PCMark 05

[Neuromancer]

Did not know where to put this thread, so it ended up in Software.


Okay PCMark05 should be run in Vista because although it scores lower than XP in almost every test, it outscores XP on the magnitude of 50 times higher in Transparent windows test.

However, I saw someone post an XP bench of PCMark, with the non-standard ~500 Transparent window score. It still was not as high as Vista but so much closer, combined with the other scores being better... made XP usable for it again.

Does anyone know of a tweak in XP to help out the transparent windows test? I assume it has something to do with themes.

I think PCMark looks to make sure you are running Luna theme, so a hand tuned OS will probably be necessary.

I can not find the answer easily, so was just hoping someone already knew so I am not wasting time.

Thanks

[hellcamino]

I think windows 7 might actually be better than vista 64 for PCMark05, I did a dry run the other day at 24/7 settings for 7 points on hwbot.

[Neuromancer]

Yes that is probable. Especially if you use preRC builds of Mojave.

I will look more tonight to see if I can find out who and how did it in XP.

[hellcamino]

Yes that is probable. Especially if you use preRC builds of Mojave.

I will look more tonight to see if I can find out who and how did it in XP.

Nope this is full RC version and fwiw calling it Mojave is a misnomer that was intended to get people to try vista, Windows 7 actually is a fair bit different...you should try it!

[Neuromancer]

Nope this is full RC version and fwiw calling it Mojave is a misnomer that was intended to get people to try vista, Windows 7 actually is a fair bit different...you should try it!

Yah I know what Mojave is, it is a joke. (I have a disclaimer in my sigs on other forums denoting this, I must have forgotten it here)

I am a Microsoft beta tester, although I opted out of testing 7. I have run a few builds of it (pre and post RC). So know a bit about it.

It is fine for benching, although the build I installed after RC, was very laggy. While the OS as a whole seems fine, there are things I do not like about it, which when disabled turns it back into Vista anyway, so I will stick with Vista until RTM.

Still have not found anythign about improving that test in XP...

[Kal-EL]

It's officially referred to as "Mojave Reloaded" on this forum.

[Neuromancer]

LOL

Ahh, I can not think of a witty retort for that.

[hellcamino]

It's officially referred to as "Mojave Reloaded" on this forum.

Only ewe!

[karmakazi]

I too have seen this XP transparent windows boost. Good luck on getting any info about it though. I searched to high hell and back and found not a damn thing. Also the people who know arent going to tell either :/

[DrNip]

Wonder if it has to do with Windows Blinds or somethin. Dunno, just takin a stab at it as I have seen some screen shots with themes of this nature.

http://www.stardock.com/products/windowblinds/

[karmakazi]

Does anyone have the formula for how to calculate a pcm05 score? Im interested to see how heavily weighted transparent windows is

[Neuromancer]

Wonder if it has to do with Windows Blinds or somethin. Dunno, just takin a stab at it as I have seen some screen shots with themes of this nature.

http://www.stardock.com/products/windowblinds/

yes, but pcmark05 will not let you run the test without xp default theme in place (from what I have read)

If so than it will be simple enogh to hack luna to incorporate transparent themes, i suppose...

Cant sit for too long at teh desk last couple of days, but I will figure this out.

[hellcamino]

yes, but pcmark05 will not let you run the test without xp default theme in place (from what I have read)


Negative, the theme must be set to "best appearance" but you can run whatever theme you like and get away with a lot of tweaks as evidenced by the bot and it's lack of screen shots for PCMark 05. All of my submissions have been with a screen shot and I have only contested one by another user as it was so obviously high for the equipment used as to be ridiculous.

[ViViD]

Sorry I Problem With PC05 In XP
it's Run Well And Pass All The Test But When Show Me Scores Show Nothing In Resualt Log All Scores Has Been And Finally Score Not Show

[Kal-EL]

DO you have media encoder 9, windows media player installed?

[Neuromancer]

Negative, the theme must be set to "best appearance" but you can run whatever theme you like and get away with a lot of tweaks as evidenced by the bot and it's lack of screen shots for PCMark 05. All of my submissions have been with a screen shot and I have only contested one by another user as it was so obviously high for the equipment used as to be ridiculous.


