Kevin Boey's Blog
Kevin Boey male Writer
Loves cameras, gadgets, geek toys and cars. Still writes proper sentences in SMSes, hates to ride at the back of buses.
The boys at Futuremark are constantly on the ball with their benchmarking products. With the announcement of Microsoft's newest impending operating system, Windows 8, they have also revealed that a benchmark to suit the ecosystem is in the works. With the working title 3DMark for Windows 8, this benchmark promises to be a groundbreaking tool in gauging system performance not only because of the new features found in Windows 8, but also because of the variety of products on which the OS is slated to ship on.
That difference is pretty staggering, knowing how Futuremark has the task of building a universal benchmark for several architectures across three form factors namely tablets, notebooks and desktops. For desktops and notebooks, ensuring that a industry-standard benchmark runs fine on all x86 processor brands is standard enough, but throw in the ARM-based architecture of future Windows 8 tablets and it gets tricky. The company quotes that the benchmark is designed to be used in all Windows environments, both in the Metro UI as well as classic Windows and offers new real-time scenes for all levels of hardware.
Of course, the goal for now is still on grading gaming performance, meaning that the benchmark is meant for stress-testing the various GPUs available on each package, but the bottomline is this: be prepared to see a myriad of scores across all platforms as mobile processing units go head-to-head against desktop-based, multiple-card solutions. Interesting times will definitely ensue. Whatever the future holds, you may want to wait till 2012 finally rears its head and Windows 8 devices start to populate the shelves. We are waiting in anticipation for this new multi-device platform and see what the future holds as much as you enthusiasts are waiting to see how your machines perform. Rest assured, there will definitely be a benchmark when that happens.
