3DMark 2006

[Koroush Ghazi]

Update: 3DMark 06 has been released, get it from FutureMark. It weighs in at 577MB. This thread is for all the discussion of 3DMark06.



Here's an interview with the head developer of the next 3DMark for DirectX9.0:
http://www.beyond3d.com/interviews/fm05/p2/

It's still under development, but here's a screenshot:


It will incorporate SM3.0, have complex HDR effects and hopefully be a decent tech demo and reasonable benchmark, as have all the previous 3DMark series.

There's also a nice historical look at the previous 3DMarks on this page of the article.

If there's one thing that's great about 3DMark IMHO, it's that it's made it easier for people to benchmark and compare performance, and that's not an easy thing to do in the PC world.

[Sharpy]

For me the best thing about the 3DMark series is that i can use the online comparison to see how people are performing on almost an identical spec to me. Im not at all concerned about the people on uber-systems and how they score because thats irrelevant to me and my system. I want to see how the next guy on the same processor, memory and GPU as me is scoring and if hes scoring better why, thats the true beauty of the 3d marks.

From what i remember the scores vary even between identical systems which just goes to show how even the smallest difference in a system or the tiny little bottleneck you never realised you had can affect the whole systems performance.

I have absolutely no intrest in the benchmark in terms of getting as high a score as possible, we all see the "nerds" who tweak every nipple on their pc to just get that ultimate score but the more savvy pc users realise that they are completely burning out their system for that one score then they revert back to a more stable setting for everyday use.

[WardoG]

id get probly a 1000 score on that :x

[cjofthedead]

That's stunning. I can only get 3300 on 3DMark05. Looks I'll need a brand new PC to run that at all.

[Apo]

The new 3DMark06 might be close, there is a teaser video on the main page looking similar to the pic posted above by Koroush and it says 'Unleashed Soon'.

http://www.futuremark.com/

Cheers

Apo

[Koroush Ghazi]

Interesting, thanks It may well be out shortly given it's already 2006 - I'm guessing early-mid February just as the next-gen cards are announced. That way everyone with current-gen stuff will run it, feel inadequate and be ready to upgrade all over again

[Beach]

Originally Posted by Koroush Ghazi

Interesting, thanks It may well be out shortly given it's already 2006 - I'm guessing early-mid February just as the next-gen cards are announced. That way everyone with current-gen stuff will run it, feel inadequate and be ready to upgrade all over again

the beauty of business


the graphics look awesome but it just looks like a souped up 3D mark 2005

I am really looking forward to the first Direct X 10 version of 3D mark, thats something that I'm looking forward to

[doughnut]

"The next 3DMark will require 256MB to ensure that there is no unnecessary swapping going on (System RAM <-> Video RAM). According to our mission of producing forward looking benchmarks to show performance of new hardware, we wanted to take a leap forward, and let the artists have more freedom to create visually stunning content. This doesn’t mean that the next 3DMark won’t run on 128MB hardware, but the performance hit can be quite severe. Several games are already limited by the amount of VRAM (at very high detail settings, which is comparable to the detail level in the next 3DMark), so I don’t see any problems with our decision. It is a known fact that VRAM has an impact on performance if the game is using a load of huge textures & data. Enable AA & AF on top of that and you need 512MB to have acceptable fps. The way we see it is that 256MB is nowadays the standard/default amount of VRAM for relatively high-end cards. 128MB was still a pretty decent amount 1-2 years ago, but things have changed pretty rapidly since. I wouldn’t be surprised if 512MB would be seen as a new standard/default in less than 2 years. Bring on 1GB cards!"

Well I don't even think about buying new card and I look forward for some great slideshow with my 128MB 6600GT

[lahire149]

Originally Posted by doughnut

Well I don't even think about buying new card and I look forward for some great slideshow with my 128MB 6600GT

I bet we will all be looking at a slideshow, and personally I'm not so sure that it will look too nice on my system either.

I really hate that developers can just start thinking that everyone will be able to get the new "standard" card as soon as it is avaliable. Becasue right now, I know that many people are using cards around the 9800pro level and it's just not fair to them... The engines need to be properly optimized, e.g.) just like the Unreal Engine was.

[Koroush Ghazi]

3Dmark really has nothing to do with game developers. As history has shown, it takes roughly 6-12 months before the features in the latest 3DMark even remotely work their way properly into a game. So I really wouldn't worry too much about it.