If you have read the whole review you will know by now that PCMark04 is an incredibly thorough benchmark. All of the main uses for home PC’s are covered and some of the most popular applications are used such as DivX and Internet Explorer, the user interface is simple and intuitive yet provides all the functionality that is required. The size of the application when downloading is another plus point. At just under 35mb it is small by broadband standards and not unmanageable for dial-up users, although patience will be needed !

One small criticism that we have is that Windows Media encoder should have been included in the application itself, or at least the download, Whilst a great number of people will have updated to IE6, Direct X9 and Media Player 9 there are a much smaller number who will have downloaded this encoder. This however is only a minor inconvenience and we are almost certain this is due to legalities with Microsoft and more than likely beyond Futuremarks control.

The weight given to each component is fair and from our results it is clear that the changing of components has a significant yet understandable impact on the scores. PCMark04 also shows that even the slightest tweak (such as using SATA through the Abit Serillel convertor) is noticeable in the results however the results are not overly sensitive.

We have to be completely honest here and say that PCMark04 has completely impressed us. It caters for everyone in terms of up to date use of applications and a wide scope of real world tests. This combined with its ease of use mean that there is nothing currently on the market to compete with PCMark04 when testing all aspects of the home system. Well executed and highly recommended.

Article by Allan "Zardon" Campbell and Stuart "Veridian3" Davidson.