different feature request and suggestions below, but please note that it is not intended to criticize the great program you've made and how reliable and professional it already is. Thanks a ton to your team!

[Petermann]

Feature request:
Insert and list the levels and duty cycles in the final results report (in the txt, html, and Cert results files we generate). That information is very crucial to our test team to know what levels and settings the technician used when setting up and running the test. This can be useful for so many things, like to compare result reports, as a record we can go back to, help us in troubleshooting etc and overall very useful for us and our customers should they require it. (PS, I know the screenshot is from version 8 but version 9 does include adjustable levels too, just in a different visual presentation so the underlying request to record that information in the results report is still the same).

[Petermann]

Missing option in Version 8, hopefully fixed or can it be added to version 9? Video test interferes with audio test, no video mute option:
When we select "video" and "sound" in "Test selection and duty cycles" in our final combined burn-in test, then attach a loopback stereo cable going from audio out to mic in/line in, the sound test would always fail and report distortion. When we turned off the video test option, the sound test works and doesn't complain. Can there be an option under the "video playback" test preferences to mute sound for the video in version 9?

[Petermann]

Feature request:
Manual option to set acceptable tolerance of errors per test device/selection so entire combined Burn-in test is not slapped with a big FAIL.

In the attached photo example 9 USB errors out of 47 billion operations is considered to some engineers acceptable and not a FAIL. However, because of those minor errors the entire combined test (which can be hours long) is listed as a FAIL, which isn't entirely true. We have engineers who give the test technicians acceptable tolerances, for example, 1% or 5% or 10% allow for USB ports etc per devices, and it would be nice to be able to manually set that in the test preferences, especially for a lot of the peripheral I/Os. The idea could even be further explored that if a tolerance percentage of error is set manually in the test preferences, then the final test banner may say a big green PASS, but then have listed in the same banner window the tolerances set. This would also be useful in the test results reports generated too! If the tolerances are manually set, then the results report can still list the overall combined Burn-in test as "Pass" but then in the same results file, list the devices that failed, and the tolerances they were allowed/set. For example
Test results file would be:

**************
RESULT SUMMARY
**************
Test Start time: Thu Feb 15 12:19:31 2018
Test Stop time: Thu Feb 15 12:24:34 2018
Test Duration: 000h 05m 03s
Test Name Cycles Operations Result Errors Last Error
CPU ---------------------------------------19 -----------------------4.524 Trillion ----PASS ---0 --------No errors
GPGPU ----------------------------------9 -------------------------66.197 Trillion --PASS ---0 --------No errors
Memory (RAM) ------------------------0 -------------------------34.178 Billion --PASS ---0 --------No errors
2D Graphics ----------------------------0 -------------------------5134 ---------------PASS ---0 --------No errors
3D Graphics ----------------------------2 -------------------------70287 -------------PASS ---0 --------No errors
Temperature ----------------------------- --------------------------- - -------------------PASS ---0 -------No errors
Optical disk (E: -------------------------2 -----------------------139 Million -------PASS ---0 -------No errors
USB 3 (PMU33ZOFZU 480Mb/s)-0 ------------------------10.345 Billion ---PASS --0 --------No errors
USB 3 (PMU33ZOFSQ 5Gb/s) ----0 -----------------------48.896 Billion ---PASS --0 --------No errors
USB 3 (PMU3408ME5 5Gb/s) ----0 ------------------------48.799 Billion ---PASS --0 --------No errors
USB 3 (PMU3408JC7 5Gb/s) -----0 -------------------------47.108 Billion --PASS --9 --------USB driver reported send error (within error tolerance 5%)
Sound --------------------------------------2 -------------------------6.317 Million ---PASS --0 --------No errors
Video Playback ------------------------22 ------------------------283 ----------------PASS --0 --------No errors
Serial Port 1 -----------------------------7 --------------------------417800 ----------PASS --0 --------No errors
Disk (C: -----------------------------------3 --------------------------118 Billion ------PASS --0 --------No errors
Disk (D: -----------------------------------12 ------------------------118 Billion ------PASS --0 --------No errors
Network 1 ---------------------------------3 -------------------------152080 ----------PASS ---0 --------No errors
TEST RUN PASSED

[Petermann]

Feature request:
Use empty space so all current/minimum/maximum temperatures are listed to make it easier for screenshot capture.

Would like to request that we have the options to display the temperature sensors info in three columns, so we can capture all the data when we screenshot. Temperature monitoring is a HUGE part of our testing, we really rely on it to test, monitor and record our product capabilities. Screenshot capture is a common way we record our temperature monitoring and results. Would be nice to have all those sensors visible in text form by utilizing columns instead of a scroll list. Version 8's layout was more practical for us.

[Petermann]

Feature request:
4K resolution options in 3D Window (and Video)

We are testing more and more graphics cards with multiple 4K capable DP and HDMI ports these days and also our monitors are 4K capable as well. It would be really nice if we could have the option to set the 3D window to 4K resolutions and not just be limited to 1280x1024.

Would also be nice to have the same option for the Video Playback resolution in case we are playing a 4K video at the same time, during combined Burn-in testing.

[David (PassMark)]

Petermann,

Thanks for the suggestions. As feedback,

Include duty cycle settings in report:
Yes, But it needs to be optional and default to be off however, as it will confuse most end users (who might think anything less than 100% is bad).

Video test interferes with audio test:
Yes, we should maybe add a mute option on the video test. Another quick solution would be to only use videos without sound.

Test tolerances:
Some tests already have limits (network test & sound test). The network protocols are designed to fail then retry. And a small amount of sound distortion doesn't matter too much. For most of the tests however we expect 100% reliability. e.g. even 1 CPU error, Disk error or RAM error should always be a fail. In the USB example you posted above 9 send errors in 5 min is a fail. You need to distinguish between bit error rates and outright failure to send anything. If the test sends 1 billion bits, but then failed to send anymore data after a device driver crash (maybe generating just 1 error) then this must be a fail.

Temperature sensors:
There might be 100 or more sensors in future CPUs. (1 per core). At some point a scroll bar is needed to display them all.
But yes, maybe we GPU & disk sensors in separate columns.

4K resolution:
We are testing on 4K setups and the video tests can be full screened to 4K. But you are correct, there should be more resolution options.