Last week, a member of the tech press let us know that they encountered an error while preparing a system for HDXPRT 4 testing. Specifically, while attempting to install the trial version of Adobe Photoshop Elements (PSE) 2020, they encountered the following error:
Update Required
Your browser or operating system is no longer supported. You may need to install the latest updates to your operating system.
They were working with
an MSI Sword 15 A12UE, which had all the latest Windows 11 and Microsoft Edge
updates, and they were able to complete installation and testing on other
Windows 11 systems in their lab. This eliminates compatibility between the
Adobe PSE 2020 installer package and Windows 11 or Microsoft Edge as the issue.
We do not have the
same MSI Sword system in our lab, but we tried to replicate the issue by performing
the HDXPRT 4 installation and setup process on a Dell G7 15 laptop running on
an up-to-date version of Windows 11 (22H2, 22621.521). We successfully installed
Adobe PSE 2020 and completed several HDXPRT 4 iterations.
The error this user
encountered could be specific to their system or situation. However, we would
like to know if other HDXPRT 4 users have run into the same issue. If you’ve experienced
this issue in your testing, please contact us.
We may be able to identify and publish a solution.
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!
During
some recent internal WebXPRT 4 Preview
testing, we discovered that the WebXPRT 4 Preview does not run in Internet
Explorer (IE) 11. In fact, before the first workload begins in IE, the WebXPRT
4 built-in WebAssembly (WASM) check fails and produces an error message.
The
reason we haven’t tested WebXPRT 4 on IE 11 before now is that Internet
Explorer is currently in its end-of-life phase. Microsoft has been removing
support for IE 11 in Microsoft 365 and other apps for some time, they did not
include the desktop version of IE 11 in Windows 11, and they are removing support for IE 11
in Windows 10 on June 15, 2022. Among Windows users, the most popular browsers
are now Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome, and Mozilla Firefox.
We’re
proud that WebXPRT has historically had broad, cross-platform compatibility in
almost any browser. However, the modern web is rapidly incorporating powerful
tools such as WASM that do not work in older legacy browsers. To maintain the
benchmark’s relevance in future years, we need to deprioritize some level of
legacy compatibility, and this begins with WebXPRT 4 release.
For
the WebXPRT testers who wish to continue testing with IE 11, WebXPRT 3 will remain
on our site for the foreseeable future. Barring any further changes from
Microsoft, the benchmark should continue to run in existing instances of the Internet
Explorer desktop app.
The official WebXPRT 4 launch is approaching, and we hope to announce the release date within the next few weeks! Until that time, we will continue to share the latest updates here in the blog. If you have any questions or comments about WebXPRT 4 or compatibility with legacy browsers, please feel free to contact us!
People choose a default web browser based on several factors.
Speed is sometimes the deciding factor, but privacy settings, memory load,
ecosystem integration, and web app capabilities can also come into play.
Regardless of the motivations behind a person’s go-to browser choice, the
dominance of software-as-a-service (SaaS) computing means that new updates are
always right around the corner. In previous blog posts, we’ve talked about how browser speed can increase
or decrease significantly after an update, only to swing back in the other
direction shortly thereafter. OS-specific optimizations can also affect
performance, such as with Microsoft Edge on Windows and Google Chrome on Chrome
OS.
Windows 11 began rolling out earlier this month, and tech press outlets
such as AnandTech and PCWorld have used WebXPRT
3 to evaluate the impact of the new OS—or
specific settings in the OS—on browser performance. Our own in-house tests, which
we discuss below, show a negligible impact on browser performance when updating
our test system from Windows 10 to Windows 11. It’s important to note that depending
on a system’s hardware setup, the impact might be more significant in certain
scenarios. For more information about such scenarios, we encourage you to read the
PCWorld article discussing the impact of the Windows 11 default virtualization-based
security (VBS) settings on
browser performance in some instances.
In our comparison tests, we used a Dell
XPS 13 7930 with an Intel
Core i3-10110U processor and 4 GB of RAM. For the Windows 10 tests, we used a
clean Windows 10 Home image updated to version 20H2 (19042.1165). For the
Windows 11 tests, we updated the system to Windows 11 Home version 21H2 (22000.282).
On each OS version, we ran WebXPRT 3 three times on the latest versions of five
browsers: Brave, Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox, and Opera. For
each browser, the score we post below is the median of the three test runs.
In our last
round of tests on Windows 10, Firefox was the clear winner. Three of the
Chromium-based browsers (Chrome, Edge, and Opera) produced very close scores,
and the performance of Brave lagged by about 7 percent. In this round of
Windows 10 testing, performance on every browser improved slightly, with Google
Chrome taking a slight lead over Firefox.
In our Windows 11 testing, we were interested to find that without exception, browser scores were slightly lower than in Windows 10 testing. However, none of the decreases were statistically significant. Most users performing daily tasks are unlikely to notice that degree of difference.
Have you observed any significant differences in WebXPRT 3 scores
after upgrading to Windows 11? If so, let us know!
During
recent Windows 11 HDXPRT 4 compatibility testing,
we noticed that Adobe now requires a user ID to download the free Adobe
Photoshop Elements 2020 trial. Previously, testers could download the trial
without setting up an account. While setting up an Adobe account is free, this
change might inconvenience some HDXPRT 4 testers. Unfortunately, we don’t
currently know of a way around it. We apologize for the hassle!
Last week, we discussed the upcoming Windows 11 GA launch on October 5, and our hope is that the transition period from Windows 10 to Windows 11 will go smoothly for the three XPRTs that run on Windows 10, HDXPRT 4, TouchXPRT 2016, and AIXPRT. We’re happy to report that so far, we’ve been able to install HDXPRT 4 and TouchXPRT 2016 on the latest stable preview of Windows 11 without any problems. For TouchXPRT 2016, we successfully installed the benchmark using both available methods—directly from the Microsoft Store and through the manual sideload process—and ran it without issues.
We’re
still testing Windows 11 compatibility with the AIXPRT OpenVINO, TensorFlow,
and TensorRT test packages, and will share our findings here in the blog as
soon as possible. Also, because Microsoft might still publish through the
stable preview channel Windows 11 changes that interfere with the HDXPRT 4 or
TouchXPRT 2016 installation or testing processes, we’ll continue to verify each
benchmark’s Windows 11 compatibility up through and beyond launch day.
If
you’re conducting your own HDXPRT 4, TouchXPRT 2016, or AIXPRT testing on the
Windows 11 beta, you could encounter issues with newly published updates before
we do due to the timing of our update cycles. You could also run into problems
that are specific to your test gear. In either case, please don’t assume that
we already know about the problem. Let us know!
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