The test suite The most important part of the 3Dmark series are of course the game demos that are the basis for the 3DMark end-score. In '05 there were three of them, with the introduction of Shader Model 3 a new timedemo was added named 'Deep Freeze'. That doesn't mean the other three game demos are the same though, no quite the contrary dear Watson. At all levels the 3D scenery has become more complex than you could ever imagine. That includes complex geometry; scenes with well over one million polygons per frame, complex and more shadows and more lights. All that rendered in real-time of course.
3DMark is all about DirectX 9.0c compatibility and yes, it requires a full DX9 compatible product to take all the shader lovin' to the next dimension. The new update is all about Shader 2.0 and 3.0. A new feature in the software is that it'll now, next to the default end-score, produce 'sub scores.' You will also see numbers for the following:. Shader model 2.0 score. HDR/Shader model 3.0 score. Processor score To measure these scores the software will take you through a suite of demos that'll stress either the GPU or CPU in various ways.
Most of all, the new 3Dmark 06 is all about shaders and HDR. What is a shader? To render a three dimensional object; 2D on your monitor? We start off by building some sort of structure that has a surface, that surface is being built from triangles and why triangles? They are quick to calculate. How's each triangle being processed? Each triangle has to be transformed according to its relative position and orientation to the viewer.
Each of the three vertices the triangle is made up of is transformed to its proper view space position. The next step is to light the triangle by taking the transformed vertices and applying a lighting calculation for every light defined in the scene. At last the triangle needs to be projected to the screen in order to rasterize it.
During rasterization the triangle will be shaded and textured. Graphic processors like the NVIDIA's GeForce and ATI's Radeon series are able to perform a certain amount of these tasks. The first generation was able to draw shaded and textured triangles in hardware. The CPU still had the burden to feed the graphics processor with transformed and lit vertices, triangle gradients for shading and texturing, etc.
Integrating the triangle setup into the chip logic was the next step and finally even transformation and lighting (TnL) was possible in hardware, reducing the CPU load considerably. The big disadvantage was that a game programmer had no direct (i.e.
Program driven) control over transformation, lighting and pixel rendering because all the calculation models were fixed on the chip. And now we finally get to the stage where we can explain Shaders. Vertex and Pixel shaders allow developers to code customized transformation and lighting calculations as well as pixel coloring functionality. Each shader is basically nothing more than a pretty small program executed on the graphics processor to control either vertex or pixel processing. GeForce Series 6 and Radeon family X1000 and upwards have support for Shader model 3.0 What is HDR? HDR is something you all know from games like Far Cry, extremely bright lighting that brings a really cool cinematic effect to gaming. This effect is becoming extraordinarily popular.
Valve recently released some HDR goodness in Half Life 2: Lost Coast which demonstrates the effect very well. HDR means High Dynamic Range. HDR facilitates the use of color values way beyond the normal range of the color palette in an effort to produce a more extreme form of lighting rendering. Typically this trick is used to contrast really dark scenery. Extreme sunlight, over-saturation or over exposure is a good example of what exactly is possible. The most simple way to describe it would be controlling the amount of light used present in a certain position in a 3D scene.
HDR is already present in Far Cry, Half Life 2: Lost Coast and will be available in titles like Unreal 3 and now 3DMark06. What we'll do is walk though the four 3DMark06 gamedemo's one by one and and show you the differences between the old and the new version. We'll briefly look at the newly introduced features. Last year when 3DMark 05 was released (February I think) it became the standard for DirectX 9 benchmarking and it was well received by the consumer and industry.
In the months following I however honestly felt the benchmark was good but not yet perfect as some very important features where left out. 3DMark06 entails all the new features and we will take a brief look at this exciting new update of the software. I say update because in essence 3Dmark06 is 3Dmark05, with a complete overhaul of features and exciting end-result.
3DMark06 Publisher: Product: DX9 3D graphics card benchmark Download: It's Thursday, the 12th of January and right now I'm on a train traveling to Amsterdam where ATI will hold a press-briefing on their upcoming R580 release. Yesterday however, the English site Hexus posted some results/score on NVIDIA's and ATI's latest and to be released flagship graphics cards. I mention this because the only thing the small news-bit mentions performance wise is yet again the 3DMark05 number. How come that whenever we see a 3DMark score we immediately know exactly how fast the product will be?
