Primate Labs, the developer behind the popular Geekbench benchmarking suite, has launched Geekbench AI—a comprehensive benchmark tool designed to measure the artificial intelligence capabilities of various devices. Geekbench AI, previously known as Geekbench ML during its preview phase, has now reached version 1.0. The benchmark is available on multiple operating systems, including Windows, Linux, macOS, Android, and iOS, making it accessible to many users and developers. One of Geekbench AI's key features is its multifaceted approach to scoring. The benchmark utilizes three distinct precision levels: single-precision, half-precision, and quantized data. This evaluation aims to provide a more accurate representation of AI performance across different hardware designs.

In addition to speed, Geekbench AI places a strong emphasis on accuracy. The benchmark assesses how closely each test's output matches the expected results, offering insights into the trade-offs between performance and precision. The release of Geekbench AI 1.0 brings support for new frameworks, including OpenVINO, ONNX, and Qualcomm QNN, expanding its compatibility across various platforms. Primate Labs has also implemented measures to ensure fair comparisons, such as enforcing minimum runtime durations for each workload. The company noted that Samsung and NVIDIA are already utilizing the software to measure their chip performance in-house, showing that adoption is already strong. While the benchmark provides valuable insights, real-world AI applications are still limited, and reliance on a few benchmarks may paint a partial picture. Nevertheless, Geekbench AI represents a significant step forward in standardizing AI performance measurement, potentially influencing future consumer choices in the AI-driven tech market. Results from the benchmark runs can be seen here.

Game Science, the developer behind the highly anticipated action RPG "Black Myth: Wukong," has released a free benchmark tool on Steam for its upcoming game. This standalone application, separate from the main game, allows PC users to evaluate their hardware performance and system compatibility in preparation for the game's launch. The "Black Myth: Wukong Benchmark Tool" offers a unique glimpse into the game's visuals by rendering a real-time in-game sequence. While not playable, it provides valuable insights into how well a user's system will handle the game's demanding graphics and performance requirements. One of the tool's standout features is its customization options. Users can tweak various graphics settings to preview the game's visuals and performance under different configurations. This flexibility allows gamers to find the optimal balance between visual fidelity and smooth gameplay for their specific hardware setup.

However, Game Science has cautioned that due to the complexity and variability of gaming scenarios, the benchmark results may not fully represent the final gaming experience. This caveat shows the tool's role as a guide rather than a definitive measure of performance. The benchmark tool's system requirements offer a clear picture of the hardware needed to run "Black Myth: Wukong." At a minimum, users will need a Windows 10 system with an Intel Core i5-8400 or AMD Ryzen 5 1600 processor, 16 GB of RAM, and either an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 6 GB or AMD Radeon RX 580 8 GB graphics card. For an optimal experience, the recommended specifications include an Intel Core i7-9700 or AMD Ryzen 5 5500 processor and an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060, AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT, or Intel Arc A750 graphics card. Interestingly, the benchmark tool supports DLSS, FSR, and XeSS technologies, indicating that the final game will likely include these performance-enhancing features. The developers also strongly recommend using an SSD for storage.

G.SKILL International Enterprise Co., Ltd., the world's leading brand of performance overclock memory and PC components, is pleased to announce that CENS from Germany won the title of OC Champion in the 8th Annual OC World Cup 2024 overclocking competition. After a grueling day of extreme overclocking with liquid nitrogen cooling, using the latest Intel Core i9-14900KF processor and ASUS ROG Maximus Z790 Apex Encore motherboard, CENS is walking away with the grand cash prize of $10,000 USD!

After the first 3 days of exhausting extreme overclocking in the Live Qualifier Stage of the OC World Cup 2024, biso biso, CENS, and Seby qualified for the Grand Final Stage on June 7. The Grand Final round is comprised of a maximum memory frequency challenge and 3 benchmarks with CPU speed fixed at a maximum of 7 GHz, demonstrating the incredible capability of the latest 14th Gen Intel Core processors and the extraordinary overclock skills of each OC World Cup 2024 Grand Final contestant.

