Aiming to the rutting test and uniaxial penetration test in the specifications for design of highway asphalt pavement in China，the distinguishing ability of high temperature performance of the corresponding test indexes was studied. The permanent deformation， dynamic stability， penetration strength and penetration displacement of 9 kinds of asphalt mixtures were measured in laboratory. The distinguishing ability of each index on the high temperature performance of different asphalt mixtures was qualitatively compared by the box diagram method. Then， two kinds of discrimination calculation methods， namely the entropy weighting method and the high-low grouping method， were introduced to calculate the discrimination of the four indices. The results show that： the four indices have significantly different distinguishing ability on the high temperature performance of asphalt mixtures； the four indices obtained by the two methods are in the same order， and the sequence from high to low is permanent deformation， penetration strength， penetration displacement and dynamic stability. It is suggested that the testing index differentiation should be considered for pavement anti-rutting design， and permanent deformation should be introduced instead of dynamic stability in the rutting test.