Sweet!

Just moved rather abruptly lst night. Will get my bench rig setup tomorrow and try running this with and without themes.

I am pretty good at finding/hacking system files, so I will try out some of these Vista transformation packs, hack them up figure out what works and include only what is necessary (patched uxtheme.dll and the theme file, although probably more to it than that for transparency. will do what I can to make it minimally invasive)

[hellcamino]

Try one of the hacked aero themes for xp.

[Neuromancer]

heh heh

Already on that HC thanks :)

All I have to say on that issue is... Pirate Bay was great not for pirating software, but finding, interesting takes on software, that is popular, that otherwise would never have been allowed to market.

(problem is it became to popular for the bad guys to get involved.. both corporate and opensource)

[karmakazi]

neuromancer if you would like any help testing, please let me know. pcm05 is one of my favorite benches :D

[Neuromancer]

Does anyone have the formula for how to calculate a pcm05 score? Im interested to see how heavily weighted transparent windows is

From the future mark white paper


PCMark Score
PCMark05 scores will initially range between 1,200 and 5,500 PCMarks with generally available PC hardware.
They are scaled such that an entry-level system will score approximately 1,200 PCMarks and a high-end
system, at the time of product release, will score approximately 5,500 PCMarks. Of course, we expect that over
timw there will be PCs that will score higher and higher.
Figure 6: Example PCMark05 Scores
The PCMark score is calculated by using the results of the various tests in the systems test suite. The individual
test scores are combined using a geometric mean. The geometric mean provides a fair mechanism to combine a
large number of test results as compared to assigning arbitrary weights to individual scores. Geometric means
are used in other successful benchmarks such as those from SPEC. The geometric mean is scaled using results
‡
Note that such custom scores are not comparable to official PCMark scores.Page 19

PCMark05 WHITEPAPER
Page 19 of 22
June 13
th
2005
from reference systems to produce the appropriate range of scores. The general formula for the geometric mean
is: geometric mean = (item1 * item2 * item3 * item4)
[1/number if items]
.
The formula for the overall PCMark score is:
PCMark Score = 87 × [geomean of the System test suite test results]
CPU Score
The CPU score is also the geometric mean calculated from the CPU suite test results. The scaling factor is
created in a same manner as for the PCMark score. The CPU score formula is:
CPU Score = 82 × [geomean of the CPU test suite test results]
Memory Score
The memory score is also calculated from the memory suite test results using a geometric mean. The scaling
factor is created in a same way as for the PCMark score. The Memory score formula is:
Memory Score = 1.7 × [geomean of the Memory test suite test results]
Graphics Score
The PCMark05 Graphics score is calculated also using the geometric mean. The formula used is:
Graphics score = 17 × [geomean of the Graphics test suite test results]
HDD Score
As in the other test suites, also the HDD Score is calculated using the geometric mean:
HDD Score = 300 * [geomean of the HDD test suite test results]

[Kal-EL]

CPU + HDD have the mega multipliers, good info bro

[Neuromancer]

heh heh going to have to try and win those Vertex SSDs on techreaction.net to boost my pcmark scores :)

[Neuromancer]

Hmm okay. Checked some verification screenshots, on hwbot after trying some msstyles hacks no transparency enabled in those screenies.

Has me thinking that the trick is, like vista to offload the rendering to the graphics card. Like Vista does.

So I think if I can get my hands on the Avalon SDK I will try that. It no longer is a DL on Microsoft's site, and it has changed names apparently. So tracking it down is not going to be easy.

I do not have all of my stuff here, or I would just install a version of XP I have that is pre tweaked. To test out the transparency stuff.

Also just finished D'Ling windowblinds and a Vista UI to see if that works, although I do not expect it too, based on the verification screenshots I saw at hwbot.

EDIT: Also going to try out Avivo and ATI stream SDK and see what they do.

