Date: May 17, 2005 - Author: Rob Williams - Editor: Rob Williams
Lavalys just released two new versions of their EVEREST program, Ultimate and Corporate. Each new version proves to be even more useful than the last. These being major version releases, they have launched with four new features. Today, we are taking a look at the Ultimate version.
Lavalys a few years back released their EVEREST Hardware Diagnostics and Memory Benchmarking tool, and it quickly became popular by enthusiasts around the globe. If there is any program that EVEREST can be compared to, it would be the popular SiSoftware Sandra, which has been around a lot longer.
Previously, EVEREST had two primary versions, Home and Professional. Home was free to anybody who wanted it, but Professional cost around $30US, for more in-depth features. This past Sunday (15th), Lavalys released two new versions, Ultimate and Corporate. The Corporate version replaced Professional, and Ultimate is a completely fresh product.
LAVAL, CANADA May 15, 2005 One year and 4 million downloads later, Lavalys enters its second year in business by announcing the newest release of its flagship software for advanced PC users, EVEREST Ultimate Edition 2005.
Lavalys EVEREST Technology is quickly setting the standard as the leading IT/PC diagnostic platform of its kind in the world. EVEREST Ultimate Edition 2005 targets more advanced users like PC enthusiasts, gamers, and home office users who need a cutting-edge but affordable tool to maximize security, performance, and trouble-shooting capabilities for their PC environment.
We won't be getting into the Corporate version in todays overview, because it's not meant for this type of audience. Common sense tells us that it's meant for a Corporate enviroment, and the tools reflect this. It's more in-depth in the diagnostics of your network, virus scanner, installed programs, and even database auditing.
The primary audience of Techgage are people who enjoy tweaking their computers to no end. People who can't open a new component without first thinking about the overclocking and performance potential. The Ultimate Edition is exactly for those types of people. There have been vast improvements and new feature sets, and we will get into most of them in todays article.
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The entire program has been improved in various areas, but there are a couple brand spanking new features as well. New features in the Ultimate Edition include Security information, CRT & LCD monitor diagnostics, CPU & FPU benchmarks and Advanced Hardware Monitor.
Security Information:
This feature was added, so that you could easily keep track of your security related programs, their versions, as well as updates you have installed through Windows Update. The Windows Security section tells you the basic info about your installation, but also whether you have Data Execution Prevention (DEP) enabled on your system. DEP was introduced in Service Pack 2, and that's why it's enabled on my system.
Occasionally using Windows Update may not work out for the best, and some hotfixes may hang your computer. In the Windows Update tab, you can view all the current installed updates, as well as the day you installed them, helping track down the culprit.
Also available is information on your Virus Scanner, Firewall, Anti-Spyware and Anti-Trojan. The reason for all of these, are to keep track of the versions and the definitions. You can quickly check to see when the last time your programs were updated to know whether now is a good time to update them. Of course, most virus scanner programs update themselves, but it's a feature that's here anyway.
CRT & LCD monitor diagnostics:
Here is a great addition to the program, and will be quite useful to people who need to make sure their monitors calibrated properly, or people who believe they are having problems with their monitor, especially LCD's.
There's a total of 40 various screen tests, and they range from brightness, gamma, alignment and others. Running these tests are meant to help you calibrate your monitor the way it should be. A well known example of why this is a good thing to have, is because imagine being on an online clothing retailer. You buy a Red jacket, and it get's to your door. You open it, to find out it's Maroon, and not Red. Should have calibrated your monitor!
You can even choose to select all the options related to LCD monitor by choosing that option. This will select only the options and tests that apply. Some of these vary from helping you set the controls properly, to finding dead pixels.
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One thing that the previous versions of EVEREST lacked, were benchmarking tests. The only choice you had was to benchmark your memory's Read/Write and Latency capabilities. This has changed in the Ultimate Version, as they added both CPU and FPU tests as well.
