Futuremark applications
are heralded as the "industry standard" when it comes to
benchmarking your computer system and its components, on the 12th
March 2002 Madonion released PCMark2002, this was the companies first
ever unified benchmark and was aimed at home and office users. The
purpose of the benchmark was to benchmark systems and gauge performance
using common tasks in home and office environments. Since the release
of PCMark2002 many things have changed; Nvidia are no longer the only
big player in 3d Graphics, Driverheaven came into existence and Madonion
became Futuremark Corporation. As the industry has developed so too
has the technology we use and the way we use it so its time for a
new unified system benchmark, enter PCMark04.
So what is the
purpose of PCMark04?
Who better to answer that question than Futuremark:
“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.”
How does it
do that?
PCMark04 continues the approach used in PCMark2002, that being a benchmark
which uses a System and Component benchmarking. By running the system
benchmark users can gain an overall impression of how their system
will run in the home environment. Component benchmarking allows the
user to isolate specific components (such as memory or Hard Drive)
for testing. When this testing is complete the results can then be
uploaded to an online database (The ORB) and compared to other users
systems.
