Windows 8 has been banned by the world’s top benchmarking and overclocking site

[piasabird]

Would be nice if consumers could purchase any computer with any operating system. Microsoft and Intel are both very close to being totally mopolistic. This may not apply for tablets, but on the desktop they are still very monopolistic and use anti competitive marketing and licensing techniques.

 

[blackened23]

Would be nice if consumers could purchase any computer with any operating system. Microsoft and Intel are both very close to being totally mopolistic. This may not apply for tablets, but on the desktop they are still very monopolistic and use anti competitive marketing and licensing techniques.

You don't build your own PCs? You have a wide variety of choices in terms of OS, there is no monopoly - aside from this, computing has changed in the past 5 years with mobile devices; few are using MS operating systems.

Besides which, if you have grievances with Windows 8 - windows 8.1 is much much better. I really think the changes from 8 to 8.1 are similar to the changes from vista (terrible) to windows 7 (very good).

Not sure what this has to do with the topic though. Clearly the RTC bug affects relatively few people that cheat in benchmarks.

 

[glugglug]

Adjusting BCLK on the fly seems a lot more likely to introduce instability than adjusting the multiplier on the fly. The only legitimate use case I can see to do it would be if you are really anal for power savings and want to slow your memory timings when the CPU is idle. I would worry about it also effecting other timings like SATA and possibly causing data corruption.

But anyways, I think entering
"bcdedit /set useplatformtick yes"
from an administrative command prompt and rebooting should "fix" it.

And if so, that means the bug is completely on Intel -- the CPU documentation says that they introduced a new feature in the Nehalem and later cores that the counter returned by the RDTSC instruction is supposed to increase at a constant rate once it gets a RESET, independent of the CPU clock changing for turbo or thermal throttling, specifically so that it can be used as a high resolution wall clock. Microsoft took them at their word, switching back to using RDTSC on Nehalem and later after having switched QueryPerformanceCounter from using the CPU cycle counter to a platform timer by default in an XP service pack because multicore CPUs were causing issues with RDTSC as a timer. AMD doesn't make this claim, so useplatformtick defaults to true on an AMD system (you should be able to switch it to false and reproduce the problem on AMD, possibly even having the wall clock speed vary with CPU multiplier).

Earlier I though it could be the useplatformclock setting which switched default values from win7 to win8, but now I think useplatformtick is more likely, especially given the specific list of platforms affected.

 

[aigomorla]

On a side note: Overclockers scramble to purchase/pirate Win7 to regain their ranking!

im fairly sure most of us who did it as a pure sport all had technet accounts which allowed us to install windows 7 on a machine which is based at home and never see's business legally.



And yes another fail on windows 8.
Which is why im having a very hard time going to windows 8, or even migrating my servers on server2012.

 

[SPBHM]

And yes another fail on windows 8.
Which is why im having a very hard time going to windows 8, or even migrating my servers on server2012.

this is a fail for hwbot, Windows 8 works well.

 

[aigomorla]

this is a fail for hwbot, Windows 8 works well.

How is it a fail for HWBOT?
Microsoft made the implementation because they wanted Windows 8 to be more friendly to the low cost devices.

The majority of us do use low cost devices with our PC's so i dont see microsoft at 100% fault...
however in testing labs and enterprise environments, low cost devices still means a 3 figure price tag.

They used to give us options... Microsoft... then some company named.. fruit came along and showed Microsoft how profitable it is to fool the foolish lambs into giving less, but paying more.

Microsoft made some changes to Windows 8′s timekeeping routines to allow for low-cost devices and embedded systems that don’t always have a conventional PC-compatible RTC. HWBot doesn’t give specific details (presumably we’re talking really low-level kernel stuff here), but it proves its point with some damning empirical evidence.

BTW watch the video and u'll get a better understanding.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brkDKgvXKko&feature=player_embedded

which in short the time difference means...

This is a problem for benchmarks, because they trust your RTC implicitly — they assume that your system is still keeping accurate time, when in actual fact it isn’t. So, if you run a five-minute benchmark on an underclocked system, the benchmark actually runs for five minutes and eighteen seconds (6% longer).

That means your wrist watch is more accurate then your (overclocked / underclocked) windows 8 PC now when it comes to keeping time even AFTER it syncs... because of the time lag which will result later.

You have a underclock... time will LAG.
EIST/Speed Step anyone?


What im wondering how is how the hell windows is overiding bios and making it do that as well.
Because OS windows time and BIOS time is typically sync'd.
It could possibly mean OS is continuously rewritting bios... which i dont like the sound of that...
^ all speculation at the moment.... dont hold any degree of it being credible...

