BAPCo releases its Sysmark 2012 benchmark tool

BENCHMARKING SOFTWARE VENDOR BAPCo has released Sysmark 2012, one of the most commonly used PC system benchmarking tools on the market.

BAPCo's Sysmark benchmark product has been out for many years and has become a popular tool for reviews websites and more importantly system vendors to use to evaluate PC performance. Sysmark 2012 includes a new user interface, individual scenario execution and integrated configuration management.

Sysmark is a synthetic benchmark that includes a smorgasbord of applications, which the firm claims "reflects usage patterns of business users in the areas of office productivity, data/financial analysis, system management, media creation, 3D modeling and web development".

Many of the largest hardware and software vendors including AMD, Dell, HP, Intel, Microsoft, Samsung and Toshiba form part of the consortium that runs BAPCo. One of the long running concerns is that vendors involved in BAPCo tune their applications or hardware to perform well on it in order to promote sales.

Although BAPCo and other synthetic benchmark providers all claim to provide benchmarking based on realistic usage patterns, it is always best practice to run multiple benchmarks, preferably on your actual workloads. After all, just how much faster can you want to drive Microsoft Word?

That said, Sysmark has always been one of the more exhaustive PC benchmarks out there and it is worthy of consideration as part of a larger benchmark suite.

BAPCo's Sysmark 2012 is available from today. µ