Update: Friday, December 5th, 2014: this Benchmark RC has now bee promoted to the the de facto release viewer.

On November 10th, the Lab promoted their benchmark viewer code to release status (viewer version 3.7.19.296094. This viewer removes the need for a manually-maintained list of GPUs (the GPU table) in order to identify the graphics system your computer is using, replacing it with a series of quick tests which are used to test the graphics system and set suitable initial defaults for the viewer (which only happens if you have no graphics settings already recorded for your viewer).

Despite extensive testing whilst a release candidate viewer, the promotion of this particular viewer to the de facto release viewer resulted in some people experiencing issues with the viewer immediately crashing on start-up due to a VFS failure – see this forum thread and BUG-7776, BUG-7783).

The problem didn’t affect everyone using the viewer, but for those who did, the usual fixes for VFS failures didn’t appear to work.

Since that time, there has been a further release viewer update – version 3.7.20.296724 (December 1st, formerly the Snowstorm contributions RC).

However, if you have resisted updating the viewer due the crash issue, or if you are still encountering the VFS crash issue, the Lab has released a new Benchmark RC viewer, version 3.7.22.297128 .

This release should address the start-up issue, and the Lab has requested anyone who may still be having problems install it, try it, and provide feedback via BUG-7783.