PCMark®04 is the latest version of the popular PCMark series. PCMark04 is an application-based benchmark and a premium tool for measuring overall PC performance. It uses portions of real applications instead of including very large applications or using specifically created code. This allows PCMark04 to be a smaller installation as well as to report very accurate results. As far as possible, PCMark04 uses public domain applications whose source code can be freely examined by any user.

The Pro Online ResultBrowser (ORB) is designed and developed specially for PCMark04 Pro and PCMark04 Business users. In addition to the normal functionalities you can do multiple comparisons, get detailed system info, use dynamic compare URLs and much much more. The Pro ORB extends PCMark04 to the extreme!

The extended PCMark04 ORB features are only available via PCMark04 Pro and PCMark04 Business.


Key PCMark04 Pro and Business Features

System Test Suite, presenting the PCMark score.
Memory Test Suite, giving Memory score.
CPU Test Suite, giving CPU score.
Graphics test suite giving a Graphics score
HDD Test Suite and HDD score.
Customizable test run including multithreaded tests.
Online services. Submit your results and compare them to PCMark04 results from all over the world.


PCMark04 Tests

PCMark04 supports both system level and component level benchmarking. It is comprised of different test suites and the user also has the ability to design custom test suites.

System Test Suite

There are 12 system tests - each one is designed to represent a certain type of PC usage. By running these tests, PCMark04 stresses the components in a similar manner as they are stressed in real life home usage. Three test pairs are run concurrently in separate threads. More information on the selection of these tests can be found on the PCMark04 White Paper. Overall PCMark04 score is calculated based on tests in the system test suite.

Tests in the system test suite are:
File compression
File decompression
File encryption
File decryption
Virus scanning
Grammar check
Audio conversion
Image processing
Web page rendering
WMV video compression
DivX video compression
Physics calculation and 3D

Memory Test Suite

The memory test suite is a collection of tests that isolate the performance of the memory subsystem. As it is difficult to find applications that only stress the memory, we explicitly developed a set of tests geared for this purpose. The tests are written in C++ and assembly. They include:
Reading data blocks from memory
Writing data blocks to memory
Performing copy operations on data blocks
Random access to data items
Latency

Graphics Test Suite

The graphics test suite is a collection of tests that isolate the performance of the graphics subsystem of the PC.
2D Tests
Transparent windows
Graphics memory
Video playback (WMV and DivX)
3D Tests
Fill rate
Polygon throughput

Hard Disk Drive Test Suite

The hard disk drive test suite is a collection of four tests that isolate the performance of the hard disk. For these tests we use RankDisk, an application developed and copyrighted by Intel®. RankDisk is used to record a trace of disk activity during usage of typical applications. These traces can then be replayed to measure to performance of disk operations for that usage. The following traces are used:
Windows XP start up
Application loading
File copying
General hard disk usage