Phoronix Test Suite 2.8 Beta 2 Is Shining

The second beta release of Phoronix Test Suite 2.8 (a.k.a. Torsken), which may also serve as the last development milestone, is now available. This release brings GTK2 GUI improvements, various bug-fixes, a new OpenGL 3.2 and OpenCL benchmark, and a new multi-threaded path tracing benchmark.

Phoronix Test Suite 2.8 Beta 2 offers up various bug-fixes and addresses some regressions introduced by preemptive Phoronix Test Suite 3.0 changes found internally within pts-core. For those using the GTK2 GUI rather than the command-line interface or one of the remote solutions like Phoromatic, this user-interface is back to working and in a ready state for Torsken.

Joining the 130+ test profiles already found within the Phoronix Test Suite are the new smallpt and gluxmark test profiles. SmallPT is a lightweight, multi-threaded path tracing benchmark that joins C-Ray, POV-Ray, Sunflow, Yafray, Bwfirt, Tachyon, and other path/ray-tracing tests we already support. What makes SmallPT unique is its different workload and that it's written in less than 100 lines of C++ code.

The other new test profile implements the Gluxmark 2 benchmark. Gluxmark 2 is an open-source, multi-platform test that uses OpenGL 3.2 and OpenCL for testing the system. Gluxmark 2 supports testing the graphics card's fill-rate, fragment shader, geometry shader, vertex shader, complex, and compute/GPGPU tests.

Try out Phoronix Test Suite 2.8 "Torsken" Beta 2 on Linux, Windows, Mac OS X, BSD, and OpenSolaris systems by downloading it here and then sharing your feedback on the release either via the mailing list or forums.

If all goes well this will be the final development milestone of Phoronix Test Suite 2.8 and the official, stable release may be out as soon as next week. After that, it's time to really start getting excited about Phoronix Test Suite 3.0 and the revolutionary changes it will provide for those interested in performance benchmarking, system profiling, automated testing, unit testing, and many other areas.

Phoronix Test Suite 2.8 Beta 2
August 18, 2010

- pts-core: Fix regression in analyze-batch that led to producing unexpected results
- pts-core: GTK2 GUI regression fixes
- pts-core: Various core regression fixes
- pts-core: Clean out parts of the API that are redundant and will be with PTS3
- pts-core: Automatically increase the test run count if at least one test run successfully ran, but at least one test run failed
- pts-core: Add lib3ds external dependency for providing AutoDesk 3DS file support
- pts-core: Add gmp-library external dependency for providing the GNU Multiple Precision Arithmetic Library
- pts-core: Fix for a smaller panel resolution being reported when using NVIDIA's TwinView
- pts: Update build-imagemagick test profile due to old download links that failed, now at ImageMagick 6.6.3
- pts: Add smallpt test profile as a lightweight, multi-threaded path tracing benchmark
- pts: Add gluxmark test profile for the gluxMark OpenGL 3.2 / OpenCL benchmark