Futuremark has launched a new version of its PCMark benchmarking software. According to the manufacturer, PCMark05 is a "totally new product" and tests computers with HD video transcoding, digital music encoding, advanced threading and trace-based hard disk performance tests. The software also comes with support for multi-core and hyper-threaded CPUs.

PCMark05 is offered as System Test Suite with application-based tests that are relevant in typical home use of a PC, as CPU Test Suite that isolates the performance of the CPU, as Graphics Test Suite that measures both 2D and 3D graphics performance of the PC, as well as a memory testing version that evaluate the speed of the memory subsystem.

A limited functionality version of PCMark05 (Basic) is offered as freeware. PCMark05 Advanced is priced at $20. The full feature set is available in PCMark05 Professional for $200. (THG)