PCMark 10 promises more relevant benchmarks at less than half the runtime
Now that PCMark Vantage and 3DMark Vantage are out of the way, Futuremark is finally ready to launch PCMark 10 in both Basic and Advanced Editions this June 22nd.
The company is claiming that its suite of brand new benchmarks can test the same performance metrics as found on PCMark 8 at "less than half the time" while being easier to use and more relevant to modern workloads. This alone should be a huge improvement as PCMark 8 is notorious for its long-running tests that only stretch out longer on less powerful laptops and tablets.
Additionally, gone are the "Accelerated" and "Conventional" options from PCMark 8 in order to streamline the testing process and, in its place, will be "Extended" to cover as wide of a range of activities as possible, "Express" to cover basic word processing workloads, and the middle-ground "Standard" option for digital media content and editing.
Readers who want to the details of each individual test can refer to Futuremark's technical guide to PCMark 10 here. The Basic Edition will be free to download while the Advanced Edition will cost users $30 USD beginning later this month. Expect us to add Futuremark's latest tests for all our standard reviews soon.