However u never see this kind of time difference in any other OS...
And this is VERY BAD on windows 8.
Because TIME = Money... if your processor is acting up a bit.. and downclocking... your TIME will be completely out of wack... which spells doom in any business.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

How is it a fail for HWBOT?

Because their community needs to be policed or they freely and willingly cheat to get ahead?


They're all cheating anyways, I don't see the issue with this from hwbot's perspective.

#1 4x 7970 result

http://hwbot.org/submission/2361906...1___performance_4x_radeon_hd_7970_34945_marks

Disabled Tessilation: http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/5803125

Accepted cheating.

 

[aigomorla]

Because their community needs to be policed or they freely and willingly cheat to get ahead?

They're all cheating anyways, I don't see the issue with this from hwbot's perspective.

and i agree with you which is why i dont HWBOT anymore.
it got worse with people subitting fake submissions for there team members so there team could be first place.
However this is entirely a Epeen hobby.
Whoever has the over9000 score... cheated and not caught... or real... has the largest epeen.
So there is always bounds to be cheaters, because our world isnt perfect and free without greed.

However they did spot a big problem with windows 8.
Now lets see how fast microsoft fixes this, as they too should understand how big of a problem this is.

 

[ViRGE]

However u never see this kind of time difference in any other OS...
And this is VERY BAD on windows 8.
Because TIME = Money... if your processor is acting up a bit.. and downclocking... your TIME will be completely out of wack... which spells doom in any business.

aigomorla, I think you need to re-read the article. This only occurs if you adjust the BCLK in real time. If your processor is downclocking, it's adjusting the multiplier. The BCLK never adjusts on its own; it's supposed to stay at 100MHz at all times.

 

[glugglug]

Easy way to achieve higher score without BCLK. This will work on AMD, Win7, WinXP, and Win2K as well. Sorry, no Win98. Officially not supported on NT4, but I'm guessing that would probably work. I guess HWBot will need to revert to Windows 98/ME scores

int main(int argc, char* argv[]) {
  double cheat_ratio = 1.05; // 5% cheat
  DWORD time_adjustment;
  DWORD time_increment;
  BOOL disabled;
  GetSystemTimeAdjustment(&time_adjustment, &time_increment, &disabled);
  time_adjustment -= time_increment / cheat_ratio;
  SetSystemTimeAdjustment(time_adjustment, FALSE);
  return 0;
}

Note: The Windows Time service will undo (and in fact temporarily overcompensate for) this setting the next time it checks with your configured NTP server. So you will want to disable the "Internet Time" feature for this.

 

[crashtech]

I never imagined an OS could affect the timekeeping of the RTC in this way.

 

[Arkaign]

Desktop mode + regular Windows applications. You have access to metro apps if you want them. You have the same options you did before and then some. Also you can split metro and regular/desktop apps on your screen at the same time. That functionality is further expanded on in 8.1. You are never forced into either setting. The choice is yours, and it's better to have that choice than not when you have Windows 8 on your desktop, laptop, and tablet. Problem not found. The unified OS is quite nice.

Touchpad and tablet input work great for me on Windows 8, even on cheap devices. No worse than 7. Problem not found. Perhaps your hands and fingers don't work properly?

Moving something to better accomodate a new UI =/= hiding something. It took me all of, well, 5 seconds to figure out how to access the power options on my desktop. If it took you longer, you might want to reevaluate your computer skillz before complaining and posting crap like that. Have you ever thought about the "Start" button and menu? Why is it called "Start?" Why "Charms?" Why "File," "Edit," "View," and so on? When you get down to it, a lot of UI naming conventions don't make sense (though some based on early UI designs might have made sense in the past).

While I would have preferred to see the power options outside of settings, such as right when you open the charms menu, it's really not a big deal. I actually thought it was fairly logical to place it in settings along with everything else in there.

Again, problem not found. I get by perfectly fine with Windows 8 and now prefer it from a usability standpoint to 7, largely because it works seamlessly across all of my devices, desktop to tablet. OMG I had to learn some new things here and there! What a TERRIBLE thing that is. My only complaint with Windows 8 is the lack of tutorials for people who don't know how to use computers and/or can't learn how to use computers (which, given the large animosity to Windows 8, it would appear a staggering number of people fall into that category). Anyone I have personally taught how to use Windows 8 has picked it up VERY quickly, and none of these folks have said they prefer Windows 7 over it. I think I'm up to a whopping 4 or 5 people now that I've introduced Windows 8 to. Not many, sure, but you'd expect otherwise given how the majority of people seem to respond to it.

