Review: Unigine's Valley benchmark gives you room to roam

Unigine's gift with benchmarks has always been the deft, artful touch they lend to their number-gobbling glitter engines. From the candlelit crypts in 2007's Sanctuary to the blue skies of 2011's Heaven, they have a long history of serving up the stats with an extra helping of eye candy. With their latest benchmark, Valley, the new twist is size and plenty of it. Think Skyrim meets granola bar commercial, and you're starting to get the picture. They've squeezed a national park into this one.

Vast environments set Valley apart from other benchmarks.

Heaven fans will feel right at home, as the interface remains unchanged in Valley. Startup presents an attractive options window that offers language selection and visual effects customization. DirectX 9 and 11 APIs are supported, along with OpenGL. Screenshots are saved via hotkey. Most startup options are also available inside the application via a row of buttons along the top of the screen.

You can access most startup options ainside the Valley benchmark.

The Valley benchmark itself consists of 18 different scripted runs through the environment, from flowerbeds to mountaintops, through rainstorms and dappled sunshine. The depth of focus changes, shadows lengthen, leaves flicker and drops of water splash against the lens of your imaginary camera. It's all quite beguiling. At the end you're presented with a raw score and the FPS numbers (avg/min/max). That's not a lot, but it's enough to gauge gaming potential in a general fashion.

As in past Unigine offerings, you can also opt out of the canned benchmark runs and explore the environment at will, either gravity-bound on foot or as a floating camera. While this was a fun sideline in Heaven, Valley's enormous size makes nature hikes through its meticulously designed forests a true holodeck-style pleasure.

Rainstorms show off advanced water and light rendering techniques.

Nice as Valley is, it's a bit rustic in more than just theme. The benchmarking world is moving beyond simple framerate numbers, and a graph with frame time in milliseconds to track stuttering issues would be a welcome addition to the Basic or Advanced versions. It can be quite useful to see the number of frames that spend 50 ms or more being rendered. That information hides inside of avg/min/max framerate formats, but significantly alters quality of play. While the Pro version features deeper analysis, it also sports a $495 price tag clearly meant for professional developers.

More on point are several visual miscues; the most serious among them is noticeable scenery pop-in even at the highest levels of detail. In some areas, the flowers appear to jump out of the ground to greet you as you pass by. In a benchmark that takes its fashionable look so seriously, that's an inexcusable Wal-Mart moment.

This vista isn't just wallpaper. You can walk every inch of it.

These shortcomings don't ruin the ride, however. If you're looking to test or show off your high-end gaming steed, Valley is a fine companion to Heaven and a welcome addition to Unigine's stable.

Note: The Download button on the Product Information page takes you to the vendor's site, where you can download the latest version of the software.

From PC World. Electronics product reviews and advice for best reference

The Top-Performing Android Phones: Benchmark Blitz

HTC EVO 4G LTEThese days Android phones seem to be in an arms race when it comes to performance, with claims of faster processors, better graphics engines, and more cores. We put a few of the hottest Android phones available today through our rigorous suite of benchmark tests to see which ones live up to the performance hype.

The Samsung Galaxy S III (Verizon version) and the HTC EVO 4G LTE (on Sprint) have the same 1.5GHz dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon MSM8960 processor. The Samsung Galaxy Nexus carries an older dual-core 1.2GHz TI OMAP processor, but runs the new Android 4.1 (also known as Jelly Bean). Among the many highlights of the latest version of Android are smoother graphics and overall improved performance thanks to Project Butter: According to Google, Project Butter lets the CPU and graphics run in parallel, resulting in smoother, more responsive performance on Android devices.

LG Optimus 4X HDOur sole quad-core phone in this test group is the LG Optimus 4X HD, which uses an Nvidia Tegra 3 processor. This phone, like other quad-core phones we’ve seen this year, is exclusively available overseas at the moment.

We also threw two older phones into the mix, the Samsung Galaxy Note (T-Mobile) and the Motorola Droid 4 (Verizon). The Samsung Galaxy Note has a dual-core 1.5GHz Snapdragon S3 processor, while the Motorola Droid 4 has a dual-core 1.2GHz TI OMAP processor (a slight variation of the processor in the Galaxy Nexus).

Because not all benchmarking programs are cross-platform, we selected only Android phones for this round of performance testing.

The Benchmarks Explained

PCWorld Labs analysts run each smartphone that comes to us through a rigorous set of tests. The first, AndEBench, is a third-party benchmark app for Android phones that measures the performance of the CPU and the Dalvik interpreter. (Dalvik is the virtual machine in Android that runs many of the operating system’s core functions.) We run two AndEBench tests: a native test and a Java test. The Labs analysts also run Geekbench, a cross-platform, multicore benchmark that measures processor and memory performance.

We test JavaScript performance using Sunspider, which measures page-load times in the browser. The Labs staff also designed an independent page-load test employing multiple JPG images, as well as text and tables. Our analysts evaluate the page-load time over a closed Wi-Fi network.

Finally, we run GLBenchmark, which measures graphics performance for OpenGL ES environments. We conduct one test with GLBenchmark Egypt 2.1.4 and one with GLBenchmark 2.1.4 Pro. Both tests measure results in frames per second; the more frames per second, the better the graphics performance is for the tested phone.

The Results

As you can see in the results charts below, the quad-core LG Optimus 4X HD smoked the competition on both AndEBench tests as well as on Geekbench. Interestingly, the Galaxy S III and the HTC EVO 4G LTE dominated in the PCWorld Page Load Tests, with the HTC EVO 4G LTE posting the fastest time at 6.5 seconds. The Galaxy Nexus recorded the fastest time on the Sunspider JavaScript Benchmark at 1.52 seconds; the HTC EVO 4G LTE finished closely behind it at 1.58 seconds. As for graphics performance, the LG Optimus 4X HD ruled the GLBenchmark Egypt Offscreen test. However, in the GLBenchmark Pro test, the Galaxy S III achieved the highest number of frames per second, with the HTC EVO coming in second.

Quad-core phones are scarce in the United States, but we’re hoping to see more toward the end of this year. We’re also anxious for Qualcomm’s quad-core S4 Pro chip to ship in smarpthones. The chipset, which is currently available only in a developer tablet, performed quite well in our benchmarks.

It is important to keep in mind that benchmarks don’t necessarily make or break a phone. Testing with real-world use scenarios, such as running multiple apps, transferring files, playing games, or watching video, is also important when you're judging a smartphone’s overall performance.

From PC World. Shop computer and accessories from Amazon here