Futuremark said on Monday that 3DMark for Windows RT is now available as a free app in the Windows Store. This version includes the same benchmarks tests as the Android and iOS editions including Ice Storm, Ice Storm Extreme and Ice Storm Unlimited. This release should help make accurate cross-platform benchmarking "easy and fast," the company claims.
Ice Storm is a DirectX 11 feature level 9 benchmark that includes 720p Graphics tests designed to stress graphical (GPU) performance and a Physics test to stress processing (CPU) performance. Ice Storm Extreme raises the Graphics tests to 1080p and uses higher quality textures and post-processing effects for a more demanding load. Ice Storm Unlimited is designed to test the raw performance of the underlying hardware.
News of 3DMark's release on Windows RT arrives after Futuremark updated the Professional Edition of PCMark 8 that enables Windows 8.1 and Internet Explorer 11 compatibility, introduces new options for testing OpenCL, and adds detailed hardware monitoring graphs. This version also uses a new installer, meaning users should manually uninstall both PCMark 8 Professional and SystemInfo using Add/Remove Programs in the Windows Control Panel before installing the updated version.
New to PCMark 8 Professional are interactive graphs that show hardware monitoring data from each benchmark run. The Home and Creative benchmarks now offer a choice of run modes, and progress windows have been improved to show an estimated time for each test. SystemInfo has been updated to v4.21 for improved compatibility with the latest hardware, and scans that are supposedly at least 50 percent faster.
"While this update only applies to PCMark 8 Professional Edition, the good news is that it clears the way for PCMark 8 Basic and Advanced, which we now expect to release within the next couple of weeks," reads the company's news blog.
The Professional Edition of PCMark 8 costs $1495 and can be purchased here. 3DMark for Windows RT can be downloaded directly from Microsoft's Windows Store here.
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