Written By : Lee Mansfield
June 2005

Installation

Installing 3DMark05 is a simple affair; you can download the basic version from the Futuremark website. Weighing in at around 74MB it's a little over twice as big as PCMark04, and almost all of that extra size is due to the new and updated benchmarking tests included within the program.

To work properly PCMark05 requires the following:

• Windows XP
• DirectX 9c
• Media Player 10
• Media Encoder 9
• Internet Explorer 6

Apart from XP, which the majority will most likely have anyway, the rest can be downloaded free from the Microsoft web site.

Additionally you must have 240MB free hard disk space to install and run PCMark05.

There are 3 versions of PCMark, and each has varying functionalities:
" Basic
o System Test Suite
o Access to detailed System Information
o The ability to submit your results using the Online ResultsBrowser
" Advanced (former Professional): Includes the above as well as:
o CPU, Graphics, Memory and HDD Test Suites
" Professional (former Business): Includes the above as well as:
o Access to customised test suites
o Command line functions
The Advanced and Professional versions can be unlocked by purchasing a registration key from Futuremark and entering it into PCMark.

Features:::...

The first impression upon running PCMark05 is that it takes forever to load, (well, around 45 seconds on my machine anyway), and it also freezes up your machine as it loads, so much so that I actually thought it had crashed my PC and my finger was already hovering over my reset button when it finished loading.

If you've ever used PCMark before then you'll instantly be familiar with PCMark05's interface.

As you can see from the below image comparing the basic versions of PCMark04 & PCMark05, they are very nearly identical.

As you can also see, the PCMark interface is split into 4 sections: Tests, System, Results, and the 'Run PCMark' button.