Baseline search and 2D benchmarks

[Stilez]

Hi Passmark,

I'm trialling PerformanceTest 8 and specifically, looking to evaluate which parts of my system have greatest scope for improvement.

Can you help me figure how best to use PerformanceTest for this, or even narrow down the field?

My use:
I'm not a gamer but push hardware to extremes in other ways - for example very heavy use of 2D "windows GUI" windows (VMs, browser, video, documents, remote desktop, etc) and massive amounts of mathematical calculation, VPN in software, etc. All in parallel. It works fine, and CPU-wise it keeps up.

Current platform and planned changes:
Current platform is ( i7-2600K + Asus Z68 + 32GB @ 2133 + Radeon HD 5670/1GB GDDR5 + Win 7 x64 + SSD). I'm topping out this spec so it's time to plan an upgrade. I'm considering Win 8 x64 where more of this is rendered in hardware via the graphics card as I understand it, and perhaps a change of hardware to (i7-3930K + Z79 + 48GB) for sheer multitasking/VM/calculation speed when money allows.

Data problem:
CPU/RAM/SSD are easy to choose and benchmarks are common.

What brings me to Passmark today is looking for data to help me evaluate how efficient and fast my video system is on 2D non-gaming graphics. For example, whether the numbers of windows and amount of video/layers of text are a bottleneck for me, and whether my video ram is too small (many windows = video data stored in main RAM not GDDR5 = slow?) I'd like to find good data even if just to confirm it's not too bad. People say 2D is "all the same" but it may not be, I think it's mostly ignored.

Information needed?
PerformanceTest's 2D benchmarks, including typical GUI and desktop rendering tests, and covering Win8's Direct2D, is perfect!

But now I've found it, how do I make best use of the data PT8 produces, to evaluate what I need? Ranking tables or data I'd usually look for don't seem to exist except for headline 3D performance rating so I can't look up "card for card" how mine rates on (say) text rendering or window operations, compared to others I might upgrade to. I'm not sure how best to use "advanced baseline" selection to get the most useful data either, and some attempted queries return no baselines when they should have many. Also it's hard to work out if baselines displayed are overclocked or stock results, or to address distortions due to overclocked systems.

I need to figure out what I ought to be doing to make best use of PerformanceTest 8 in this area and reach solid conclusions. Ideally as 2D is neglected, any other ideas you might have would be great too. Can you help? Many thanks for your time!

[David (PassMark)]

The 2D performance depends on the video card, the operating system, the video card device driver,the CPU and the way the application software is written (there are several different 2D APIs, like Direct2D, GDI, GDI+, etc..).

So it is hard to make a chart showing 2D performance for video cards as the other factors also have a big influence.

But using the Advanced baseline search function can provide some useful data.

For the search criteria enter,
CPU string: 3930K
Windows version: Win7
Sorting: G2D
Then click on search.

As you will see the top video cards (in Win7 with a 3930K CPU at the moment) are,
GTX 690
GTX 680
GTX 670
GTX 580
HD 7950
HD 7970
HD 7870
But there isn't much difference between them to be honest. Other cards like the Quadro 1800 & 4000 and GTX 275 can also clearly give good performance.

If you look at just the Win8 results, then the GTX cards seem to do better than AMD. Maybe nVidia have done a better job of Win8 drivers for 2D.