Zhaoxin finally released its oft-delayed KX-7000 CPU series last December—the Chinese manufacturer claimed that its latest "Century Avenue Core" uArch consumer/desktop-oriented range was designed to "deliver double the performance of previous generations." Freshly discovered Geekbench 6.2.2 results indicate that Zhaoxin has succeeded on that front—Wccftech has pored over these figures, generated by an: "entry-level Zhaoxin KX-7000 CPU which has 8 cores, 8 threads, 4 MB of L2, and 32 MB of L3 cache. This chip was running at a base clock of 3.0 GHz and a boost clock of 3.3 GHz which is below its standard 3.6 GHz boost profile."

The new candidate was compared to Zhaoxin's previous-gen KX-U6780A and KX-6000G models. Intel's Core i3-10100F processor was thrown in as a familiar Western point of reference. The KX-7000 scored: "823 points in single-core, and 3813 points in multi-core tests. For comparisons, the Intel's Comet Lake CPU with 4 cores and 8 threads plus a boost of up to 4.3 GHz offers a much higher score. It's around 75% faster in single and 17% faster in multi-core tests within the same benchmark." The higher clock speeds, doubled core counts and TDPs do deliver "twice the performance" when compared to direct forebears—mission accomplished there. It is clear that Zhaoxin's latest CPU architecture cannot keep up with a generations old Team Blue design. Loongson's 3A6000 processor is a very promising prospect—reports suggest that this chip is somewhat comparable to mainstream AMD Zen 4 and Intel Raptor Lake products.

The Moore Threads MTT S80 first attracted wider media attention last summer due to it being introduced as the world's first PCIe Gen 5 gaming graphics card. Unfortunately, its performance prowess in gaming benchmarks did not match early expectations, especially for a 200 W TDP-rated unit with 4096 "MUSA" cores. Evaluators discovered that driver issues have limited the full potential of MTT GPUs—it is speculated that Moore Threads has simply repurposed existing PowerVR architecture under their in-house design: "Chunxaio." The Chinese firm has concentrated on driver improvements in the interim—mid-February experimentations indicated 100% performance boosts for MTT S80 and S70 discrete GPUs courtesy of driver version 240.90. Germany's ComputerBase managed to import Moore Threads MTT S80 and S30 models for testing purposes—in an effort to corroborate recently published performance figures, as disclosed by Asian review outlets.

The Moore Thread MTT S80—discounted down to $164 last October—was likely designed with MMO gamers in mind. VideoCardz (based on ComputerBase findings) discussed the card's struggles when weighed against Team Red's modern day integrated solutions: "S80 falls short when compared to the Ryzen 5 8600G, featuring the Radeon 760M iGPU with RDNA 3 graphics. A geometric mean across various titles reveals the S80's lag, but there are exceptions, like DOTA 2, where it takes the lead in framerate. It's clear that MTT GPUs (have a) less emphasized focus on supporting AAA titles." ComputerBase confirmed that DirectX 12 API support is still lacking, meaning that many popular Western games titles remain untested on the Moore Threads MTT S80 graphics card. The freshly launched entry-level MTT S30 card produced "1/4 of the performance" when compared to its flagship sibling.

FurMark's development team, Geeks3D, seems to be relieved after work was completed on version 2.1.0's public release—according to release notes: "It took me more time than expected but it's there!" The Beta version was made available back in December 2022 (through Geeks3D's Discord)—a milestone achievement for the Furmark dev team, since no major updates had been implemented since 2007. The GPU stress test and benchmarking tool was improved once again—last August, when the Beta was upgraded to v2.0.10.

Main author, JEGX, provided a little bit of background information: "FurMark 2 is built with GeeXLab. The GUI is a pure GeeXLab application while the furmark command line tool is built with the GeeXLab SDK. GeeXLab being cross-platform, this first version of FurMark 2 is available for Windows and Linux (the Linux 32-bit version is also available, I will re-compile it for the next update). I plan to release FurMark 2 for Raspberry Pi (I just received my Raspberry Pi 5 board!) and maybe for macOS too." He states that feedback is welcome, and requests for OpenGL 2.1 and 3.0/3.1 support will be considered. The full timeline of changelog updates can be found here.