As you can see from the pictures below, both the CPU and FPU benchmarks consist of three tests. The bulk of theses tests tell me that my PC is faster than a PIII-E, and that makes me happy. :)
These are unique tests, that you don't see included as benchmarks often. Here is a quick rundown of what each test, other than the obvious memory ones, do:
CPU Queen: This test is called Queen, because it's Chessboard related. It focuses on the predictions and mis-predictions of your CPU, and stresses it to find solutions. If you have a CPU that's great at number crunching, such as a P4-EE or an AMD64, then you will get much higher scores than I accomplished.
CPU Photoworxx:: As the name suggests, this is a Digital Photo Processing test. The test performs 7 primary functions on a very large RBG image to spit out the result. This is also memory intensive, so faster memory will help your score. This test also takes advantage of fast math processors, including ones with HyperThreading and even Dual-Core.
CPU ZLib: The least in-depth test of the three, this one focuses on compression, using of course, the ZLib compression library.
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FPU Julia: This test focuses on measuring the single precision FP performance through the Julia fractal. The code behind this is written in Assembly, so it's incredibly optimized for both Intel and AMD processors.
FPU Mandel: Julia is focused on 32-Bit, while Mandel is 64-Bit. Just like Julia, Mandelbrot is written in Assembly, and takes advantage of x87 instructions.
FPU SinJulia: This is a modified version of Julia, and measures in 80-Bit. Of course, this is also written in Assembly, and uses Trigonometric calculations and x87 instructions. Wish I memorized this method in high school.
Advanced Hardware Monitor:
This feature was added so that you could monitor your PC's health. You can keep track of your CPU, GPU and even Hard Drive temperatures. You can also track fan speeds, and your power supplies voltages.
Depending on the sensors in your computer, you may have more or less than what EVEREST spit out for me. Note that it could not detect the temperature of the Radeon 9800 Pro. The program has the capability of tracking the temperatures of your DIMM and Chipset as well.
Another sub-feature of the Hardware Monitor, are the SysTray icons it uses. This helps you keep track of your temperatures, as well as the VCore, as seen in the screenshot. One grip I have about this though, is that EVEREST has to be loaded in order for this to work. You cannot minimize the program to the SysTray to my knowledge, and I couldn't find any options to do so. If you want this feature, you will have to leave EVEREST constantly running.
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Overclocking:
This is not listed as a new feature, but I don't recall it in any prior version. Basically, the Overclocking section gives off all your systems OC info, and helps you track it. In my case, my systems not currently overclocked, but I can keep track of stock speeds.
This screen tells a lot though. It includes your Memory, GPU and CPU overclock, as well as other essential information. If you were to share your OC information with someone, you could easily print out a report to send to them.
Chances are, the new features are not going to sell the program to someone who never liked the program to begin with. Even without the new features though, the program has some redeeming qualities that I like. The ability to keep track of your system up time is nice. It's better than that though, because this screen can tell you when you installed Windows, how many times you have rebooted, and even tracks your BSOD's (Blue Screen of Death)!
My favorite feature though, and possibly the reason that EVEREST became so popular. The ability to print out reports for your computer. You can see an example of this, with my PC, here (250kb). This is ideal, for printing out your system info, for whatever reason.
Whenever someone asks me for help with a computer problem, hardware related, I usually get them to print out an EVEREST report. You can just tell by the example above how informative it is.. and that's only the standard hardware report.
EVEREST has always been an app that I installed upon a fresh Windows install. I personally enjoy using it, because it makes keeping track of everything very easy. If you have licenses for software, such as Office, Nero, Futuremark products and more, it will track all of those, in case you need to write them down.
One thing I have always wanted to see, was the ability to actually change things through the program. It tracks all these things, but I am always feeling the need to double click and change a value. Hopefully in a later version, because it would definitely be a great feature to add. Of course, not all values should be changed, but especially if you know what you are doing, it would be a great thing to be able to do.
Overall though, for the price, EVEREST Ultimate Edition does a lot, and is worth the money. In the future though, I would like to see features added, some as I mentioned. I could easily see this being made into a system Suite in the future.. they have all the bases, they just need to put more code behind them.
Feel free to discuss this article in our related thread.
You can find out more about the program here, and if interested, you can purchase it here. Currently, it's selling for $29.99, but will increase to $39.99US on June 17th.
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