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

[PurSuiT]

"In an odd turn of events, Windows 8 has been banned from HWBot, one of the world’s top benchmarking and overclocking communities. All existing benchmarks recorded by Windows 8 have been disqualified. This is due to a fault in Windows 8′s real-time clock (RTC), which all benchmarking tools use as a baseline."

 

http://www.extremetech.com/computing/164209-windows-8-banned-by-worlds-top-benchmarking-and-overclocking-site

 

"Windows 8′s RTC isn’t reliable. According to HWBot, 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. Basically, if you change your CPU base clock (BCLK) frequency in software (not at boot time), it has a massive impact on Windows 8′s ability to keep accurate time. By underclocking the BLCK of a Haswell system from 130MHz to 122MHz (-6%), Windows 8 loses 18 seconds over a five minute period and the inverse applies to overclocking, too."