We already know about AMD Ryzen 7 8700G APU's enjoyment of overclocked memory—early reviews demonstrated the graphical benefits granted by fiddling with "iGPU engine clock and the processor's memory frequency." While gamers can enjoy a boosted integrated graphics solution that is comparable in performance 1080p stakes to a discrete Radeon RX 6500 XT GPU, AI enthusiasts are eager to experiment with the "Hawk Point" pat's Radeon 780M IGP and Neural Processing Unit (NPU)—the first generation Ryzen XDNA inference engine can unleash up to 16 AI TOPs. One individual, chi11eddog, posted their findings through social media channels earlier today, coinciding with the official launch of Ryzen 8000G processors. The initial set of results concentrated on the Radeon 780M aspect; NPU-centric data may arrive at a later date.

They performed quick tests on AMD's freshly released Ryzen 7 8700G desktop processor, combined with an MSI B650 Gaming Plus WiFi motherboard and two sticks of 16 GB DDR5-4800 memory. The MSI exclusive "Memory Try It" feature was deployed further up in the tables—this assisted in achieving and gauging several "higher system RAM frequency" settings. Here is chi11eddog's succinct interpretation of benchmark results: "7600 MT/s is 15% faster than 4800 MT/s in UL Procyon AI Inference Benchmark and 4% faster in GIMP with Stable Diffusion." The processor's default memory state is capable of producing 210 Float32 TOPs, according to chi11eddog's inference chart. The 6000 MT/s setting produces a 7% improvement over baseline, while 7200 MT/s drives proceedings to 11%—the flagship APU's Radeon 780M iGPU appears to be quite dependent on bandwidth. Their GIMP w/ Stable Diffusion benchmarks also taxed the integrated RDNA 3 graphics solution—again, it was deemed to be fairly bandwidth hungry.

The 14th Gen Core "Raptor Lake Refresh" desktop CPU lineup was not showcased during Intel Innovation's keynote presentation—instead, upcoming Meteor Lake and Lunar Lake generations were put in the spotlight. We will likely have to wait for an official announcement closer to the expected October 17 launch date of K and KF SKUs. The Core i9-14900KF model has emerged once again, thanks to benchmark results hitting the 'net—Passmark's owner, David Wren, declared on social media: "Yet another high-end CPU has made a significant debut on the single-threaded chart today! While it's not available for purchase yet, the Intel 4th Gen i9-14900KF CPU has claimed the top spot on the chart."

The benched Core i9-14900KF scored 4939 points in PassMark's single-thread test, which surpasses equivalent 13th gen heavyweights: Core i9-13900KS—4769 points and Core i9-13900K—4666 points. Intel's iGPU-less flagship desktop processor now sits at the top of Passmark's single-thread rating table. VideoCardz noted: "It's worth mentioning that the i9-13900KS also boasts a 6.0 GHz clock speed, and the 14900KF achieved this score using relatively modest DDR5-5600 memory." Multi-threaded performance is a tad disappointing—this 14900KF sits about level with the 13900K with an extremely narrow 0.6% difference.

The Geeks3D team has been working quietly on a new version of FurMark, a highly popular benchmarking application as used by many in the enthusiast overclocking community. The GPU stress test and benchmarking tool is set to receive its first major upgrade (public release) since 2007, although a beta version has been made available to download since December 2022—accessible via the Geeks3D Discord group. A late August update had the beta reaching a new milestone in version 2.0.10—fixing various bugs, expanding GPU support and adding more resolution options.

The new version of FurMark supports OpenGL or Vulkan graphics APIs, and its three preset benchmark options include 1080p, 1440p, and 2160p resolutions. Users can also customize parameters for different graphical and resolution settings. A results database is already active, but Tom's Hardware notes that it consists of data submitted by beta users, thus it does not log: "results from the previous version of the app." The development team has teased a loose later this month launch window for FurMark 2.0 in public form.

