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PCMark05 supports both system level and component level benchmarking. It is comprised of different test suites and the user also has the ability to design custom test suites.

System Test Suite

There are 11 system tests - each one is designed to represent a certain type of PC usage. By running these tests, PCMark05 stresses the components in a similar manner as they are stressed in normal home usage. More information on the selection of these tests can be found on the PCMark05 White Paper.
The system test suite contains tests measuring different components of a PC and the results of the tests as well as the total score depend on all components. The system tests stress CPU, system bus, Memory and Graphics performance.
The default test suite is the System Test Suite including tests combining the use of different components. The tests is the System Test Suite include:

• HDD - XP startup
• Physics and 3D
• 2D - Transparent windows
• 3D - Pixel Shader
• Web page rendering
• File Decryption
• 2D - Graphics memory - 64 lines
• HDD - General usage
• Multithreaded test 1: Video encoding & Audio Compression
  This test runs the Video encoding and Audio Compression tests at the same time multithreaded.
• Multithreaded test 2: Text Edit & Image Decompression
  This test runs the Text Edit and Image decompression tests at the same time multithreaded.
• Multithreaded test 3: File Encryption & HDD - Virus scan & Memory - Latency 16MB & File compression

CPU Test Suite

PCMark05 also includes test suite for testing CPU performance. The tests selected in this suite are the most CPU intensive and lack activities in other components, such as memory. The tests in the CPU suite include:

• File compression
• File decompression
• File Encryption
• File Decryption
• Image decompression
• Audio encoding
• Multithreaded test 1: File compression & File Encryption
  This test runs the File Compression and File Encrypting tests at the same time multithreaded.
• Multithreaded test 2: File decompression & File decryption & Audio decompression & Image decompression
  This test runs the File compression, File decryption, Audio decoding and Image decoding tests at the same time multithreaded.

Memory Test Suite

Memory Read tests: 16MB, 8MB, 192kB, 4kB block sizes
Memory Write tests: 16MB, 8MB, 192kB, 4kB block sizes
Memory Copy tests: 16MB, 8MB, 192kB, 4kB block sizes
Memory Latency tests: 16MB, 8MB, 192kB, 4kB block sizes

Graphics Test Suite

• 2D - Transparent Windows
• 2D - Graphics memory 64 lines
• 2D - Graphics memory 128 lines
• 2D - Video playback
• 3D - Fill rate
• 3D - Polygon throughput
• 3D - Pixel shader
• 3D - Vertex shader

HDD Test Suite

• XP Startup
• Application loading
• General usage
• Virus scanning
• File write

Please refer to the PCMark05 Whitepaper and Help file included in PCMark05 for more detailed information about the tests.