GfxBench2D the First Release

Posted by Hans de Ruiter

Welcome to yet another development log. This post marks the first release of the GfxBench2D benchmark tool, and the corresponding web application (web-app). The benchmark tool tests the performance of graphics cards for a range of different operations, and (optionally) uploads the results to this website for display. While it is still a work-in-progress (isn't most software?), it has reached a point at which it is useful.

The original idea for this project was a result of my Radeon HD driver for AmigaOS 4.x project. Graphics card driver writers are particularly interested in how fast the graphics card can perform operations. So, I started writing a 2D graphics benchmarking tool so that I could measure performance, identify any areas that need work, and monitor progress as the driver is developed further. This helped me track down the PCI-to-PCI bridge initialisation problem that was seriously hampering performance on Sam440 machines (you will find details about this here, on the last paragraph in the section called "The Long Road to Here").

While the early version of the benchmarking tool was helpful, collating results and generating graphs manually was rather tedious and time consuming. I wanted to get results from more graphics cards, and others were asking for benchmark results too. So, I thought about how I could automate the process and enable other people to send results quickly, and the GfxBench2D web-app was born. A web-API was developed to upload results, and an upload client was added to the benchmark tool. At this point I also added the tests that I still wanted it to perform.

As mentioned earlier, this is still a work-in-progress. In particular, there are more features that I would like to add to the website for displaying and comparing results. It is also planned to port the benchmarking tool to other operating systems too. In the meantime, I invite you to check out the results that have already been submitted, and/or download the benchmarking tool to try out on your own machines (AmigaOS 4.x only at the time of writing).

Comments (0) | 18 June 2011