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Category: History of benchmarking

Celebrating 10 years of WebXPRT!

Justin Greene
By Justin Greene
on March 30, 2023

We’re excited to announce that it’s been 10 years since the initial launch of WebXPRT! In early 2013, we introduced WebXPRT as a unique browser performance benchmark in a market space that was already crowded with a variety of specialized measurement tools. Our goal was to offer a benchmark that could compare the performance of almost any web-enabled device, using scenarios created to mirror real-world tasks. We wanted it to be a free, easily accessible, easy-to-run, useful, and appealing testing option for OEM labs, vendors, and the tech press.

When we look back on the last 10 years of WebXPRT, we can’t help but conclude that our efforts have been successful. Since those early days, the WebXPRT market presence has grown from humble beginnings into a worldwide industry standard. Hundreds of tech press publications have used WebXPRT in thousands of articles and reviews, and testers have now run the benchmark well over 1.1 million times.

Below, I’ve listed some of the WebXPRT team’s accomplishments over the last decade. If you’ve been following WebXPRT from the beginning, this may all be familiar, but if you’re new to the  community, it may be interesting to see some of the steps that contributed to making WebXPRT what it is today.

In future blog posts, we’ll look at how the number of WebXPRT runs has grown over time, and how WebXPRT use has grown among OEMs, vendors, and the tech press worldwide. Do you have any thoughts that you’d like to share from your WebXPRT testing experience? If so, let us know!

Justin

Posted in benchmark, Benchmarking, BenchmarkXPRT, Browser-based benchmarks, Cross-platform benchmarks, German, History of benchmarking, JavaScript, Performance benchmarking, results, Simplified Chinese, tech press, WebAssembly, WebXPRT, WebXPRT 2013, WebXPRT 2015, WebXPRT 3, WebXPRT 4, WebXPRT Processor Comparison Chart, White papers | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , |

Looking forward to an important WebXPRT milestone

Justin Greene
By Justin Greene
on December 1, 2022

February 28, 2013 was a momentous day for the BenchmarkXPRT Development Community. On that day, we published a press release announcing the official launch of the first version of the WebXPRT benchmark, WebXPRT 2013. As difficult as it is for us to believe, the 10-year anniversary of the initial WebXPRT launch is in just a few short months!

We introduced WebXPRT as a truly unique browser performance benchmark in a field that was already crowded with a variety of measurement tools. Since those early days, the WebXPRT market presence has grown from a small foothold into a worldwide industry standard. Over the years, hundreds of tech press publications have used WebXPRT in thousands of articles and reviews, and the WebXPRT completed-runs counter rolled over the 1,000,000-run mark.

New web technologies are continually changing the way we use the web, and browser-performance benchmarks should evaluate how well new devices handle the web of today, not the web of several years ago. While some organizations have stopped development for other browser performance benchmarks, we’ve had the opportunity to continue updating and refining WebXPRT. We can look back at each of the four major iterations of the benchmark—WebXPRT 2013, WebXPRT 2015, WebXPRT 3, and WebXPRT 4—and see a consistent philosophy and shared technical lineage contributing to a product that has steadily improved.

As we get closer to the 10-year anniversary of WebXPRT next year, we’ll be sharing more insights about its reach and impact on the industry, discussing possible future plans for the benchmark, and announcing some fun anniversary-related opportunities for WebXPRT users. We think 2023 will be the best year yet for WebXPRT!

Justin

Posted in benchmark, Benchmark metrics, Benchmarking, BenchmarkXPRT, BenchmarkXPRT development community, Browser-based benchmarks, Collaborative benchmark development, Cross-platform benchmarks, Future of performance evaluation, History of benchmarking, Performance benchmarking, Web-based testing, WebXPRT, WebXPRT 2013, WebXPRT 2015, WebXPRT 3, WebXPRT 4 | Tagged , , , , , , , , |

HDXPRT: See how your Windows PC handles real-world media tasks

Justin Greene
By Justin Greene
on May 26, 2022

Many of our blog readers first encountered the XPRTs when reading about a specific benchmark, such as WebXPRT, in a device review. Because these folks might be unfamiliar with our other benchmarks, we like to occasionally “reintroduce” individual XPRTs. This week, we invite you to get to know HDXPRT.

HDXPRT, which stands for High-Definition Experience & Performance Ratings Test, was the first benchmark published by the HDXPRT Development Community, which later became the BenchmarkXPRT Development Community. HDXPRT 4, the latest version, evaluates the performance of Windows 10 and Windows 11 devices while handling real-world media tasks such as photo editing, video conversion, and music editing. HDXPRT uses real commercial applications, such Photoshop and MediaEspresso, to complete its workloads. The benchmark then produces easy-to-understand results that are relevant to buyers shopping for new Windows systems.

The HDXPRT 4 setup process takes about 30 minutes on most systems. The length of the test can vary significantly depending on the speed of the system, but for most PCs that are less than a few years old, a full three-iteration test cycle takes under two hours.

HDXPRT is a useful tool for anyone who wants to evaluate the real-world, content-creation capabilities of a Windows PC. To see test scores from a variety of Windows devices, go to HDXPRT.com and click View Results.

Want to run HDXPRT?

