Futuremark Announces PCMark 7 for Windows 7
Futuremark's has announced an upcoming benchmark suite for Windows 7.
Tuesday Futuremark announced the upcoming release of PCMark 7, a new benchmark offering complete PC performance analysis for Microsoft's Windows 7 operating system.
Currently the software doesn't have a set release date. However, when launched, it will offer a set of seven test suites measuring different aspects of PC performance "with a high degree of accuracy." These suites will combine more than 20 individual workloads covering storage, computation, image and video manipulation, web browsing and gaming.
"Hardware innovations like solid state drives (SSDs), and new form factors such as netbooks and tablets are greatly increasing the range of PC performance available to businesses and home users," said Jani Joki, Director of PC Products and Services at Futuremark. "With so much choice available, PCMark 7 is an essential and easy to use tool to test and compare PC performance accurately and reliably across a wide range of usage scenarios."
According to the company, PCMark 7 will include a Lightweight Suite that will measure the capabilities of entry level systems and mobility platforms that don't have enough horsepower to run the full PCMark 7 suite. As for the meatier rigs and notebooks, the Entertainment, Creativity and Productivity scenario suites will measure common use performance while the Computation and Storage hardware suites will measure component performance.
"The Storage suite is ideal for testing SSDs and external hard drives in addition to the system drive," the company added.
Right now Futuremark lists the software as "coming soon," so stay tuned for additional details about the actual release and pricing.

To be honest, I like using the 3Dmark software for showing compatibility with different components. Just because "it works", doesn't mean it works well sometimes. For instance, when I had my AM2+ board (K9A2 Platinum) I tried 3 different kinds of ram, and got different avgs for each kind tested. Now, having a complete sweet, you can see how each component compares. Helps when you're a system builder.