EDIT EDIT: Okay MS styles improved the score a little bit (about 20w/s) installed Avivo and ran it again. jumped to 790w/s. Ran it again and scored over 1000w/s...

wonderif I am on the right track or the test just needs to be run 20 time to get 10,000 in xp lol

[karmakazi]

You definately making progress!

I found another potential tweak. I was testing it for superpi but it actually made times worse (compared to just killing explorer shell altogether). Its a replacement for the explorer shell of windows. I was using LiteShell but there are many variants that have different features. Unfortuantely I dont have alot of spare time right now to test things, due to making 2 websites and some other crap. I have no idea if it would affect pcmark though. Just do a google search for explorer shell replacement or go here (http://shell-shocked.org/)

[G H Z]

EDIT EDIT: Okay MS styles improved the score a little bit (about 20w/s) installed Avivo and ran it again. jumped to 790w/s. Ran it again and scored over 1000w/s...

wonderif I am on the right track or the test just needs to be run 20 time to get 10,000 in xp lol

You're definitely making progress :thumbsup:

I'll be watching to see where you end up, this has been bugging me for a while too.

[Neuromancer]

Yah took a break due to some RL complications.

Gotta get the rest of my stuff over to the new place before I can do more testing (everything is on the HTPC/File Server) I am afraid of borking this test with Aero transformation packs and such

Tried windowsblinds but the trial does not enable transparency and such. And my usual means of evaluating software was not helping me get around this limitation.


Still I do not think that transparency is the issue. The issue is that Vista runs the desktop on the GPU. If there is an "aero" shell for XP, it will solve the problem.

Liteshell mentioned earlier may be on the right track, I plated around with Aston Desktop before, and see they have a few products out now. I will try and look into alternative software tomorrow.

[Neuromancer]

Oh crap think I just figured it out... just hit me out of nowhere :)

Will try it out tomorrow, logically it should not work, but who said logic ever pertained to benching :p

[dinos22]

Oh crap think I just figured it out... just hit me out of nowhere :)

Will try it out tomorrow, logically it should not work, but who said logic ever pertained to benching :p

...please dont tell me you were taking a shower when it clicked :laughing: j/k

[Neuromancer]

ugh forgot what it was :(

and no was not in the shower lol

[dinos22]

u forgot what it was :Dizzy: how old are you 80? lol

[Neuromancer]

LOL No just freakin tired as hell.

I stopped thinking about it and popped into my head.


Will not be able to test it out right now. Should be finishing up my desk tomorrow. Will have my main rig up and running by then. MY bench rig might be going to eBay though, as a guy on ocf offered to walk over to microcenter for me, and pick up a 920 for me. :D

I blame OCA gladiators for just increasing this HW junkie issue I have.



Anywho. The idea I had was, with Virtualization tech taking new steps every day, I was thinking there might be a way to run a PC that has two videocards installed. Vista or 7 as host OS. Run XP in a VM with the primary card disabled (so it only sees one) but, because the host OS is still 3d powered GUI, even though the guest OS is not, the power of virtualization would take advantage of it.

As I said, logically it would not make sense. And I am not sure that VT works on GPUs yet, but maybe....

When I have time I will test it out. Short of that the only other thing I can think is people were experimenting with DX10 on XP back when Vista came out. Maybe running one of those applications would help Transparent windows.


I tried Windows Blinds but the trial does not allow transparency effects. (and the *ahem other method I tried failed, have not looked for another DL yet)

[dinos22]

lol can i give you some advice
give up and start using vista hahahah

[Kal-EL]

Never give up, never surrender fight12

[Neuromancer]

lol can i give you some advice
give up and start using vista hahahah

Thanks for the pep talk.

I love when people say something is impossible with computers :) It inspires me.

All I have left to do, is finish building the motherboard tray for my desk, assemble the drawer and stain and poly the top before I can take a break and devote some time to benching and tweaking. Will put this on my short list :)

EDIT: For the record, I love Vista, and I am not doing this because I do not want to install it :) Just doing it to help grab a few more boints with my 550 before I axe it.

[dinos22]

reverse psychology anyone :D:D:D

[spfoam1]

I just noticed this "The Difference between ASUS and ASS is U"

:rofl