3Dmark 11, pcmark 7 and other benchmarks will no longer be supported

You may have heard that Microsoft will stop supporting Windows 7 on January 14, 2020. The benchmarks also have a natural lifespan that ends when they no longer provide significant results in modern hardware. This is happening with some widely used tools belonging to UL, such as 3DMark or PCMark 7, which are no longer supported.

3DMark 11, PCMark 7 and other benchmark tools will no longer be supported by UL

When old benchmark tools are used with new hardware, the results may be biased or limited so that their precision and relevance are reduced. That was happening with 3DMark 11 or PCMark, tools that were not as optimized for multi-core CPUs at the time they were conceived.

Visit our guide on building an enthusiastic PC

Today, UL announces that as of January 14, 2020, it will no longer offer updates or support for the 3DMark 11, PCMark 7, Powermark, 3DMark Cloud Gate and 3DMark Ice Storm tools. These benchmarks, all of which were released between 2011 and 2013, no longer offer useful and comparable results with modern hardware. In all cases, there are newer and more relevant benchmark tools that we should use instead.

After January 14, 2020, these unsupported benchmarks:

• They will no longer be sold at UL, Steam or other app stores. They will no longer receive updates. They will no longer be guaranteed to work on their online services. They will no longer be eligible for customer support.

Anyone who has purchased 3DMark 11 on Steam will remain the owner and can run it from their Steam Library.

Guru3d font