PCMark 10 Express

Futuremark was kind enough to provide a copy of the PCMark 10 Professional Edition for us, and as of the date of this article, the application version was 1.0.1198, while the three benchmark versions were 1.0. So please note that future versions may include changes from what we have currently. Futuremark did make it clear that benchmark versions will only change for bug fixes and that the launch product will continue to be the same benchmark as always.


Before we dig deeper into the PCMark 10 Express benchmark, know that the three perform different tests which in turn result in different system requirements. For instance, PCMark 10 and PCMark 10 Extended include a graphics test, so your GPU had better be supporting a 1920x1080 display. As seen above, it also comes with higher system requirements on memory and storage. A test guide comparison is also seen above, there to help introduce the test groups that belong to each individual benchmark. As such, it is fair to say that PCMark 10 Express is the least demanding of the three benchmark suites.


We see here the test routines in the PCMark 10 Express benchmark. Here, Futuremark is targeting office professionals more than enthusiasts, which makes for a very good everyday performance test benchmark. Let's briefly examine each individual test routine. Please note that the background in the screenshots below may not be from the PCMark 10 Express benchmark while the actual test is.

App Start-up

This test aims to measure hardware performance when launching real-world applications. I can definitely support this as there is nothing more annoying than having to wait for a program to open. It uses four free programs, all of which come included with the PCMark 10 installer - Chromium web browse, Firefox web browser, LibreOffice Writer, and GIMP - for a combination of light weight and more complex applications. There are three steps in the routine involving initialization, warm start, and cold start, with five runs conducted of the latter two steps and a geometric mean calculated in terms of time taken in seconds.

Web Browsing

This test routine uses the Chromium and Firefox web browsers and involves five browsing segments - social media, online shopping, maps, videos, and static web pages - tested twice as applicable. The test aims to replicate power-user scenarios and measures hardware performance accordingly.

Video Conferencing

This test uses two call scenarios. The private call scenario involves a 1-to-1 call at a resolution of 1280x720 at 30 FPS, and the group call scenario is run with four mock participants at a resolution of 1920x1080 at 30 FPS. Video encoding, streaming, and decoding are all tested and quantified. As someone who has experienced an old work laptop mess up several video conference calls myself, I appreciate the inclusion of this test.

Writing

LibreOffice Writer is the application of choice here, with multiple typical text-processing tasks tested by involving two separate documents - load, cut-paste, copy and paste, type, picture insert, save, and save as. Text processing usually takes up a large fraction of a office worker's time, and I am no exception even here on TechPowerUp as I write up this review.

Spreadsheets

A new program, LibreOffice Calc, is used here. Similar to the writing test, this involves typical spreadsheet application tasks in two different scenarios including load, window stretch, data copy, mathematical formulae, data paste, and save. The test is fairly self-explanatory in real world applicability, as number crunchers everywhere will testify.

These five test routines each have a score, and the test group scores are calculated as described in the technical guide. The PCMark 10 Express score is thus calculated as: Score = K * geomean (Se,Sp) where K= 0.605 (which scales the score to 5000 on the reference PC); Se = Essentials group score; Sp = Productivity group score.