Download HDXPRT from HDXPRT.com. The HDXPRT user manual provides information on minimum system requirements, as well as step-by-step instructions for configuring your system and kicking off a test.

Want to dig into the details?

The HDXPRT source code is available upon request. If you’d like to access the source code, please send your request to benchmarkxprtsupport@principledtechnologies.com. Build instructions are also available.

If you haven’t used HDXPRT before, give it a shot and let us know what you think!

Justin

Posted in Adobe Photoshop, benchmark, Benchmark metrics, BenchmarkXPRT, BenchmarkXPRT development community, HDXPRT, HDXPRT 4, HDXPRT capabilities, History of benchmarking, MediaEspresso, Performance benchmarking, WebXPRT, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 11 | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , |

A huge milestone for XPRT runs and downloads!

Justin Greene
By Justin Greene
on July 1, 2021

We’re excited to have recently passed an important milestone: one million XPRT runs and downloads! Most importantly, that huge number does not just reflect past successes. As the chart below illustrates, XPRT use has grown steadily over the years. In 2021, we record, on average, more XPRT runs in one month (23,395) than we recorded in the entire first year we started tracking these stats (17,051).

We reached one million runs and downloads in about seven and a half years. At the current rate, we’ll reach two million in roughly three and a half more years. With WebXPRT 4 on the way, there’s a good chance we can reach that mark even sooner!

As always, we’re grateful for all the testers that have helped us reach this milestone. If you have any questions or comments about using any of the XPRTs to test your gear, let us know!

Justin

Posted in benchmark, Benchmarking, BenchmarkXPRT, BenchmarkXPRT development community, History of benchmarking, WebXPRT, webxprt 4 | Tagged , , , , , |

Adapting to a changing tech landscape

Justin Greene
By Justin Greene
on April 23, 2020

The BenchmarkXPRT Development Community started almost 10 years ago with the development of the High Definition Experience & Performance Ratings Test, also known as HDXPRT. Back then, we distributed the benchmark to interested parties by mailing out physical DVDs. We’ve come a long way since then, as testers now freely and easily access six XPRT benchmarks from our site and major app stores.

Developers, hardware manufacturers, and tech journalists—the core group of XPRT testers—work within a constantly changing tech landscape. Because of our commitment to providing those testers with what they need, the XPRTs grew as we developed additional benchmarks to expand the reach of our tools from PCs to servers and all types of notebooks, Chromebooks, and mobile devices.

As today’s tech landscape continues to evolve at a rapid pace, our desire to play an active role in emerging markets continues to drive us to expand our testing capabilities into areas like machine learning (AIXPRT) and cloud-first applications (CloudXPRT). While these new technologies carry the potential to increase efficiency, improve quality, and boost the bottom line for companies around the world, it’s often difficult to decide where and how to invest in new hardware or services. The ever-present need for relevant and reliable data is the reason many organizations use the XPRTs to help make confident choices about their company’s future tech.

We just released a new video that helps to explain what the XPRTs provide and how they can play an important role in a company’s tech purchasing decisions. We hope you’ll check it out!

We’re excited about the continued growth of the XPRTs, and we’re eager to meet the challenges of adapting to the changing tech landscape. If you have any questions about the XPRTs or suggestions for future benchmarks, please let us know!

Justin

Posted in AI, AIXPRT, benchmark, Benchmarking, BenchmarkXPRT, BenchmarkXPRT development community, Chromebooks, Cloud, CloudXPRT, Collaborative benchmark development, Future of performance evaluation, HDXPRT, History of benchmarking, Performance benchmarking | Tagged , , , , , , |

Experience is the best teacher

Eric Hale
By Eric Hale
on February 16, 2017

One of the core principles that guides the design of the XPRT tools is they should reflect the way real-world users use their devices. The XPRTs try to use applications and workloads that reflect what users do and the way that real applications function. How did we learn how important this is? The hard way—by making mistakes! Here’s one example.

In the 1990s, I was Director of Testing for the Ziff-Davis Benchmark Operation (ZDBOp). The benchmarks ZDBOp created for its technical magazines became the industry standards, because of both their quality and Ziff-Davis’ leadership in the technical trade press.

WebBench, one of the benchmarks ZDBOp developed, measured the performance of early web servers. We worked hard to create a tool that used physical clients and tested web server performance over an actual network. However, we didn’t pay enough attention to how clients actually interacted with the servers. In the first version of WebBench, the clients opened connections to the server, did a small amount of work, closed the connections, and then opened new ones.

When we met with vendors after the release of WebBench, they begged us to change the model. At that time, browsers opened relatively long-lived connections and did lots of work before closing them. Our model was almost the opposite of that. It put vendors in the position of having to choose between coding to give their users good performance and coding to get good WebBench results.

Of course, we were horrified by this, and worked hard to make the next version of the benchmark reflect more closely the way real browsers interacted with web servers. Subsequent versions of WebBench were much better received.

This is one of the roots from which the XPRT philosophy grew. We have tried to learn and grow from the mistakes we’ve made. We’d love to hear about any of your experiences with performance tools so we can all learn together.

Eric

Posted in Application-based benchmarks, Benchmark metrics, Benchmarking, BenchmarkXPRT development community, History of benchmarking, Performance benchmarking, What makes a good benchmark? |

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