I actually had a situation regarding teaching a stranger at Fry's how to turn off a Windows 8 device. They said they'd heard bad things and that it took their friend an hour to figure out how to turn it off (which would help validate my thought on 8 lacking tutorials). I reassured him that the OS was quite easy to use if you were willing to learn and demonstrated a few things, first being how to turn off the machine (explained and demonstrated in both touch and KB/M terms). Afterwards, he just laughed and said that was all much easier and more intuitive than people had been making it out to be. Seems like people are just feeding off the idea that Windows 8 is terrible and needs to be hated, much like people did with Vista (generally silly, unfounded reasons or whining because they didn't like change). Also, I have never and do not work at Fry's...just happened to be a creep and picked up on his conversation with someone else before I jumped in.

UI aside, there are enough tweaks under-the-hood that make 8 worth it for me. Posting benchmark results to one site isn't something I participate in, so that's no issue for me. The logic behind it in regards to saving power on certain devices makes sense from a unified OS perspective, and I honestly can't say I've been negatively impacted by the issues brought up by this benchmarking community site. But, yeah, sounds like it's only an issue if you OC through software post-boot. Surely there is some way to check for this rather than ban Windows 8 benchmarks outright...?

You can like it all you want, I hate it. And watch, I can respond to you without feeling threatened or needing to insult you.

What I'm talking about with touchpads is obvious, it's the swipe feature, and it will commonly pop up while you're simply trying to move the cursor from side to side if you start and end in the wrong spot. This is very well documented, and the most favored solution seems to be to disable swipe altogether for laptop users.

http://www.businessinsider.com/micr...t-easy-for-windows-users-to-figure-out-2012-5

http://www.howtogeek.com/135507/how-can-i-disable-windows-8-swipe-gestures-on-my-laptop/

Windows 8 brings exactly zero benefit to me, outside of getting calls to remove it and install Win7. Furthermore, my primary clients : law firms, health care firms, and other corporate / enterprise users HATE it a thousand times more than I do. NONE of them want to use Windows tablets, because they're already invested in Apple (and some android stuff) products for mobile. And due to the immense catastrophe of Windows 8, more than ever they're moving their laptops to MacBook Airs and Pros.

How are those sales of Surface working out? Windows Phone? That's right, practically flatlined, as to be expected. And what did they sacrifice in the ludicrously insane dream of chasing a locked-up marketplace? Their desktop. That's right, none of the metro crap makes doing actual work any better. How many metro apps do they sell anyway? .01% of the numbers that Apple/Google sell? Sounds about right.

I won't bore you with a long list of certs, 20+ years of experience in enterprise, blah etc. I can use Win8 perfectly fine, but I can also see that it's an unnecessarily piece of crap and going nowhere fast in Microsoft's last stronghold : the business desktop. Again, sacrificed at the altar of chasing ghosts. Nobody wants a Windows phone, and nobody wants a Windows tablet.

http://www.computerworld.com/s/arti...lacks_Plan_B_after_sales_debacle?pageNumber=1

"According to estimates by researcher IDC, Microsoft shipped just 300,000 Surface RT and Surface Pro tablets in the second quarter, which ended June 30. In the same period, Apple shipped 14.6 million iPads, while Android tablet makers shipped 28.2 million devices."

'Gross miscalculation of sales'? 'Plan B'? Idiocy. The only way they ever had a chance was to make the thing an extreme loss-leader to get it to the masses, and even then it would have been a long shot.

You can stick your fingers in your ears, you can put a blindfold on, you can wear Microsoft-colored glasses, but reality is still going to be outside your door. Relatively few people outside of corporate shills and fanboys like Windows 8 or Windows Phone/Tablet. The unwashed masses don't give a crap if a handful of nerds love Windows 8. It's a bloodbath out there, and Microsoft's screwup is harming PC sales by association.

 

[crashtech]

And Vista sucked, too.

 

[Idontcare]

Windows 8 brings exactly zero benefit to me, outside of getting calls to remove it and install Win7. Furthermore, my primary clients : law firms, health care firms, and other corporate / enterprise users HATE it a thousand times more than I do. NONE of them want to use Windows tablets, because they're already invested in Apple (and some android stuff) products for mobile. And due to the immense catastrophe of Windows 8, more than ever they're moving their laptops to MacBook Airs and Pros.