It's almost scary how much people can rely on a number and that's exactly the success of the 3Dmark series, that single number. It's simply perfect, the number represents something we can comprehend; scaling.
Just like we scale the number in GHz for processors, if you ask a user with a low knowledge level do you think 2 GHz is fast he'll go 'hmmm.' If you ask him that same question yet with 3.6 GHz in the question he'll go 'aah.' You can see there is a certain danger to a single number, for example an AMD 64 FX-57 running at 2.8 GHz is much faster then a 3.6 GHz Pentium 4 processor.
Futuremark's 3DMark series however is more than a scaled number. The series looks at what modern 3D cards do performance wise at several levels and then weighs how important a technology features and then will calculate the score based upon many factors. This is where we land at 3DMark06. Synthetic test or not, 3DMark is THE only standard benchmark that everybody can comprehend and it actually works extremely well. Might I suggest that during the time you read this review you startup your download of 3DMark06 , the file is 550MB in size so you'll kill some time during that download process. Last year when 3DMark 05 was released (February I think) it became the standard for DirectX 9 benchmarking and it was well received by the consumer and industry. In the months following I however honestly felt the benchmark was good but not yet perfect as some very important features were left out.
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NVIDIA started their bragging rights with Shader Model 3 last year already, yet they also introduced something new and exciting called High Dynamic Range (HDR), which is one of the more beautiful technologies we saw last year. There's still very few games supporting it to the fullest yet mark my words, 2006 is going to be an exciting year in game development. New technology that is being introduced needs to go mainstream in hardware, accepted by the consumer and then game developers will start using it.
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A process that usually takes one or two years. It of course doesn't stop there. Subsurface scattering, the introduction of dynamic soft shadows and much, much more are all very exciting to see. Needless to say that 3DMark06 entails all the new features and we will take a brief look at this exciting new update of the software. I say update because in essence 3Dmark06 is 3Dmark05, yet with a complete overhaul of features and exciting end-result. Before I continue I have to state that we only had seven days before we received whitepapers and such to make this article. With other NDA stuff exactly in the middle of this Futuremark release we will show you a short review with a lot of stuff taken directly from the whitepapers.
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A small peek at one of the new tests; Deep Freeze. Last year when 3DMark 05 was released (February I think) it became the standard for DirectX 9 benchmarking and it was well received by the consumer and industry. In the months following I however honestly felt the benchmark was good but not yet perfect as some very important features where left out. 3DMark06 entails all the new features and we will take a brief look at this exciting new update of the software. I say update because in essence 3Dmark06 is 3Dmark05, with a complete overhaul of features and exciting end-result.
3DMark is a tool created and developed by (formerly MadOnion.com and initially Futuremark) to determine the of a computer's 3D graphic rendering and CPU workload processing capabilities. Running 3DMark produces a 3DMark score, with higher numbers indicating better performance. The 3DMark measurement unit is intended to give a normalized mean for comparing different PC hardware configurations (mostly and ), which proponents such as gamers and enthusiasts assert is indicative of end-user performance capabilities. Many versions of 3DMark have been released since 1998.
As each 3DMark is based on a specific version of the, and scores cannot be compared across the different releases. Contents.
Versions Version Description Released Operating System DirectX API Support Status 3DMark99 The first 3DMark was one of the first 3D benchmarks to be aimed directly at the 3D gaming community, rather offering a generic overview of a PC's capabilities. The graphics tests use an early version of 's MAX-FX engine, which was later used in the game.
October 26, 1998 Windows 95 Windows 98 DirectX 6.0 Discontinued after the release of 3DMark99 MAX 3DMark99 MAX 3DMark99 MAX is a content update to 3DMark99. March 8, 1999 Windows 95 Windows 98 DirectX 6.1 Unsupported 3DMark2000 The second generation 3DMark, making use of key features from DirectX 7 (such as hardware accelerated transform and lighting). The east and west are inverted in the games tests. December 6, 1999 Windows 98 DirectX 7 Unsupported 3DMark2001 The third generation 3DMark and the first 3D benchmark that supports DirectX 8, using key features such as vertex and pixel shaders, and point sprites.
