We regularly publish a DVD full of application-based tests we call Software Evaluation Guides (SEGs). On it, we provide test scripts and input files you can use to evaluate PC platforms using real-world applications.

SEGs make a great compliment to industry-standard benchmarks since a complete test mix includes synthetic tests like PCMark*, application-based benchmarks like SYSmark*, and application-based tests you run on your own.

We normally provide our SEG collection to Intel customers, as well as members of the tech press. Now, we’re making it available to everyone. Here at ICF, you can download these SEG test scripts, as well as resource files (media input files, mostly) to run on your own system.

These SEG tests cover several usage areas including media encoding, office applications, as well as 3D, audio and video content creation. SEG tests are also compatible with both Windows* XP and Windows* Vista* if you want to compare performance on the two OSes. Some of these SEGs also make for good background workloads in multitasking scenarios. Today, we introduce you to three SEGs that cover photo editing, 3D rendering, and video effects.