The SPECviewperf® 2020 v2.0 Benchmark, Keeping Pace With an Evolving Industry

By Ross Cunniff, SPECgpc Chair

The Graphics and Workstation Performance Group (GWPG) proudly announced the SPECviewperf® 2020 v2.0 benchmark in June, just eight months after the initial release of the 2020 version. In addition to the time we invested in ensuring the SPECviewperf benchmark keeps pace with our evolving industry, the SPECviewperf 2020 2.0 benchmark truly reflects the best of SPEC’s ability to leverage competing members to create and update a benchmark that benefits everyone, the vendors, enterprise customers and end users alike.

The SPECviewperf benchmark was the first benchmark created by GWPG, which was originally formed in 1986 under the National Computer Graphics Association (NCGA) and joined SPEC in 1996. The benchmark was unique in its day, developed through the cooperation of independent software vendors (ISVs) and designed to use real-world datasets (called viewsets), tests and weighting. It measured performance far more consistently across OpenGL implementations than other benchmarks and with guarantees for visual quality and consistency.

SPEC/GWPG has continued to update, grow and refine the SPECviewperf benchmark, and today it is the clear worldwide standard for measuring graphics performance. It now measures 3D graphics performance of systems running under the OpenGL and Direct X application programming interfaces, and the viewsets represent graphics content and behavior from today’s actual applications, including 3ds Max, CATIA, Maya, and SOLIDWORKS. And very important for most businesses, it enables companies to benchmark their systems against these applications without the need to install the applications themselves.

There are two key updates in the SPECviewperf 2020 v2.0 benchmark:

• The SOLIDWORKS-06 viewset has been updated to use the same viewport rendering modes in both 4K and 2K resolutions, enabling users to compare the difference in performance between the two resolutions. Results are not comparable with SPECviewperf 2020 v1.0 SOLIDWORKS-05 or any previous version.
• Viewsets are now individually downloaded and may be independently installed and removed using the new "Manage Viewsets" utility, allowing users to focus on the viewsets that interest them. 

And version v2.0 supports all the features previously introduced in the first SPECviewperf 2020 benchmark release:

• New viewsets taken from traces of the latest versions of 3ds Max, CATIA, Maya, and SOLIDWORKS applications.
• Updated models in the viewsets based on 3ds Max, CATIA, Creo, SOLIDWORKS, and real-world medical applications.
• Support within all viewsets for both 2K and 4K resolution displays.
• User interface improvements, including better interrogation and assessment of underlying hardware, clickable thumbnails of screen grabs, and a new results manager.
• Support for running the benchmark using command-line options.

To take a deep dive into this benchmark, start on the SPECviewperf 2020 benchmark page. And if you’re interested in helping us create the next SPECviewperf benchmark update, be sure to check out our SPEC/GWPG membership page.

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