Review: Luxmark measures OpenCL graphics performance

November 29, 2012

As graphics cards have grown more complex and powerful over the years, efforts to exploit that processing power outside of gaming and 3D environments have become more widespread. If a new graphics card can do more than just play games faster, that can help justify a purchase. Even mid-range graphics cards have horsepower to spare when they spend most of their time serving up desktop applications. The problem has been harnessing that power without requiring single-supplier hardware or software solutions that invariably wind up on the yestertech trash heap. OpenCL has promised to ameliorate some of these problems by providing a cross-platform, hardware-independent means to accelerate various software functions normally considered the sole province of the CPU. Over time, that promise has turned into reality with a healthy list of applications supporting OpenCL standards, including Adobe's latest CS suite and the ubiquitous WinZip. Now that OpenCL is being used more widely, how do you measure performance and see how these cards stack up in the brave new world of application acceleration? In the time-honored geek tradition, you do it with a flashy benchmark, like Luxmark 2.0 (free). Luxmark's Sala test is where users will spend most of their time. Luxmark is brainchild of a worldwide group of programmers who maintain and update the open-source 3D rending engine LuxRender. This forms the basis of Luxmark's benchmarking suite. The layout is refreshingly simple, with menus for options and test selection, a rendering output window and two information panes, one to the right and the other at the bottom of the screen. The panel on the right provides information on your OpenCL-capable devices, such as your CPU or GPU, and the lower one lists the benchmark's console output, so you can see when things go awry. AMD's 7950 muscled through OpenCL benchmarks 10 times faster than the CPU alone. Five different test scenes of varying complexity are provided and various modes to render them are included, as OpenCL allows for a range of hardware combinations. Some of the tests are interactive. You can combine CPU and GPU operations or split them separately to see the benefits of each usage scenario: the results may be less straightforward than you think. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Link: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2017299/review-luxmark-measures-opencl-graphics-performance.html