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Official testing guidelinesIn order to get accurate and repeatable benchmark results, you should follow the requirements and recommendations below. These guidelines may be updated from time to time. Up-to-date guidelines are available on the PCMark04 web pages.
Official Testing Requirements:
- Restart the computer before running the benchmark.
- Exit all other programs.
- Under the 32-bit Windows operating systems, other tasks can preemptively run during the tests, thus affecting the results. You will want to eliminate as many of these types of tasks as possible, such as automatic updates in operating systems, e-mail clients or other tasks from your StartUp folder. This action also maximizes your available memory.
- Disable all file sharing and possibly also all network connections. Background network activity may affect results. You can submit your results even if you run the benchmark without network connection. Save your results in the default format (.pcr) and restart your system with network connection after the benchmark run. Run PCMark04 and submit your saved result by selecting the 'Submit Saved Result' item in the right click menu (open the right click menu by right clicking the PCMark04 main window).
- Follow a standard testing procedure each time you run the tests. Run the tests at least three times to verify that the results are reproducible.
- Before running the HDD tests, the target drive should be first defragmented in order to receive accurate results.
Additional Recommendations for Testing:
- We recommend that you test on a "clean" system only. You should use a program like "Norton Ghost" (http://www.ghost.com) to restore a clean system for every test case.
- We recommend that you disable the System Restore feature in Windows XP. For more information, please see Microsoft Knowledge Base article Q267951.
These measures help to ensure that your results are consistent.
The main window (Professional Edition)
The large button in the bottom of the dialog starts the benchmark run. The Benchmark button always starts the run using the selected tests and options. The default settings are used when you open PCMark04, which means that all of the default tests are selected and the default options are used.
Select testsBy default all the standard tests are selected but you can also choose to only run certain tests. Pick tests to be run by clicking the Select button.
The tests selection is done in two dialogs: the selection and the advanced selection. The Tests view shows the tests in their logical groups, such as System Tests, Memory Tests etc. Remove a tick from a checkbox (by simply clicking on it) to run the next benchmark without that group of tests. You can expand the test groups and select single tests from them by clicking the + sign before the suite name.
The Advanced view shows all the available tests under different categories. This is where you can create your own test sets. Remember though that you will not get any overall scores if you run other than the default test suites. You will get the results of the individual test you run.
The Advanced test selection has two parts: the Tests and Selected Tests. Of these, Tests contains all the tests you can select from and Selected Tests show the current test selection i.e. tests to be run. You can add tests to the test run by selecting a test and clicking Add -> (or double-clicking on the desired test). The selected test shows under SetX, where the X describes the test set number. The test sets can be renamed by selecting a set and pressing F2. The test set names appear on the Select Tests dialog under Custom Test Suite category.
You can also select different tests to be run simultaneously multithreaded. One test set (e.g. Set1) includes all the tests to be run simultaneously. One Test Set can contain a maximum of two different tests. Note that you can only select the threaded tests under System category, and you can not run the Physics and 3D test multithreaded. After creating a Set, click Add Set to create another, and after having created all the tests and their options, you can either save the test set by clicking Save As.. or just run the tests. Click OK to return to the Select Tests screen, check that the desired test suites are selected, click OK to return to the main screen and run the benchmark.
OptionsYou can turn the SSE/SSE2 optimized compilation off by unselecting the tick on "CPU Optimizations". For more information on the optimized compilation, please see PCMark04 White Paper.
The target partition for the HDD tests can be selected by choosing the correct letter at "HDD Test Target:" Note that you can run the HDD tests only on local hard drives.
Benchmark results
When the benchmark run is complete, the Results dialog shows your overall score. Below the score is the button for accessing the Online ResultBrowser (ORB). The Details... button shows the results of the individual tests, and To Excel button imports the results to Microsoft Excel. You can also save the results by clicking Save As.. . Saved results get the extension .pcr, and they can be submitted to the ORB or imported to Microsoft Excel. There is a frame in the PCMark main window showing the total scores after the Result dialog has been closed.
PCMark04 Professional Edition calculates total scores for System, CPU, Memory, Graphics and HDD performance. The figures are gained in different ways for different test suites. The scoring formulas are explained in the test suite description and further in the PCMark04 White Paper.
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The Result Details window shows the results of the tests. The Scores tab shows the scores for different test suites and Results tab shows the individual test results in the original measurement units. You can expand the results trees by clicking the + sign before the test suite name to view the results of the individual tests.
The System tests and their result units are listed below:
- Zlib Compression - MB/s (million bytes of data compressed / second)
- Zlib Decompression - MB/s (million bytes of data decompressed / second)
- File Encryption - MB/s (million bytes of data encrypted/second)
- File Decryption - MB/s (million bytes of data decrypted/second)
- Virus Scanning - MB/s (million bytes of data scanned /second)
- Grammar Check - KB/s (thousand bytes of text checked /second)
- Audio Conversion - KB/s (thousand bytes converted /second)
- JPEGDecompression - MPixels/s (million pixels decompressed /second)
- Web Page Rendering - pages/s (amount of pages opened during one second)
- WMV Video Encoding - fps (frames processed /second)
- DivX Video Encoding - fps (frames processed /second)
- Video Memory - fps (frames processed /second)
PCMark04 ScoresThe PCMark score is calculated using the following formula:
PCMark Score = 66 * (File Compression* File Encryption * File Decompression * Image Processing * Virus Scanning * Grammar Check * File Decryption * AudioConversion * Internet Browsing * EMV Video Encoding * DivX Video Encoding * Physics & 3D * Graphics Memory )^(1/13)
The factor 66 is used to scale the results to wanted level and the score itself is created as a geometric mean of the test results. Please read the descriptions of these tests.
