PCMark 04 (Build 120)

In a short time it grew to be quoted by 73% * of on-line and paper publications. PCMark has proved to be a highly accurate tool for measuring mainstream PC usage, much like its sister product 3DMark ? has for 3D graphics usage. PCMark has developed a very large following worldwide in its own right. Users of PCMark2002 worldwide have submitted more than 1.5 million benchmark results to Futuremark?s Online ResultBrowser database. PCMark04 builds on Futuremark?s strong benchmark development experience by providing a sophisticated tool for measuring PC performance for home usage. PCMark04 supports the complete benchmark cycle ? allowing you to benchmark your PC, view the resulting benchmark details, compare your results to those of others, and finally analyze how to improve your PC performance. Figure 1: PCMark04 Supports the Complete Benchmarking Cycle. PCs continue to improve at a dizzying pace. As each PC component ? CPU, system memory, graphics card, hard disk, etc. ? increases in speed or capacity, it becomes increasingly difficult for the home user to evaluate benefits of these changes. Software applications that may or may not take advantage of the latest hardware add further to the confusion. The goal of PCMark is to solve this problem by providing an easy-to-use tool that outputs easy-to-understand performance figures. In this paper we discuss our approach to PC benchmarking and the development of PCMark04. We first explore the various facets of successful system and component benchmarking. We next cover our multi-step development process that is central to developing a dependable benchmark. We describe the individual test suites and technologies used in each in detail.

Fixes & Updates in Build 120:
- Grammar Check test on AMD Athlon64 FX-53 processors fixed
- SystemInfo updated
- DiVX Encoding test modified to prevent a possible cheat
- Right click and command line option to unregister PCMark04
- Registration and product version info shown in the About dialog
- Fixed all reported and reproduced minor issues



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