March 13, 2001 Windows 98 Windows 98 SE Windows Millennium Windows 2000 Windows XP DirectX 8.0 Discontinued after the release of 3DMark2001 SE 3DMark2001 SE 3DMark2001 Second Edition is an updated version of the third generation 3DMark2001 (the core benchmark tests are as in 3DMark2001, but there is an additional Feature test and broader hardware support). 3DMark2001 SE is the last version of 3DMark to use the MAX-FX engine. February 12, 2002 Windows 98 Windows 98 SE Windows Millennium Windows 2000 Windows XP DirectX 8.1 Unsupported 3DMark03 The fourth generation 3DMark. It is the first version that supports Microsoft DirectX 9.0 and introduces several new features.
The graphics tests cover a range of rendering techniques and DirectX 9 features, expanding on a similar system used in 3DMark2001. 3DMark03 does not use a 3rd party engine for any of the tests; light DirectX wrappers are used instead.
The final score is a of the game tests. The results of CPU and other tests are not taken into account. As a complete package, 3DMark03 consists of:. 4 game tests:. GT1: Wings of Fury - SM1.1 vertex shaders are used alongside fixed function pixel processing. Futuremark Corporation.
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Futuremark Corporation. Archived from on 2011-03-24. Retrieved 24 March 2011. Futuremark Corporation. Archived from on 2011-03-24.
Retrieved 2008-05-24. Futuremark Corporation. Archived from on 2011-03-24. Retrieved 24 March 2011. Retrieved 2008-05-24. From the original on 2008-07-07.
Retrieved 2008-05-24. Archived from on September 30, 2011. Retrieved 2008-05-24.
Futuremark Corporation. Retrieved 2008-05-24. Futuremark Corporation. Retrieved 2009-02-22.
Futuremark Corporation. Retrieved 2008-05-24. Futuremark Corporation. Futuremark Corporation. Futuremark Corporation. From the original on 2008-05-01.
Retrieved 2008-05-24. Futuremark Corporation.
Retrieved 2009-02-22. Futuremark Corporation. Futuremark Corporation.
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From the original on 2008-05-01. Retrieved 2008-05-24. Murray, Matthew (2011-03-15). Archived from on 2011-03-22.
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Retrieved 22 March 2011. Futuremark Corporation. Retrieved 2010-12-02. Retrieved 23 June 2016. Retrieved 14 July 2016.
External links.
How To Run A Performance Test With 3DMark06 3DMark06 is the worldwide standard in advanced 3D game performance benchmarking. A fundamental tool for every company in the PC industry as well as PC users and gamers, 3DMark06 uses advanced real-time 3D game workloads to measure PC performance using a suite of DirectX 9 3D graphics tests, CPU tests, and 3D feature tests. 3DMark06 tests include all new HDR/SM3.0 graphics tests, SM2.0 graphics tests, AI and physics driven single and multiple cores or processor CPU tests and a collection of comprehensive feature tests to reliably measure next generation gaming performance today.
3DMark06 is a PC benchmark suite designed to test the DirectX9 performance of your graphics card. A 3DMark score is an overall measure of your system’s 3D gaming capabilities, based on comprehensive real-time 3D graphics and processor tests.
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By comparing your score with those submitted by millions of other gamers you can see how your gaming rig performs, making it easier to choose the most effective upgrades or finding other ways to optimize your system. 3DMark06 has been downloaded more than any other 3D benchmark and the ORB database now contains over 8.5 million 3DMark06 benchmark scores from around the world. 3DMark is an essential tool for every PC gamer, hardware enthusiast or component manufacturer in the industry. What's New:. Fully compatible to Windows 8. SystemInfo component updated to 4.15.
OpenAL installer updated to latest version To run 3DMark06 in Windows Vista 64bit or Windows 7 64bit, please run the application as administrator.
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