How are those sales of Surface working out? Windows Phone? That's right, practically flatlined, as to be expected. And what did they sacrifice in the ludicrously insane dream of chasing a locked-up marketplace? Their desktop. That's right, none of the metro crap makes doing actual work any better. How many metro apps do they sell anyway? .01% of the numbers that Apple/Google sell? Sounds about right.

I won't bore you with a long list of certs, 20+ years of experience in enterprise, blah etc. I can use Win8 perfectly fine, but I can also see that it's an unnecessarily piece of crap and going nowhere fast in Microsoft's last stronghold : the business desktop. Again, sacrificed at the altar of chasing ghosts. Nobody wants a Windows phone, and nobody wants a Windows tablet.

http://www.computerworld.com/s/arti...lacks_Plan_B_after_sales_debacle?pageNumber=1

"According to estimates by researcher IDC, Microsoft shipped just 300,000 Surface RT and Surface Pro tablets in the second quarter, which ended June 30. In the same period, Apple shipped 14.6 million iPads, while Android tablet makers shipped 28.2 million devices."

'Gross miscalculation of sales'? 'Plan B'? Idiocy. The only way they ever had a chance was to make the thing an extreme loss-leader to get it to the masses, and even then it would have been a long shot.

You can stick your fingers in your ears, you can put a blindfold on, you can wear Microsoft-colored glasses, but reality is still going to be outside your door. Relatively few people outside of corporate shills and fanboys like Windows 8 or Windows Phone/Tablet. The unwashed masses don't give a crap if a handful of nerds love Windows 8. It's a bloodbath out there, and Microsoft's screwup is harming PC sales by association.

You hit the nail on the head in precisely the two different areas that matter - from a consumer view Win8 is needless.

It is "unnecessary" in that it really basically brings nothing to the table that the end-user needed.

It doesn't solve any problems that existed with Win7.

At best Win8 is a solution in need of a problem to solve, at worst it is an annoying step backwards in terms of ease-of-use and learning curve effort for existing experienced windows users.

And as a result the market share reflects this.

I personally like the feel of Win8, but at the same time I can totally recognize and accept that my reasons for liking Win8 are the sort of reasons that me and maybe 12 other people on the planet would like.

So the market results are not unsurprising IMO. And it doesn't take much to see why the market responded to Win8 as it did - what problem did it solve? Contrasted with how much effort it requires a new user to invest into figuring out how to be proficient at using it versus their existing proficiency with Win7 or other OS?

 

[blackened23]

Because their community needs to be policed or they freely and willingly cheat to get ahead?


They're all cheating anyways, I don't see the issue with this from hwbot's perspective.

#1 4x 7970 result

http://hwbot.org/submission/2361906...1___performance_4x_radeon_hd_7970_34945_marks

Disabled Tessilation: http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/5803125

Accepted cheating.

If you're not cheating you're not trying.

It's especially true in the HWBOT circles!

 

[2is]

Nothing to see here... This affects almost nobody and almost nobody is about the amount of people who will care. Now I'm not a Windows 8 fan, just stating a truth.

As far as people moving to Mac's, that isn't happening either. Their sales are flat compared to this time last year and expected to decline by this time next year.

 

[Arkaign]

Nothing to see here... This affects almost nobody and almost nobody is about the amount of people who will care. Now I'm not a Windows 8 fan, just stating a truth.

As far as people moving to Mac's, that isn't happening either. Their sales are flat compared to this time last year and expected to decline by this time next year.

Apple sales, or Mac sales? Mac is a minority of Apple revenue overall, but their sales are anything but flat :

http://www.imore.com/apple-retail-s...3-2013-most-successful-macbook-air-launch-yet

" saw their most successful MacBook Air launch to date thanks to the new Haswell machines"

http://www.zdnet.com/apple-q2-2013-hardware-sales-by-the-numbers-7000014459/

"However, Mac sales are remaining stable, while PC sales are falling through the floor."

A decent number of Mac buyers waited until Haswell MBA to buy a new one, which accounts for some of the decline in MB sales. However, PC sales shrank MUCH more than Mac sales, which can only lead by simple math to the fact that Mac marketshare is growing. 5 years ago I seldom saw Macbooks in enterprise use, now I see them regularly, and more all the time.

And the icer :

http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/04/23/mac_vs_pc_big_gain_in_market_share_for_apple.html

"Mac Sales Wildly Outperforming the PC Industy"

I feel almost silly posting all of that. I don't own a Mac, or any Apple products in fact. I can do everything I wish with my cheap android and Windows PCs. That said, Mac is growing their share of desktop/laptop, even if that total market is shrinking. For business users, it won't be any time soon that they can replace their PCs and laptops with tablets. However, they can now fairly easily replace their Windows PCs/Laptops with Macs and Macbooks.