OneRaichu has conducted a series of Geekbench 6.2 tests on an Intel Core i9-14900KF CPU, very likely a preview sample—his results have arrived for public viewing in the form of three new database entries. The hardware enthusiast (and sometimes leaker) is expected to produce a full review of said flagship Raptor Lake Refresh processor. His evaluation arrives roughly a week after leaked Intel Core i9-14900K processors appearing online, via benchmark results produced in Geekbench 6.1 and CPU-Z. The KF variant is missing an integrated GPU, while its K sibling is likely endowed with a bog standard Intel UHD Graphics 700-series iGPU.

The database entries reveal single-core scores starting at 3322 and going up to 3347 points. Multi-core scores span from 22895 through to 23051 points. A Geekbench 5 result is thrown in for good measure, with achievements of 2412 points in single-core, and 26972 points in multi-core performance. OneRaichu's test build utilized an ASRock Z790 Taichi motherboard and 32 GB of DDR5-7000 memory, his OS of choice appears to be Microsoft Windows 11 (non-Pro) 64-bit. VideoCardz has crunched the numbers: "preliminary benchmarks suggest that the Core i9-14900KF outperforms the i9-13900K by approximately 5-6% in multi-threaded tests and a minimum 12% improvement in single-core performance."

Pre-release Meteor Lake silicon has popped up again thanks to an Intel Corporation Client Platform getting submitted for evaluation through Geekbench 6.1.0. The latest database entry—discovered by Benchleaks—presents yet another Core Ultra 100H mobile CPU series engineering sample. This new candidate could end up being named "Core Ultra 165H" once it hits retail in finalized form. Team Blue seems to be playing around with its naming/identifying schemes ahead of an official unveiling—we hope to see something sensible presented at this month's Innovation event.

The tested Meteor Lake Client Platform featured a Core Ultra 7 1002H CPU mounted on an MTL-P LP5x T4 RVP board, with access to 12 GB of memory. Clock speeds of 3.4 GHz (base) and 4.988 GHz are mentioned on the Geekbench Browser page. A 6 P-Core and 10 E-Core configuration aligns this evaluated sample with the previously leaked Core Ultra 7 165H SKU. It achieved a single-core score of 2439 points in Geekbench 6.1, placing it above previously submitted Meteor Lake samples. The multi-core tally comes in at 12668, which trails slightly behind other compiled scores.

SiMa.ai, the machine learning company delivering solutions for the embedded edge, today announced the results of its second MLPerf submission, outperforming industry ML leader, NVIDIA's Orin NX and AGX Orin in the Closed Edge power category in the MLCommons ML Perf 3.1 benchmark. SiMa.ai participated in the MLPerf Inference 3.1 closed, edge, power division of this benchmarking process, focusing on the image classification benchmark Resnet50. Since the company's prior submission in April 2023, SiMa.ai achieved a 20 percent improvement in its results for Single Stream Resnet50 for performance and power, while exhibiting up to 85 percent greater Resnet50 MultiStream efficiency compared to NVIDIA. With frames per second per watt as the defacto performance standard for edge AI and ML, these results demonstrate SiMa.ai's pushbutton approach drives continued leadership in unrivaled power efficiency that does not compromise performance.

"Outperforming the industry leader not only once, but again for a second time is great validation for our technology. Our team at SiMa.ai will persistently pursue performance per watt leadership and new standards in ease of use for the embedded edge market as part of our core DNA," said Krishna Rangasayee, CEO and founder, SiMa.ai. "We are proud of the SiMa.ai team's leadership in the latest MLPerf benchmark and excited to extend these latest improvements to our customers' real-world needs and use cases."

An alleged Intel Core i9-14900K engineering sample CPU was tested out recently in CPU-Z, with results leaked onto the internet earlier this week—courtesy of wnxod—978 points in single-core and 18117.5 points in multi-core. This particular sample of the flagship Raptor Lake Refresh processor managed to surpass its predecessors quite handily—with 9.7% SC/8.4% MC gains over the i9-13900K (Raptor Lake), and an uplift of 19.4% SC/59% MC over the i9-12900K (Alder Lake). Thanks to the i9-14900K's Thermal Velocity Boost (TVB) capability, it is able to hit a maximum 6.0 GHz clock speed (with P-cores) on 1.385 volts according to the leaked CPU-Z info.

