Concerns about PT v8_1054 vs v9_1013 results for the same PC

[natey2]

Most results are within a few percent of each other, so no real cause for concern, but:


CPU Mark
all were fairly close, but

CPU - Extended Instructions (SSE)
v8 reports 48
v9 reports 370
(big difference!)


2D Graphics Mark
all were fairly close, but

Graphics2D - Fonts and Text
v8 reports 160
v9 reports 252


3D Graphics Mark
all were identical, but

Graphics3D - DirectX 9 Simple
v9 didn't do this test; v8 did

Graphics3D - DirectCompute
v8 reports 196
v9 reports 384


Memory Mark
fairly consistent between v8 and v9


Disk Mark
very consistent between v8 and v9

[David (PassMark)]

In version 9 of PerformanceTest the CPU extended instructions benchmark test will perform testing using sub-tests for FMA, AVX and SSE (or only those that are supported, for older CPUs) and take the average of the 3 (or of those that are supported) for the benchmark result. FMA and AVX are new CPU instruction sets that have become available over the last few years in Intel and AMD CPUs. They were designed to make certain mathematical operations faster.

The newer instructions allow the same computations, matrix multiplications, in this case, to be performed much faster than before. On old CPUs the difference won't be as dramatic, as they likely won't support all the new instructions.

There has also be lots of other changes in V9. Some of which impact the benchmark results.