 

[2is]

"Stable" and "flat" are the same thing...

http://www.macrumors.com/2013/08/19...ver-year-drop-expected-for-september-quarter/

(I can post links too)

If your theory that Windows 8 is driving people to Mac's were true, the above story wouldn't exist. The reality is, you don't like Windows 8 (which I understand) and made up a random statistic.

And saying Mac sales outperform PC sales is like saying iPhone outsells Android devices. If you compare a single device to a single device, yes it outperforms them. But how meaningful is that?

Oh, and I DO own Apple devices, including an iPhone, iPad, AppleTV and a Macbook air, so what we own has zero relevancy here. Much like Windows 8 has zero relevancy to macbook sales

 

[Arkaign]

http://money.cnn.com/2013/04/10/technology/pc-sales/index.html

Are you trying to contradict the fact that PC sales are declining much faster than Mac sales?

Yes, in point of fact if :

(1)- The total market of desktop and laptop sales are shrinking (true)
(2)- The Windows-based PC desktop and laptop sales are shrinking at a huge rate (true)
(3)- The OSX-based Mac/MacBook desktop and laptop sales are shrinking at a mess lesser rate (true)

then

(4)- Macs and Macbooks ARE taking PC marketshare, even if that marketspace is shrinking overall.

Make sense now? It's irrefutable from any source you want (Forbes, et al).

 

[2is]

No, I'm not disputing that at all. The entire market is declining and what I'm saying is that Macs aren't doing so hot either and that none of this has anything to do with Windows 8 like you're suggesting.

 

[Arkaign]

No, I'm not disputing that at all. The entire market is declining and what I'm saying is that Macs aren't doing so hot either and that none of this has anything to do with Windows 8 like you're suggesting.

Ah.

Yes the entire market is declining, that's exactly why I find it impressive that Mac/MacBook are largely immune so far to the dramatic contractions that the PC vendors are seeing.

It's anecdotal of course, but I have seen firsthand many dozens of business users switch to Mac in the past couple of years, dramatically more so now that Windows 8 is out. It may be because I rarely interact with home users, I spend ~10 hours a day dealing with business/enterprise users, primarily attorneys.

 

[Arkaign]

IOW : if less people are choosing Windows PCs and a larger % of total PC+Mac sales are leaning towards Macs, that seems to me like evidence of rejection of Windows 8. I'm not alone in that analysis.

* - Bob O'Donnell, a vice president at IDC, said in the company's report that "the Windows 8 launch not only failed to provide a positive boost to the PC market, but appears to have slowed the market."

He slammed Windows 8's "radical changes" to the user interface, particularly the removal of the iconic start button, and intimated that the switch is confusing for customers.

"Microsoft will have to make some very tough decisions moving forward if it wants to help reinvigorate the PC market," O'Donnell said in the report.

 

[2is]

The entire personal computer market has been in decline long before windows 8, macs growth is slower now that it was before windows 8. And by slow I mean not growing at all and they're expecting a decline, where as it WAS growing well before windows 8 ever materialized. If I used your logic that means windows 8 is responsible for slower Mac sales since it's been many years since they've been stagnant and/or falling behind. But I know better than to make that silly correlation

You can conclude what you want, but it's all based on flawed logic. I understand you don't like windows 8, but you're giving it far too much credit and nothing you're quoting actually says what you're saying. I'm sure you know that though.

 

[bgt]

Pity Microsoft choose to use a separate Start screen. All my custommers(mostly above 50) like Windows 8......IF you explain them how to use it. Without explanation they are shocked how it looks and reject it. The desktop is familiar to them not the start menu. They get totally confused by the start menu with the tiles of which most of them are useless.
Macs are just too expensive(here anyway) for most people(especially the oldies) except the Ipads. So most of them use Ipads and a normal PC next to it. I have yet to get a Win8 tablet to compare it to the Ipad.

 

[glugglug]

And saying Mac sales outperform PC sales is like saying iPhone outsells Android devices. If you compare a single device to a single device, yes it outperforms them. But how meaningful is that?

All my inlaws have become iPhone fans, and keep making this claim that it outsells any particular brand of Android. But the actual shipment statistics say that Samsung Galaxy S3 alone has outsold all iPhones. And I'm sure the Galaxy S4 will do the same.
iPhone SEEMS more popular, because unlike Android which has high utility value, iOS makes it more of a fashion accessory. And what is the point of a fashion accessory that not everyone sees. So everyone who has the iPhone makes a point to flaunt it as much as possible.