Link to Intel PDF:

IT@Intel White Paper Streaming and Virtual Hosted Desktop Study: Phase 2

Here’s a good general description of the WorldBench 6 tests from Laptoplogic.com :

“PC World WorldBench 6 is the sixth revision of PC World’s well regarded full-system benchmarking suite. Worldbench runs a slew of benchmarking tests designed to simulate many common programs used by today’s typical user. Programs benchmarked are Adobe Photoshop CS2, Autodesk 3ds max 8.0, Firefox 2, Microsoft Office 2003 SP1, Microsoft Windows Media Encoder 9.0, Nero 7 Ultra Edition, Roxio VideoWave Movie Creator 1.5, and WinZip 10.0. WorldBench 6 scores are baselined against a test system consisting of a 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo E6600, 2GB DDR2 RAM, nVIDIA GeForce 7900GS graphics card, and 2 x 320GB Western Digital hard drives in RAID-0, with Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium installed as the OS. After each test has been run, the system clears temp files and reboots.

Adobe Photoshop CS2: A small, non-complex image opens and the software applies and undoes each set of artistic filter enhancements (11 sets in all). After this has completed, a much larger and complex image is loaded and the same filters are applied, at a much slower rate as the image takes longer to manipulate due to its size. After these tasks have been completed, the benchmark ends.

3ds max 8.0: A file is opened showing a wireframe of an underwater scene, which is rendered by the software, with a cartoon-looking lizard appearing in a second window in the background towards the very end. As soon as this rendering is complete, a three-dimensional mouse bearing more than a close resemblance to Stuart Little is quickly rendered, and as this completes, a dragon in its environment is rendered. Once these are all finished, the benchmark concludes.

Microsoft Office 2003 SP1: A new word document is opened, and an existing Access database is converted to Access ’97 format. After the conversion occurs, the tables are examined. An Excel spreadsheet showing multiple pages of financial information is opened and the data is manipulated by changing formulas and functions. The new Word document opened at the onset is then accessed, and converts an RTF document into Word format. Once the conversion has finished, a spell check is initiated on the 180-page document, and the benchmark ends after that has concluded.

Firefox / Windows Media Encoder 9.0 Multitasking: Windows Media Encoder is opened and a new project is started. As the project encodes, the PC World website opens and the benchmark begins navigating to numerous articles/links on the site. Once the encoding process completes, the benchmark concludes.

Roxio VideoWave Movie Creator 1.5: A new storyline is opened to make a video of a user’s vacation he recently filmed. Several clips are imported into the program and each one is rendered individually. After the fourth clip renders successfully, the benchmark ends.

• Nero 7 Ultra Edition: This benchmark simulates writing a DVD data disc and saving as an NRG image file. The test is repeated three times before the benchmark is finished.

WinZip 10.0: The system takes a group of files and compresses them within WinZip. Once this has been performed, the benchmark concludes.”

via How We Test – LaptopLogic.com.

WorldBench is not a single test, it is a suite of application based tests. Yes, it does provide an overall index score (the ‘WorldBench Score’) that is widely recognized as an industrywide performance metric. However, if you are buying PCs to run Office, then you can just run the Office test. Or, if you want to compare PCs that will run Photoshop and 3ds max then you can run those tests.  Maybe you plan on burning discs and editing video, then run VideoWave, Windows Media Encoder, and Nero. It’s up to you what tests you want to run. The entire suite can take hours to run on a typical machine and that’s how we run it in the PC World Test Center.

From the WorldBench help file:

“How WorldBench Measures System Performance

There are many ways to measure a computer‘s system performance. Benchmarks perform designated tasks on a computer system, measuring how much time it takes to complete the work or counting how many repetitions of the work the computer can complete in a fixed amount of time. The key to producing a good benchmark is formulating realistic tasks. Synthetic benchmarks measure how many instructions your CPU can execute in one second, or how long your hard disk takes to access a specific track. Unfortunately with those tests, you have no way of knowing how your system’s CPU speed and hard disk access times relate to the computer’s real-world performance on applications such as Microsoft Office.

Unlike synthetic benchmarks, WorldBench uses popular desktop applications to perform realistic tasks. This makes it easier to accurately gauge how fast your computer runs applications you may routinely use, rather than just listing abstract measures of individual components. Our application-based tests tell you exactly what you need to know how fast your computer runs real applications.

WorldBench installs special versions of each application tested, enabling the automated test scripts to perform every test. It also ensures that the software configuration and version are identical for every computer evaluated. Our setup program installs the user interface, testing scripts, and all documents necessary to complete the tasks. It also unpacks and installs each application as needed during testing.

Once a test is completed, the program removes the unpacked application from the hard drive. For security reasons, none of the test applications can be installed from the WorldBench CD.”