Bringing Open-Source, Automated Benchmarks To Windows 10 / Windows Server 2016
Moving forward the Phoronix Test Suite will be offering Microsoft Windows support that's at near feature parity to the automated, reproducible, open-source benchmarking support we have offered the past decade for Linux as well as BSD, macOS, and Solaris platforms. This is brand new, rewritten Windows support with a focus on Windows 10 x64 and Windows Server 2016.
Back around the Windows 7 days I did the basic port of the Phoronix Test Suite to Win 7 x64 but it wasn't anywhere close to parity with the software when running on Linux or even BSD/Solaris/macOS, but was basically a hobby port. I would use it when wanting to run a few OpenGL Windows vs. Linux gaming benchmarks or so, but it only offered a handful of these basic OpenGL test profiles, the hardware/software detection was quite basic, and there were many other features not available compared to when running the Phoronix Test Suite on other supported operating systems.
That's now changing with the upcoming Phoronix Test Suite 8.0 having completely rewritten Windows support that is much better positioned and for the stable 8.0 release is production-ready for enterprise use-cases. An enterprise user of the Phoronix Test Suite happy with it on Linux has been seeking that same level of benchmarking support on Windows to now make this new port possible for offering open-source, freely-distributable, fully-automated benchmarking for a variety of interesting use-cases.
While this port remains a work-in-progress, with the latest Git code now for Phoronix Test Suite 8.0 development it's long enough that it's in an alpha/beta state and now comfortable mentioning it on Phoronix for anyone else that may be interested in some early Windows testing... But the Windows port as well as the number of available test profiles will continue to be improved over the days and weeks ahead. So if you fetch Phoronix Test Suite 8.0 now, make sure you are tracking its Git tip.
This Windows support is focused on Windows 10 and Windows Server 2016. Windows Server 2012 and Windows 8 may also largely work, but is just not officially supported and there may be some hiccups when it comes to software/hardware detection or other non-core functionality not working exactly right.
The Phoronix Test Suite on Windows should behave largely the same as on Linux/BSD/macOS of focusing on automating the start-up process as much as possible from start to finish, allowing side-by-side, fully-reproducible comparisons.
The software/hardware detection should be similar to the reporting abilities under Windows. Though with all the different drivers and hardware components out there, if you find your system configuration reporting some odd hardware/software data, please be sure to report it.
For new users, it should be just a matter of git clone https://github.com/phoronix-test-suite/phoronix-test-suite.git (or downloading the zip snapshot from GitHub; once PTS 8.0 is available you can grab it from the official site) and then from PowerShell cd phoronix-test-suite and run .\phoronix-test-suite benchmark fio or .\phoronix-test-suite system-info or any of the other of dozens of possible commands... Assuming no network/proxy issues, the Phoronix Test Suite will attempt to setup the dependencies needed to run itself followed by any necessary external dependencies for running tests like Python, PHP, etc. The Phoronix Test Suite on Windows relies upon Cygwin for its more complete Bash interpreter than our old "PhoroScript" parser for allowing many cross-platform test profile scripts for setting up a directory for testing, etc.