{multithumb}Hello dear readers. Some of you know that I gave Bill a chance to prove that Vista is indeed the next OS. FutureMark is making a bold step towards the future of computing and they have created a new PcMark to measure our PC performance in Vista. If you visited FutureMark then you must know that the next 3dMark will also be Vista only. But hey, the CPU’s and GPU’s of the “future” have arrived, XP is getting old and with Vista you have to know what you are expecting. The time of this release is just right and now every vista user has a chance to explore how well his PC is equiped in order to deal with daily tasks inside Vista. Not only that but as we benchers know that this tool will let us compare our sistems against each other. Soooo, the new exotic tool for testing your killer machine has arrived from future-Mark and it’s called PCMark VANTAGE!

“PCMark® Vantage provides you with the correct tools for performance measurement of every type of Personal Computer with Microsoft's new Microsoft Windows Vista® operating system from Office Productivity computers and Gaming Machines to PCs configured for the creative user. With an easy to use interface and clear scoring, you will be able to select exactly the type of tests you want to use and then choose the right upgrade components or complete PC that will fit your needs. This easy-to-use product gives you the same tools and knowledge that virtually every professional tester in the industry uses.”

What you should know if you want to give it a shot:

Installation file is about 664MB in size and it takes about 774MB after installation. An aditional ~1 GB free space is required in order to run it. As I already said this bench is made only for Vista so if you have another OS don’t bother.

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Installing PCMark Vantage

PCMARK VANTAGE feature tests

Memories Suite

TV and Movies Suite

Gaming Suite

Music Suite

Communications Suite

Productivity Suite

HDD Suite

So lets get started. The installation was pretty fast and in 3 or four minutes the bench was installed and ready to go. In case you wonder there was no restart needed.

In the main menu you have a lot of options to set depending on which version of Vantage you got.

Main Menu

First test it’s about the way your PC is handling digital data (memories) working with photos and stuff…

Memory Test

Second test is about TV-Movies multi-media capability.

TV Movies

Third test was the gaming one and I am sure you’ll say “hmmm I think I remember this”

Gaming Test

The entire test takes about 30 min (26 on my system). Since PcMark doesn’t equal 3DMark in beauty you can sip your coffee while reading your newspaper and sit confy in your chair until the number pop up. Actually you have to submit your result online and then you see your result into the online browser. There you can check how your PC performed in every test and there is plenty of info about your setup and stuff. This special trial I had access to had some advertising, mainly about YouGamers (the sister of futuremark site) but nothing that I mind really. Here is my end result;

Results

At about 8PM UK time I had a CSS Friendly match so I had to postpone a second testing with more pics and stuff. After a second testing it turned out my trial key expired. Maybe they gave it just for one test only, not sure tho, but still I am happy I got no errors and the tests run flawlessly. Overall impression is good and I really look forward to compare my bench with anyone that will have the pleasure of running PcMark VANTAGE.

PC Specs: Intel E4300 @2600, 2x1GB Kingston 667, MSI P35, 2x120Seagate on Adaptec RAID2120, 8800 GTS 320 Leadtek, 500W Delux PSU/Antec1080Case, SB X-FI ExtremeGamer, LG DVDWR

“Key Benefits of PCMark Vantage:

• Unparalleled ease-of-use: Single Click Benchmarking

• Unified Benchmarking for desktop, laptop PCs and workstations

• Newly developed to natively support 32 and 64-bit Microsoft Windows Vista

• System Information tool that displays advanced system configuration information

• Advanced Online Results Browser functionality with Result Analyzer “

Useful links:

http://www.futuremark.com/pcmarkvantage/promo/

http://www.yougamers.com/games/10205/

Download PCMark Vantage from AOAFiles!