Another example was put through the ringer via Geekbench 6.1.0 on Microsoft Windows 11 Pro 64-bit. The database entry popped up this morning, and several PC hardware news outlets were quick to pounce on the figures. In terms of single core performance, the benched Core i9-14900K achieved a score of 3121—blowing past a previous record holder—3089 set by a Core i9-13900KS CPU. Intel's 14th generation contender looks to be the fastest single-threaded chip out there, despite a less than optimal test system configuration—16 GB of DDR5-4800 memory on a Biostar Z790A-Silver mainboard, with Windows running a balanced power plan. The Core i9-14900K's multi-core score lagged behind its main rival—19032 versus 21678 (respectively). It would be nice to witness some nicer test builds materialize as we get closer to Intel's Innovation September event, and the rumored launch of K-series Raptor Lake Refresh processors around late October.

Maxon, developers of professional software solutions for editors, filmmakers, motion designers, visual effects artists and creators of all types, is thrilled to announce the highly anticipated release of Cinebench 2024. This latest iteration of the industry-standard benchmarking software, which has been a cornerstone in computer performance evaluation for two decades, sets a new standard for performance evaluation, embracing cutting-edge technology to provide artists, designers, and creators with a more accurate and relevant representation of their hardware capabilities.

Redshift Rendering Engine Integration
Cinebench 2024 ushers in a new era by embracing the power of Redshift, Cinema 4D's default rendering engine. Unlike its predecessors, which utilized Cinema 4D's standard renderer, Cinebench 2024 utilizes the same render algorithms across both CPU and GPU implementations. This leap to the Redshift engine ensures that performance testing aligns seamlessly with the demands of modern creative workflows, delivering accurate and consistent results.

Intel decided to drop the relatively new AVX-512 instruction set for laptop/mobile platforms when it was discovered that it would not work in conjunction with their E-core designs. Alder Lake was the last generation to (semi) support these sets thanks to P-cores agreeing to play nice, albeit with the efficiency side of proceedings disabled (via BIOS settings). Intel chose to fuse off AVX-512 support in production circa early 2022, with AMD picking up the slack soon after and working on the integration of AVX-512 into Zen 4 CPU architecture. The Ryzen 7040 series is the only current generation mobile platform that offers AVX-512 support. Phoronix decided to benchmark a Ryzen 7 7840U against older Intel i7-1165G7 (Tiger Lake) and i7-1065G7 (Ice Lake) SoCs in AVX-512-based workloads.

Team Red's debut foray into AVX-512 was surprisingly performant according to Phoronix's test results—the Ryzen 7 7840U did very well for itself. It outperformed the 1165G7 by 46%, and the older 1065G7 by an impressive 63%. The Ryzen 7 APU was found to attain the highest performance gain with AVX-512 enabled—a 54% performance margin over operating with AVX-512 disabled. In comparison Phoronix found that: "the i7-1165G7 Tiger Lake impact came in at 34% with these AVX-512-heavy benchmarks or 35% with the i7-1065G7 Ice Lake SoC for that generation where AVX-512 on Intel laptops became common."

Irdeto is the current owner of Denuvo Software Solutions—the Austrian development team behind the infamous anti-tamper technology and digital rights management (DRM) system. According to Ars Technica neither of these organizations have made great efforts (in the past) to engage in discussion about the controversial anti-piracy and anti-cheat suites—but Steeve Huin, Irdeto's Chief Operating Officer of Video Games—agreed to grant the publication an exclusive interview. The article is titled "Denuvo wants to convince you its DRM isn't evil," which sums up a lot of the public perception regarding Denuvo technologies—having received plenty of flak for high CPU usage and causing excessive activity within storage components. Some users propose that the latter scenario has resulted in shorter lifespans for their solid-state drives. Ars Technica has a long history of Denuvo-related coverage, so a company representative has been sent in for some damage control.

