If you were shopping in a big-box retail store for an off-the-shelf PC, would having a concrete, comparative performance figure help your buying decision? Futuremark, maker of 3DMark and PCMark, has teamed up with Elkjøp Nordic — one of the largest computer chains in northern Europe — to benchmark its brand new PCs and organise them into categories for buyers to choose from.
Futuremark tested all of Elkjøp’s current desktop PCs, all-in-ones and notebooks with its PCMark, 3DMark and VRMark software benchmark suite, and will display both those scores and a category ranking — Basic, Home, Produce and Create. Basic PCs are for “social media, email, online shopping, and surfing the web”, where Create ones might be “capable of working fluidly with large media files for photo editing, graphic design, video production, and making music.”
From Futuremark: “Elkjøp knows that choosing a new computer is difficult. Many people struggle to relate PC specifications to real-world performance. This can leave less knowledgeable customers feeling confused and uncertain. Others buy cheaper laptops and notebooks without understanding how the low performance of these systems will affect their everyday use and enjoyment.” The idea, clearly, is that with that extra info, customers will see an advantage in stepping up to a more expensive and more powerful model.
We’d love to see this in Australia too. Imagine walking into a JB Hi-Fi or Harvey Norman and, as well as having a saleperson’s patter, also being able to get a dispassionate figure that shows just how powerful your future PC is? It also gives you a performance benchmark to test the machine again in the future, too, to see whether it’s bloated by malware or other junk. This is a Good Thing. Good work, guys. [Futuremark / Elkjøp]