by Rob Williams on June 28, 2005 in Software
Just released is Futuremarks latest system benchmarking tool, PC Mark 2005. We take a look at what’s new, and tell you what you need to get an uber score.
I have to say that I’m impressed of the selection this time around. They added quite a bit, and the overall System Suite tends to make more sense. It becomes quite obvious as well, that there is support for Dual Core processors, such as Audio compression and Video encoding performing at the same time.
The Read/Write tests of the Memory Suite also have larger blocks being thrown at our Memory, to reflect todays megabyte hungry apps. As for the Graphics Suite, we see a lot more going on here as well. Some of the techniques are borrowed from ’04, but that’s because they still apply today, such as fill rates and vertex shaders.
Overall, some tests have been untouched while others have been improved, and then there are others that make a debut.
Visually, the new version looks the same to the ’04 edition. Of course, it’s not the look of the program that matters, but for those who haven’t tried it yet, now you know what it looks like. One major difference you will notice about ’05 though, is that it takes easily twice as long to start up as ’04. Even though you will likely never be doing anything on the computer when you start the program up, it’s a good thing because you will be unable to do. During the start up, it collects all your system information, so you have to just sit back and wait for it to open.