Windows 8 banned from benchmarking site

In yet another embarrassing event for Microsoft and Windows 8, one of the top benchmarking and overclocking communities has banned all results using Windows 8.  HWBot is a well known site for posting overclocking results using various tools like 3dMark, PCMark and SuperPi.  But because of a flaw in the real time clock within Windows 8, all results that have been posted using Windows 8 have been removed, and no new ones will be allowed unless Microsoft can patch this flaw.

mycewin8logo

ADVERTISEMENT

HWBot accepts results from individuals, then those results are confirmed by the administrators of the site.  It is a handy site for comparing your hardware setup with those of others around the world, and of course, the extreme overclockers show just how far their equipment can be pushed.  But all of the benchmark tools  depend on something called the Real Time Clock within every computer.  It is basically a way of keeping time while the computer is turned off, and maintains the clock on the computer in step with time in the real world.  Because the RTC is hardware based, it provides a reliable baseline for starting and stopping any benchmarking tool.

Windows 8 breaks this baseline of trust however, as this operating system was designed to work on devices that may not have a PC-compatible RTC.  Because the software interferes in the operation of the RTC, HWBot says it is “impossible to verify the veracity of  system performance”.  And so, results using Windows 8 will no longer be accepted at their site.

Any solution for this will have to come as a patch from Microsoft, but no one knows at this point how feasible this is, since Windows 8 is designed to work on such a variety of hardware.

ADVERTISEMENT

You can read more on the story at Extreme Tech and at HWBot.

No posts to display