Off the bat, Huin acknowledges that he and his colleagues are aware of Denuvo's reputation: "In the pirating/cracking community, we're seen as evil because we're helping DRM exist and we're ensuring people make money out of games." He considers the technology to be a positive force: "Anti-piracy technologies is to the benefit of the game publishers, [but also] is of benefit to the players in that it protects the [publisher's] investment and it means the publishers can then invest in the next game...But people typically don't think enough of that...Whether people want to believe it or not, we are all gamers, we love gaming, we love being part of it. We develop technologies with the intent to make the industry better and stronger."

We're excited to announce that 3DMark is now also available for purchase in the Epic Games Store from today, June 20, 2023. 3DMark is a computer benchmarking tool for gamers, overclockers and system builders who want to get more out of their hardware. With its wide range of benchmarks, tests and features, 3DMark has everything you need to test the performance of your gaming PC.

When purchasing 3DMark through the Epic Games Store, it includes all current 3DMark GPU and CPU benchmarks released since the application's launch over a decade ago. Our latest GPU benchmark, Speed Way, tests ray-traced gaming performance using the latest DirectX 12 Ultimate API for Windows 10 and Windows 11. 3DMark offers more than just benchmarking tools. Test your system stability with stress tests, explore how new engine technologies affect visuals and performance with interactive mode, or compete for top PC performance with your friends and the 3DMark community as you chase a spot in the 3DMark Hall of Fame.

Capcom has kindly provided a new benchmarking tool for folks who are wondering whether their souped-up PC gaming rigs can run the upcoming seventh (not sixth, despite the title) main entry in the Street Fighter series with aplomb - the testing suite can be downloaded from here. The development team's introductory message states: "The Street Fighter 6 Benchmark Tool monitors gameplay on the Street Fighter 6 demo and calculates a score that indicates your PC's performance. The results of the benchmarking will be shown as follows, with a score of 91 or above demonstrating that your PC can play the game with ease."

The explanation continues: "If your PC does not meet the system requirements needed to run this benchmarking software, it may not launch properly. If that happens, please reconfirm that you satisfy the criteria listed on this page under System Requirements." Street Fighter 6 is arriving this Friday (June 2), so Capcom's benchmarking tool only gives a little bit of advanced notice - an unfortunate few who "cannot operate the game" (with a 0-30 score) will need to make necessary PC upgrades in time for launch day action. Or they could simply buy the bare minimum point of entry on console: a PlayStation 4 Slim or the cheapest current generation system - Xbox Series S.

BAPCo, a non-profit consortium of leading PC hardware manufacturers, released SYSmark 30, the latest generation of the premier PC benchmark that measures and compares system performance using real-world applications and workloads.

The Office Application scenario features updated workloads for popular office suite-style applications. The General Productivity scenario features tasks like web browsing, file compression, and application installation. The new Photo Editing scenarios measure the responsiveness of creative photo management and manipulation usage models. The Advanced Content Creation scenario heavily uses photo and video editing applications, including multitasking.

It appears that one of AMD's partners has a Ryzen 7000 CPU or APU, with integrated graphics up and running in Linux. Based on details leaked, courtesy of the partner testing the chip using the Phoronix Test Suite and submitting the results to the OpenBenchmarking database. The numbers are by no means impressive, suggesting that this engineering sample isn't running at the proper clock speeds. For example, it only scores 63.1 FPS in Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, where a Ryzen 9 6900HX manages 182.1 FPS, where both GPUs have been allocated 512 MB of system memory as the minimum graphics memory allocation.

The integrated GPU goes under the model name of GFX1036, with older integrated RDNA2 GPUs from AMD having been part of the GFX103x series. It's reported to have a clock speed of 2000/1000 MHz, although it's presumably running at the lower of the two clock speeds, if not even slower, as it's only about a third of the speed or slower, than the GPU in the Ryzen 9 6900HX. That said, the GPU in the Ryzen 7000-series is as far as anyone's aware, not really intended for gaming, since it's a very stripped down GPU that is meant to mainly be for desktop use and media usage, so it's possible that it'll never catch up with the current crop of integrated GPUs from AMD. We'll hopefully find out more in less than two weeks time, when AMD has its keynote at Computex.

