Futuremark announces its PCMark7 benchmarking suite

SOFTWARE DEVELOPER Futuremark has announced its benchmarking software package, PCMark7, designed for Windows 7.

The PCMark series of benchmarking software is one of the market leaders and big names for benchmarking the latest computer technology. PCMark7 is the latest in this range and has been designed for the Windows 7 operating system.

With almost every new laptop and desktop coming with Windows 7 pre-installed now, PCMark7 will come with 7 different test suites that combine over 20 different workloads to test a range of machines, components and scenarios.

The main suite is your run of the mill overall performance test that you'd expect from any good benchmarking software package and will give you a overall PCMark score. An entertainment suite will focus on media and gaming, while the creativity suite measures performance specifically related to images and video and the productivity suite will look at performance based on Internet and office applications.

A pair of specialist suites will include the computation suite, which "contains workloads that isolate the computation performance of the system", and a storage suite for testing, er, storage. Last, but not least of the seven is a lightweight suite specifically designed for entry level systems that would otherwise be unable to run the full PCMark7 suite.

A DirectX9 graphics card is required for a PCMark score and DirectX10 and DirectX11 cards are required for additional graphics tests.

Futuremark has not yet released any price details or when the software will be available to purchase, with only the words on its website, "coming soon". µ