Benchmarking is one of the most important factors in assessing product quality so without the relevant benchmarking tools, it's impossible for us to judge which hardware deserves your cash. Unfortunately, most third-party benchmarking tools rely on synthetic tests that don't accurately reflect what most PC enthusiasts do on a daily basis. That's why we developed our own Media Benchmarks, which use widely available, open-source applications to carry out the tasks that most of us perform on a regular basis. There are three tests, each of which measure different aspects of a PC's performance. These are also the same benchmarks that we use in the magazine, so you can make a direct comparison between your PC and the kit we review. You can also submit your results to the Custom PC website and compare your PC's performance with that of other readers' PCs.

GIMP Image Editing

Photo editing is one of the most common tasks that people use their computers for, and with the sensors in consumer digital cameras now topping 6 megapixels, it's becoming an increasingly demanding task too. Our GIMP image editing test simulates how well a PC can manipulate a collection of large digital photos, and to achieve a high score requires a PC with a powerful CPU, plenty of quick memory and a fast hard disk drive.

H.264 Video Encoding

Video encoding is one of the most demanding tasks that you can ask a PC to perform, particularly now that high-definition camcorders are becoming the norm. Our test uses Handbrake to encode a high resolution MPEG-2 video using the H.264 codec. This primarily tests CPU performance and, since the encoding application can take advantage of more than one CPU, multi-core processors get a significant boost.

Multitasking

Multitasking is a phrase that we're all highly familiar with, because most of us are now used to running multiple applications at the same time. However, to run multiple applications well you need a powerful (ideally multi-core) CPU and plenty of RAM. Our multitasking test performs a massive file backup (with encryption) using 7Zip, while simultaneously playing back a HD movie file using mplayer, making it a seriously demanding test for any PC.

Scores

All the scores are normalised against our reference PC. This scored 1,000, so a score of 1,300 is 30% faster than the reference PC. The reference PC consists of a 2.66GHz Core 2 Duo E6750, 2GB of Corsair XMS2-8500 DDR2, 250GB S-ATA II Samsung SpinPoint P120 hard disk and Asus P5K Deluxe WiFi-AP motherboard running Windows Vista Ultimate 32-bit.

Download the Custom PC Media Benchmarks 2007 file below.

CPCSuite2007.zip - 338 Mb

Then run the application and follow the on-screen instructions to install the applications.

This patch fixes a bug in the GIMP Image Editing test for certain PC configurations. However, it is only required if you downloaded the benchmarks before 06/02/2008 - the new build of the benchmarks includes this fix.

patch_235.zip - 52 Kb

Once you've tested your PC, the benchmark application will generate an encrypted results file, which you can then submit to the CPC Benchmarks leaderboard through the application.