PerformanceTest V6.1 now available

[Ian (PassMark)]

PerformanceTest V6.1 is now available.

As it is (almost) the day before Christmas we thought we would leave V6.0 as the main public download until after Christmas. But please try out the new release of PerformanceTest - V6.0 licenses are valid with V6.1.

There are quite alot of improvements. The main improvements are the support of Vista and the scripting of tests. There is a full list of changes below.

Downloads
You can download the new releases from:

32-bit Windows version:
http://www.passmark.com/ftp/petst611001.exe

64-bit Windows version:
http://www.passmark.com/ftp/petst611001_x64.exe

Support
If you have any problems with this release, please let us know at help [at] passmark [dot] com or post them in this forum.

Upgrade cost
The upgrade to V6.1 is free for everyone who purchased V6.0.

What's new compared to V6.0

• To provide the ability to automate quite complex testing scenarios scripting of standard preference configuration settings and test selection has been added.
• The Baseline selection Window is now resizable.
• The CPU type, rather than the manufacturer is now displayed in the
• Baseline selection Window.
• The PerformanceTest Version number inconsistently used "V6.0" and "6.0". The V is now ommitted.
• Some additional checks to ensure corrupt OEM populated SMBIOS data does not cause PerformanceTest to close on startup.
• The title bar icon for the Download from Web Window has been corrected.
• Corrected a bug where-by on rare occasions PerformanceTest could close when selecting Next or Previous on the Download from Web Window.
• The Download from Web Window error messages must be OK'ed before continuing.
• The main window is now updated to reflect any changes made in preferences.
• In all of the Save As Windows, a blank filename was accepted and saved as. e.g. ".pt", this is no longer accepted.
• Selecting a Graphics file name to save would incorrectly set this as the default Baseline name to save.
• PerformanceTest would close when in the Save as Test Window, the filename was blank and a different type of report was selected. This has been corrected.
• Additional system information is now available on 64-bit Vista systems as the device driver PerformanceTest uses is now digitally signed.
• Saved results are now all shown to 1 decimal place, and RAM is shown in MegaBytes rather than Bytes.
• The 64-bit version of PerformanceTest better reflects current 64-bit application performance when compared to the previous versions of PerformanceTest, which reflected early 64-bit applications.
• The set of default baseline files provided with PerformanceTest provide a wider spread of PC hardware technologies.
• Support for Windows Vista. Previous versions of PerformanceTest required access to a range of resources that, under Vista, were only accessible when PerformanceTest was run with elevated privileges. The following changes have been made to address this. The changes have also been made to Windows 2000 and XP for a consistent user experience.
  Windows 2000, XP and Vista:
• • Files have been moved from the Program Files directory to the User Personal directory. Examples:
    Vista - "C:\Users\<username>\Documents\PassMark\Performanc eTest",
    XP -
    "My Documents\PassMark\PerformanceTest\".
    These include: The baseline installation directory, Download Baselines from Web, Upload baseline, all HTML report default directories, default Save As Baseline and image, default Export results and Export Results For Web, Debug logging and the CD burn test image.
  • PerformanceTest will now check both the Program Files and User Personal directory for the following files: a key.dat file (for running PerformanceTest from CD or USB drive), for installing baseline files and for installing Cascading Style Sheets for HTML report formatting.
  • Files have been moved from the Program Files directory to the User Application directory. Examples:
    Vista - "C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\PassMark\Perfor manceTest",
    XP -
    "C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Local Settings\
    Application Data\PassMark\PerformanceTest".
    These include: The configuration file and temporary files such as statistics files for the Advanced tests.
  • For disk tests (standard, advanced and multiprocess), an option has been added to allow the User Application directory to be used for the test (as the user may not have access to any of the root directories to perform the test).
  • If the User is running Vista and is not running PerformanceTest with elevated administrator, some system management BIOS information will not be available (such as number of RAM slots). A button, "Get info", has been added to the Baseline information window to run a program to collect this information. The user will be requested to accept elevated administration for this operation.
  • The previous version of PerformanceTest did not collect the Video Card description on Vista. This has been corrected.
• DirectX Direct3D has been updated to 9.0c October 2006. This was mainly to correct a bug in DirectX where temporary texture files were written to the root directory - which in most cases the user did not have access to when using Vista. PerformanceTest now includes the update installation for DirectX Direct3D October 2006.
• The Baseline selection Window now displays the Operating System for Vista and Longhorn correctly.
• The error message "This program might not have installed correctly" afterinstallation is no longer incorrectly displayed.
• HTML help improved and the older style of Windows help removed. HTML browser based help is now used.
• To assist test automation, an option to suppress the main test warning and error messages has been added to preferences.
• Increased the maximum number of CPU processors that can be tested from 10 to 64. This is required for future quad and eight core CPUs.
• Added a new formatted text result report. For easier exporting to text. For example to post to a fourm.
• The User Interface graphics and icons have been updated.
• Bug corrections:
  • During the 3D test, an error Window could have been obscured by the main PerformanceTest Window. The user may have thought that PerformanceTest had stopped responding.
  • On the result graphs, a long CPU type description could continue off the Window.
  • The CPU type is now split across 2 lines if required.
  • "Install Baseline from Web" would fail if "Install Baseline from File" had been used beforehand.
  • The Advanced Disk test could display the status "stopping", instead of error in an error case.
  • If RAM slot information was not available, the device information for the memory test would show 0 of 0 slots.

Thanks.
Happy Christmas.

Best regards,
Ian

[Windsurf48]

Thanks. I just ran the new x64 version.

I won't know if it solves the problem I was having running the 3D tests under Windows XP Pro X64 until I switch back to my Geforce 8800 GTX, but there is one result from version 6.1, .01 for Memory - large RAM, which seems improbable. Is it possible that there is field overflow problem?

I uploaded the test results as baseline 4516 and it's currently on the top ten page.

Asus P5WDG2 WS Pro, FSB 300 (QDR 1200)
Core 2 Quad QX6700, 3.3 GHz
4 x 512 meg Patriot DDR2-8000 XBL, 900 MHz, 4-4-4-12-6T
XFX Geforce 7900 GT
X-Fi Extreme Music
Adaptec 4805SAS RAID Controller
6 x Hitachi Ultrastar 15k 37 gig
Plextor 716SA

Mike

[Windsurf48]

...there is one result from version 6.1, .01 for Memory - large RAM, which seems improbable.

I reran the test and the problem did not repeat.

Mike