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SPECviewperf® 11 is a
remarkable improvement upon the
predecessor. More smooth and the data
sets load much more efficiently.
So we must then turn to those unsung
heroes that have sat down for many, many
months putting this all together,
without doubt kudos to you all.
The
final package has that needed fresh
crisp look and new well thought out
constructive data sets.
This is most certainly a substantial
benchmark that is given back to the
community by the hardware vendors. For
those out in the wild who complain that
nothing is ever given back, please think
again as these guys and girls who make
up the SPEC/GWPG and its project groups
-- SPECapc and SPECgpc;
give up much of their free time to
attend these committees and oversee the
professional benchmarks so many take for
granted. For the more adventurous who
wish to see the full remit, try sitting
watching a complete FSAA run. It’s only
after this you will truly understand
just how much gruelling and demanding
work has gone into this build.
To quote the current SPECgpc chair; Ian
Williams. “The New GUI, updated
viewsets is one of the most significant
releases of SPECviewperf in recent
years. It delivers a much better user
experience and the major workload
updates better align graphics
performance results with what users
experience in their day-to-day work with
professional applications.” Never
has one phrase been so accurate within
the professional arena.
Professional systems are now about to
face the challenge that will stretch
them to the limits.
It brings to the fore the question many
of the more larger S.I.’s and VARS must
now be asking “why should we submit a
submission, after all, the Tier 1’s
dominate these sorts of things”. Not so
the case. Not just a year ago; several
companies completed and successfully met
the criteria and their rewards where
great. It did involve a little bit
of extra work behind the scenes, though
they did all reap the reward of very
successful orders.
And, their SPECviewperf results also
were as good if not better in some areas
than the Tier 1’s. It just takes that
bold decision to step up to the plate and a
leap of faith. It can be done
successfully.
The
first results are now live on
the
SPEC
website and show an
interesting set of returns under Windows
7 Professional 64-bit. As many still
maintain Windows XP Professional 64-bit
we maintained our platform OS of choice
so that readers can get a good insight
to how their systems should be
performing. We can advise those out in
the wild that the numbers we have
obtained under Windows XP Professional
64-bit are very good indeed; therefore
you have a guideline in which to follow.
Therefore to summarise. The new
SPECviewperf 11 GUI makes it easier for
novice or infrequent users to set up
multiple benchmark runs, access results,
and receive help for common issues.
Identical scripting is used for both
Windows and Linux environments, helping
ensure consistent results across
different operating systems. Test
files in SPECviewperf 11, called
viewsets, are traced from newer versions
of eight different graphics-intensive
applications and incorporate advanced
OpenGL functionality such as shaders and
vertex buffer objects (VBOs). The new
viewsets also contain larger models –
some with more than 60 million vertices
– to exercise the latest generation of
graphics cards and to reflect current
user workloads. Notwithstanding, we
still have to complete that Config file
hidden away within the application. It
should be properly completed as you
never know who or what organisation will ask for a
copy of your run logs one day. Store
them safely.
We now have a professional graphics
benchmark package that fully supports
those new professional graphic cards
that have hit the streets from ATI and
of course,
still making some formidable noise are the
current Quadro series from Nvidia. Within
SPECviewperf®
11 this is where the true battle
does commence. Though we have to look
at this all very objectively as each
company has their own merits within,
and, of course we have finally the
choice. Though we anticipate these next
6 months to be very bitterly fought out
here, within
SPECviewperf® 11 and in the
marketplace.
The year ahead, it’s going to be very
interesting indeed. All those wonderful
hardware parts will make differences
within certain viewsets, and of course
each new driver and hardware release
from both ATI and Nvidia will bring with
it more advancement of the viewset
results. Therefore we all have to watch
these spaces very closely as the going
is about to get very tough and exciting
indeed.
The line is now drawn in the sand for
both ATI and Nvidia, the gauntlets are
down – let the optimisations begin. |
