Futuremark Releases PCMark 7 Today

Today Futuremark is releasing their brand new full system bench, PCMark 7. The last PCMark (Vantage) was not exactly widely used in the benchmarking community. That’s not just because it isn’t a boint-granting benchmark on HWBot either. It took forever and a day to run; I think I saw a fish evolve into a lizard the last time I tried to run it.

Fortunately for everyone, this iteration takes about one third the time of PCMark Vantage. Vantage could take up to 30-45 minutes to run. On the test system referenced below, it took only 13 minutes, a vast improvement!

PCMark 7 comes in three flavors. The Basic edition is free and allows unlimited test runs. Unfortunately it is limited to one-stored-run at a time on the Futuremark web site. Depending on how they display results (hopefully the full  result without upload), Basic could be ok for most people.

The other consumer-level edition is the Advanced edition and goes for $29.95, which is pretty reasonable if you need the additional features.

PCMark 7 Editions
PCMark 7 Editions

PCMark 7 runs seven tests on your system:

Test 1) Video Playback and Transcoding – This test plays a scene with taxi cabs and pedestrians driving and crossing the street, respectively.

Test 2) System Storage – Gaming – None of the system storage tests are not visually appealing, you just watch the single status indicator change slowly.

Test 3) Graphics DirectX 9 – This one is familiar to many of you because it was ripped straight out of 3DMark06. Remember the Firefly Forest test? Yep, that’s making a reappearance as the graphics test in PCMark 7. That one is particularly tough for GPU overclocks, so it’s a fitting addition.

Test 4) Image Manipulation – This twists, tiles, flips and does other things to various images of taxi cabs and long-exposure night cityscapes.

Test 5) System Storage – Importing Pictures

Test 6) Web Browsing & Decrypting – I’m not exactly clear which browser engine this uses. It looks like Futuremark’s own invention and does not seem to physically use the Internet Explorer browser as in past tests.

Test 7) System Storage – Windows Defender

All of that takes just under five minutes to run. The reason it takes the whole shebang longer is because it goes through the entire test cycle three times before giving you a score. Here’s hoping they allow single-pass scores down the road.

Overall, it seems like a solid benchmark and hopefully it will make HWBot at some point in its life. There is definitely an increased chance over PCMark Vantage because it has a free version and you can take screenshots with all details shown (you manually expand the test drop-down as shown in our screenshot).

As far as what you can expect, our example test system consists of:

PCMark 7 Result on a Thuban + 5870
PCMark 7 Result on a Thuban + 5870

Total score for that system: 4323 marks.

Now it’s your turn – go download the basic edition from Futuremark and show us what you’ve got!

– Jeremy Vaughan (hokiealumnus)

About Jeremy Vaughan 197 Articles
I'm an editor and writer here at Overclockers.com as well as a moderator at our beloved forums. I've been around the overclocking community for several years and just love to sink my teeth into any hardware I can get my paws on!

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bmwbaxter

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Nice, I can't wait to try this when I get home. It shall be fun to find tweaks :D

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EarthDog

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How did I miss this thread?!! LOL! DLing now... Im curious to see if this is as HDD sensetive as 05...

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bennoculus

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How did I miss this thread?!! LOL! DLing now... Im curious to see if this is as HDD sensetive as 05...

Doesnt appear to be, I ran it on my 775 system with an HDD, and on my daily driver with an SSD and it surely didn't show any MAJOR difference in scores. I could be wrong though.
Daily driver screen, granted this is without any overclock as I never overclock my daily driver:
pcmark7-2.png

Edit: It did take a little bit to run, I didn't time it or anything. It's definitely MUCH shorter than PCMark Vantage, but it is longer than PCMark05.

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bmwbaxter

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Hmmm, not sure if I want it to be hdd dependant or not... If it is then it will seriously limit the amount of serious contenders. But if it's not then it will be cheaper for me. :p

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bennoculus

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Hmmm, not sure if I want it to be hdd dependant or not... If it is then it will seriously limit the amount of serious contenders. But if it's not then it will be cheaper for me. :p

I can't say for sure, but from my two runs from it I noticed I didn't see a big difference between the one that ran on my SSD and the one that ran on my HDD. I'll let one of the guys with more experience give their input on the whole thing. :shrug:

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EarthDog

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5129... :)

@benoc, what was your detailed score?

pcm7.jpg

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bennoculus

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pcmark7new.png

Appears that memory speed and timings don't affect it as much, as this new run was @ 1600 7-8-7, and the previous run was @ 1333 9-9-9.

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Seebs

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This is PCMark7 on my Daily Driver...
Run 1
955BE (STOCK) + HD6950 (STOCK) + OCZ Vertex 2 60GB + Kingston HyperX Blue 1600MHz 9-9-9-27 + Win 7 Ultimate 64Bit (not stripped)
3790 PCMarks
955BE_HD6950_STOCK.jpg

Notice how I left the "strategic" parts of my background uncovered?

Run 2
955BE @ 4080MHz + HD6980 @ 875/1325 + OCZ Vertex 2 60GB + Kingston HyperX Blue 1600MHz 9-9-9-27 + Win 7 Ultimate 64Bit (not stripped)
4132 PCMarks
pcm7_OC1.jpg

Run 3955BE @ 4050MHz + HD6950 @ 885/1350 + OCZ Vertex 2 60GB + Corsair DOM GT 1800MHz 7-8-7-21 + Win 7 Ultimate 64Bit (not stripped)
4132 PCMarks
pcm7_OC2.jpg

Please look at the main tab of CPUz and tell me I'm not crazy... But this chip will do 4GHz + with that little voltage.... :shock:

Run 4
955BE @ 4275MHz + HD6950 @ 900/1400 + OCZ Vertex 2 60GB + Corsair DOM GT 1800MHz 7-8-7-21 + Win 7 Ultimate 64Bit (not stripped)
4241 PCMarks
pcm7_OC3.jpg

Maybe I'm blowing this thing out of proportion, but take a look at the CPUz main tab.... That is 4275MHz on the chip with just 1.36V... :shock:
I can't wait to get this chip cold and see how far it will go.

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bennoculus

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With a modest overclock of 4.1GHz it gave me this:
pcmark7_2.png

I like this benchmark, there's certainly something to it. I'm curious on how to tweak it, I guess I'll figure it out one way or another. It sure seems to like raw CPU speed.

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theELVISCERATOR

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