Introducing WorldBench 6 Beta 2

The next version of WorldBench, the PC World-developed benchmark for testing PC system performance, is now available for testing on Windows Vista.

This release of WorldBench fills an urgent need for testing PCs running the Windows Vista operating system. While we have labeled it a beta, this release is stable and reliable enough to run as a final product. Regardless, we plan an even better final release of WorldBench 6. (For more information, see the WorldBench 6 Beta 2 FAQ.)

Though the outward appearance and navigation of WorldBench 6 Beta 2 closely resembles that of WorldBench 5, a lot of behind-the-scenes work has gone into making sure it runs reliably on both the 32- and 64-bit versions of Windows Vista.

Continuing the tradition of the previous versions of our test suite, WorldBench 6 Beta 2 uses application-based tests to gauge real-world system performance. We have updated its applications and tests to provide a better assessment of today's more powerful systems, which have larger amounts of RAM and multicore CPUs.

The new applications in WorldBench 6 Beta 2 are:

• Adobe Photoshop CS2
• Autodesk 3ds max 8.0 SP-3
• Firefox 2
• Microsoft Office 2003 with SP-1
• Microsoft Windows Media Encoder 9.0
• Nero 7 Ultra Edition
• Roxio VideoWave Movie Creator 1.5
• WinZip Computing WinZip 10.0

Like WorldBench 5, WorldBench 6 Beta 2 is fully automated. Application tests are scripted to run consecutively, and their results are automatically combined and compared with that of a baseline system to give the final WorldBench score. The WorldBench score and the individual application test times are available at the end of the testing.

Starting with the June 2007 issue, PC World will include WorldBench 6 Beta 2 scores in tested projects until the final version of WorldBench 6 is released. Because of the updated tests and baseline system, scores from WorldBench 6 Beta 2 cannot be compared with scores from previous versions of WorldBench.

For more information, visit our Test Center page, as well as "How to Get WorldBench 6 Beta 2."