The PCMark04 CPU score is calculated using the following formula:
CPU Score = 110 * (File Compression * File Encryption * File Decompression * Image Processing * Grammar Check * File Decryption * AudioConversion * WMV Video Encoding * DivX Video Encoding )^(1/9)
The PCMark04 Memory score is calculated using the following formula:
Memory Score = 0,9 * (Read 8M * Read 4M * ((Read 192k + Read 4k)/2) * Write 8M * Write 4M * ((Write 192k + Write 4k)/2) * Copy 8M * Copy 4M * ((Copy 192k + Copy 4k)/2)) * Random Access 8M * Random Access 4M * ((Random access 192k + Random access 4k)/2)}^(1/12)
Please read the descriptions of these tests.
NOTE: The results of the memory tests with data blocks small enough to fit in the L1 or L2 cache are combined as an average to weigh less in the total score.
The PCMark04 Graphics score is calculated using the following formula:
PCMark04 Graphics score = 0.5 * transparent windows + 0.4 * ((video memory 16 lines + video memory 32 lines) /2) + 0.6 * ((fill rate single text. + fill rate multitext.)/2) + 50 * ((polygon throughput single light + polygon throughput multiple lights)/2)
The descriptions of these tests.
The PCMark04 HDD score is calculated using the following formula:
HDD Score = (XP Startup Trace x 120) + (Application Load trace x 180) + (File Copy Trace x 28) + (General Usage x 265)
Please read the descriptions of these tests.
For more information on the scores, please read the PCMark04 white paper available at PCMark04 product web pages and on the PCMark04 CD.
System infoSystem Info shows you the hardware setup of your PC in detail. Click the Details button in the main window of PCMark04 to view your System Info.
System Info opens in Internet Explorer 6. Choose from the list in the tree structure what system information you want to view. Click on the desired node to expand it. These can be minimized again by clicking the node. Note that if you save your results or export them to Microsoft Excel, System Information is also saved, so you can easily see afterwards with what system the results were obtained.
System Info shows you details regarding your PC's:
- Windows installation
- DirectX installation
- CPU
- System memory
- Motherboard
- AGP bus
- Graphics card
- Hard Disk Drives
- Monitor
IMPORTANT NOTE! PCMark04 runs on a wide variety of PCs, equipped with very different hardware. We have done our very best to build a system info utility that detects any hardware we have been able to test it on. However it is possible that your PC contains, for example, a motherboard that doesn't provide the CPU bus clock speed or amount of memory in the format our system info expects. Should you find yourself in this situation, please check our FAQs for more information.
Command line switchesPCMark04 has a number of command line options. Command line options are options that are entered when PCMark is started to automate the benchmark run. The traditional way is to open a command prompt, and type manually the name of the executable that is to be run and the command line options for it.
All available command line options are presented in a window, when you start PCMark04 with the switch -help. This can be done in at least two ways:
- Drag the PCMark04.exe file or the PCMark04 desktop shortcut to the Run dialog of your Start menu. Press the Start button on your desktop and then select Run to open the Run dialog. When the 3DMark03 file or shortcut is in the text field of the Run dialog, move the cursor to the end of the text, add a space, type -help and click OK.
- Edit the 3DMark03 shortcut on your desktop by clicking it with the right mouse button. Select properties and edit the Target: text field. Move the cursor to the end of the text, add a space, type -help and click OK. Next time you click the 3DMark03 desktop shortcut the command line switches will be displayed. Remember to change the shortcut back to the way it was, so that you can run 3DMark03 again.
Use all command line switches the same way you used the -help switch. The command line switches are the following:
-help Show all command line options. -verbose Enable verbose output. -nosplash Disable splash window. -repeat=X Set repeat count, where X is "off", "loop" or a number. Default value is "off". "Loop" runs the benchmark until it's manually stopped. If you give a number, the benchmark runs the selected tests as many rounds. -optimized=on/off Set the CPU optimization mode, can be "on" or "off". Default value is "on". -drive=X Set the target for the HDD test, where X is a drive letter from A to Z. Default target is the first available HDD partition. -system=on/off Set System suite, can be "on" or "off". Default value is "on". -cpu=on/off Set CPU suite, can be "on" or "off". Default value is "off". -memory=on/off Set Memory suite, can be "on" or "off". Default value is "off". -graphics=on/off Set Graphics suite, can be "on" or "off". Default value is "off". -hdd=on/off Set HDD suite, can be "on" or "off". Default value is "off". -custom=X Run custom test suite, where X is the filename for the custom suite XML file to load. [filename] The result output file. The results are saved in the given output filename. An example of a command line automated benchmark run which runs the System and the CPU test suites and writes the results to "results.pcr":
C:\PCMark04\PCMark04.exe" -cpu=on results.pcr
Note that if you don't give a filename, the options you have chosen, are selected, but the benchmark doesn't run automatically.Right Click Menu
The explanations of the right click menu items are as follows:
Open saved result in Excel Exports a saved PCMark04 result file to Microsoft Excel worksheet (Microsoft Excel needs to be installed) Submit Saved Result Submits a previously saved result to ORB Help Opens this Help file. About Copyright- and other information on PCMark04 Exit Exit PCMark04.
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