PCMark Vantage measures the performance of the latest PC hardware across a variety of common scenarios. PCMark Vantage supports both system level and component level benchmarking and comprises several different test suites. Please refer to the PCMark Vantage whitepaper and PCMark Vantage Help for more detailed information about the tests below.

PCMark Suite

The PCMark Suite is a collection of various tests designed to represent common everyday PC usage. The PCMark score is the direct result of the PCMark Suite test.

PCMark Consumer Scenarios

• Digital Memories 1 & 2
• TV and Movies 1 & 2
• Gaming 1 & 2
• Music 1 & 2
• Communication 1 & 2
• Productivity 1 & 2

CPU Tests

• Data encryption, decryption, compression and decompression
• CPU image manipulation (compression / decompression / resize / flipping)
• Audio transcoding
• Video transcoding
• Text editing
• Web page rendering
• Windows Mail
• Windows Contacts
• CPU game test

Graphics Tests

• Video playback
• GPU game test

HDD Tests

• 6 seperate HDD tests

Advanced and Professional test suites

PCMark Vantage Advanced and Professional Editions include additional test suites covering consumer scenarios such as digital photography and video, HDTV and movies, gaming, music, communications and productivity performance as well as specific storage system tests.

• Memories Suite measures the system’s performance when handling digital photos and video.
• The TV and Movies Suite measures performance when transcoding and displaying TV and movies.
• Gaming Suite measures the system’s ability to run the latest games.
• Music Suite measures performance when working with music files.
• Communications Suite measures the system’s performance in various communication scenarios.
• Productivity Suite measures performance when running common productivity software.
• HDD Suite measures the system’s storage performance.

PCMark Vantage online services

The Online Results Browser, or ORB for short, is an essential part of the PCMark Vantage experience. The ORB lets you make performance comparisons between your PC and other similar systems by searching through over 20 million results.

From the ORB comparison graphs, you can easily see how your PC’s performance could be improved by upgrading to a faster processor, adding memory or installing a more powerful graphics card for example.