3DMark 2006

[Volacide]

Originally Posted by Koroush Ghazi

What's even funnier is the CPU test for me is also absolutely dog slow. I get 0.5-1FPS the whole time, yet I have an X2 4400+. Does that mean I should upgrade to an FX-60? Of course not.

Wow, that's a relief. I thought It was just my old, but still reliable, AMD Athlon 64 3200+ that was getting 0-1 fps average on the CPU tests it kinda made me disappointed about it.

I too am VERY disappointed. Antartica looks fantastic but everything else is just a rehash of the old tests with some new special effects. Granted these special effects make it look a lot better, like the soft shadows and HDR, what gets me most is the upping of the resolution. They obviously only upped the resolution, like you said, to make people think they need to buy better hardware.

When if you put things back to 1024x768 if you had a pro version I'm sure you'd see similar results as 3DMark05.

[Koroush Ghazi]

They will argue no doubt that 1280x1024 is now the "standard" gaming resolution. Which I agree, it is a fairly standard gaming resolution.

However to combine strenuous stress-test-like 3D graphics with a 1280x1024 resolution, and lock it in at that res, they are only forcing everyone to think their systems are inadequate. It achieves nothing else. It doesn't benchmark the system properly, it doesn't scale well (as the CPU results show), and it is certainly not indicative of any game now, nor in the next few months.

Sure, it may be vision of games in 6-12 months, but who knows what hardware will be out by then, and how many games will adopt all of these effects. If previous 3DMarks are anything to go by, it took ages for all these effects to work their way into actual games.

[Danny]

I see it likes this. 3Dmark2003 is more demanding than Quake4. What does that tell me? Well... 3 years later after a 3dmark-release.. we will have games that demand that much, but then the graphics are much nicer and STILL perform better.

[Volacide]

Let alone all the effects in a single game. I have yet to see a game that combines HDR with soft shadows. FEAR's soft shadows are very inefficient, not to mention ugly. I'm not sure of a single game that uses sub surface scattering either.

[HLB]

i got 2766 which i think is freaky nice. who else has a 6800GS i wanna compare scores

[bigtabs]

I actually like the fact that 1280x1024 is the base res. That is the res that I want to play at. It is also good to distinguish the higher performance cards, who only really shine at higher resolutions. I've been saying for ages that the res needed to be raised and I'm happy to see they've done it.

Rehashing the old demos was a shame though, but let's not forget the fact that ultimately this is a tool, not a toy. The demos get the job done, although they may not be as interesting to watch.

I scored 1112 with stock speeds on my GFX card.

[fo0t]

Devlopers are getting worse and worse with the patches, hot fixes, security updates, rushed items. It would've been better if they released the lastest version next year with new content and maybe some real benchmarks. Fear is probably once of the most intensive games graphic wise out on the market and my fps ranges from 30-70 in the game.

Oh and anotherthing when that CPU test started after about 30 seconds my cpu fans rpm shot up. This is the first time they've done that too, that really did freakin stress it.

[Spriggan_X]

The reason I didn't upgrade this year is because dx10 isnt supporting dx9 cards at all, but there might be a emulation or something of dx9, which will probably take a lot of resources.A dx10 card is a must for me since I dont want to be outdated, and I think it was dumb to upgrade to the higher end graphics cards this passed summer(IMO).

[extremesheep]

not trying to argue or anything, but this only really needed to be an update from a certain perspective. one complaint about 3dmark 05 was that it is cpu limited already (geforce 7800 gtx 512 sli and fx60 or something). because it was cpu limited already, it sort of ceased to be a great benchmarking tool because soon all equipment would get virtually the same score.

this sort of suggested that a new version that was not cpu limited was needed. so they rehashed it for new equipment. also this probably wasn't planned as a full new benchmark like previously. they usually release only every 2 years (3dmark 2001, 2003, 2005 => 2006 is odd).

as far as i could tell, the best equipment could only run 3dmark 05 pretty well initially too, so its kinda similar.

it may not be perfect, but i'm impressed even though i can't run it. it looks better, uses pixel shaders 3.0, HDR, and multi-core. i'm impressed.

[TerminXman]

http://img68.imageshack.us/img68/257...rkscore8fu.jpg

there's my score, At first I was like oh s*** I'm going to have to upgrade, but then I saw what most people were getting, and my PC still runs everything well, so I'm going to keep what I have for a while.