PCMark 7 version 1.4.0 released

March 4, 2013

PCMark 7 has been updated to version 1.4.0 and is now fully compatible with Windows 8. Please note that benchmark scores ARE affected by the changes in this update.

You should not compare scores from PCMark 7 v1.4.0 with any previous version of PCMark 7.

To get the update, download the PCMark 7 v1.4.0 installer from one of our partner mirror sites

The major changes in PCMark 7 v1.4.0 include:

Improvements

  • Enhanced accuracy in video playback drawn frames measurement.
  • In addition to the standard result, PCMark 7 Storage tests now report additional "raw" results where the metric idle values have been excluded from the score calculation.
  • New troubleshooting option for hardware acceleration of video transcoding - "Enable hardware accelerated video transcoding" checkbox on the Help tab.
  • Improved logging.

Compatibility

  • Now fully compatible with Windows 8.
  • The Web Browsing test has been completely rewritten to avoid compatibility issues with Windows 8. The previous implementation was based on Microsoft Foundation Classes (MFC), the new one is a Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) application. The heavy lifting in the test is still done by the WebBrowser2 control. Benchmark scores are affected, in most cases going up by a few percent.
  • SystemInfo updated to version 4.15 for Windows 8 compatibility.

Bug fixes

  • Fixed issues in video transcoding tests and added transcoding output file validation. These changes affect benchmark scores.
  • Fixed a data compressibility bug in the storage workloads. Benchmark scores are affected in configurations that use data compression at the hardware level.