Today, Chaos Group released V-Ray 5 Benchmark, a free standalone application that lets users quickly test their rendering speeds on any combination of CPUs and GPUs. V-Ray 5 Benchmark launches with three complex test scenes designed to assess V-Ray performance on CPU, GPU CUDA and GPU RTX cards.

Since launching, V-Ray Benchmark has become a standard for new hardware testing, helping countless users and journalists assess the rendering performance of new laptops, workstations, graphics cards and more. With V-Ray 5 Benchmark, these users can access its biggest update yet, making it easier to evaluate the latest technology against one of the most popular renderers in the world.

The PC Mark benchmarking software is one of the mainstays of system benchmarking. Although it isn't as attractive to enthusiasts and gamers due to the lack of such visually impressive showcases like Time Spy, it stands as a more complete suite for users looking to thoroughly examine their systems' performance. And it now offers a more complete package even for gamers and enthusiasts, since it does include a graphical, game-like benchmark in FireStrike.

Based on real-world apps and activities, the tests in PC Mark 10 work with some included third-party programs as part of the benchmark suite to reflect common tasks performed in the modern workplace. Futuremark is releasing three versions of PCMark 10, the Basic, Advanced, and Professional Editions, with different tiers of features for each. The Basic version will be free of charge (available to download on June 22nd), while the Advanced version will retail for $29.99 (and will be available on Steam.) You can read our review of PCMark's latest iteration right here, courtesy of our own VSG.

Rightware, the leader in 3D user interface (UI) technologies and the provider of world's most widely adopted benchmarking software, today announced public availability of Basemark CL, effective immediately. This OpenCL (Open Computing Language) benchmark product provides diverse performance measurement capabilities for device manufacturers, semiconductor companies and their ecosystem to test and optimize OpenCL implementations. The version launched today features tests targeted for desktop computers. An embedded profile version of the benchmark will be published at a later stage.

OpenCL by Khronos Group is the first open, royalty-free standard for parallel programming of modern processors found in personal computers, servers and embedded devices. Proper use of OpenCL can greatly improve speed and responsiveness of applications in numerous categories from gaming and entertainment to scientific and medical software. Within these applications, OpenCL makes it possible to leverage the processing power of Central Processing Units (CPUs), Graphic Processing Units (GPUs) and other processing units for general purpose computation. By utilizing an efficient low-level programming interface, OpenCL will form the foundation layer of a parallel computing ecosystem of platform-independent tools, middleware and applications.

Unigine released the latest version of Unigine Heaven, one of the industry's first DirectX 11 compliant 3D graphics benchmark applications. Version 2.5 of the software expands its feature set a little, the product is also branched into two variants: a free "basic edition" that gives most of the product's functionality to consumers, overclockers, and gamers; and a paid "professional edition", that gives data-logging and specific-functionality to aid professionals such as analysts, and reviewers, priced at US $495. The professional variant is also backed by technical support.

As far as new features go, Heaven 2.5 introduced support for new DirectX 11 features such as indirect occlusion (SSDO) to simulate real-time global illumination, improved hardware support, improved quality of ambient occlusion, and a number of stability improvements that help maintain long sessions of benchmarking. It also added a new help file, and a snappier installer. The professional edition includes command line automation support, data-logging in CSV format, stress-testing, a commercial use license, and technical support. The professional edition can be purchased from here.DOWNLOAD: Unigine Heaven 2.5 Basic Edition

Patriot Memory, a global pioneer in high-performance memory, NAND flash and computer technology, today announced the release of their Tri-Channel Viper II Series bundle packs with Futuremark 3DMark Vantage software.

Patriot Memory and Futuremark have teamed up once again to offer PC enthusiasts and overclockers the tools necessary to build the ultimate performance system. Futuremark's 3DMark Vantage, the world's #1 benchmarking software, offers consumers the chance to see how their system performs and stacks up against worldwide contention.