How does your PC compare with other PCs? There is no easy way to determine this – each PC can be configured in a thousand different ways by mixing the various hardware components. They may be similar in appearance but can have different CPU speeds, memory, FSB, video card setup and several others. Using a standard Benchmarking system will ease this pain. Unfortunately most of the industry standard benchmarking systems cost money and not worth the price if you plan on using once or twice a year. PCMark05 is a free alternative created by Futuremark. It provides one-click features and can be used on Laptops and Desktops. The reports are accessible via a web-browser if you decide to upload them to a web-server.

Features & Download

Minimum System requirements as per PCMark05 webpage:

• Intel® or AMD® compatible processor 1.4GHz or higher, SSE support
• 128MB of RAM (256MB recommended)
• DirectX 7 compliant graphics adapter (3D tests require a fully DirectX 9 compatible hardware)
• 110MB of Hard Disk space. HDD tests require additional 130MB of Hard Disk space.
• Windows® XP 32bit or Windows Vista™ 32bit operating system with latest Service Packs and updates installed
• DirectX® 9.0c
• Visual C++ 2005 Redist
• DirectX 9.0c
• Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 or later installed
• Microsoft Media Player 10 or later installed
• Microsoft Media Encoder 9 installed

It is free for personal use and can be downloaded from a variety of sources such as MajorGeeks and Fileshack.