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Futuremark 3DMark06 Released 136

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the one-chip-to-rule-them-all dept.
jmke writes "Futuremark has released their latest graphics card evaluation software. The 2006 version features all the latest technologies and will stress even the most expensive video cards. From the announcement: 'Continuing forward in the development of advanced game performance benchmarks, Futuremark announced today the release and immediate availability of 3DMark06. A more comprehensive and unrestricted benchmark than previous versions, 3DMark06 includes an array of 3D graphics, CPU and 3D feature tests for overall performance measurement of current and future PC gaming systems.' Futuremark is offering a free download of the software with limited capability while offering an advanced edition for a price. PC Perspectives also has a nice overview of some of the features available."
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Futuremark 3DMark06 Released More

Futuremark 3DMark06 Released

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  • Stuff that matters? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by KerberosKing ( 801657 ) on Wednesday January 18, 2006 @05:09PM (#14504438)
    OK, I check the framerates posted at Tom's or other hardware review sites as much as the next guy, but to me an article on slashdot about a new 3D benchmark program is about as exciting as one on a new type of screwdriver. This stuff should just work, and if it were not for the non-stop planned obsolence of video-cards where the obsurdly expensive card you bought three months ago is now obsolete.
    • This stuff should just work
      Your right of course, it should just work much in the same way a car should just work but I still like to know what one gets better MPG etc. I'm running brand new games on a two year old laptop, granted I have to turn off a lot of the eye candy by the gfx card is not obsolete.

      Please send all OT comments about Highway miles per gallon not being reliable to /dev/null
    • Have you ever run Futuremark? They tend to make pretty benchmarks. It's worth running them just to watch the eye candy.
    • I know of some types of screwdrivers - Straight, Phillips, Allen, Torex, and Square. Are there more?

    • if it were not for the non-stop planned obsolence [sic] of video-cards where the obsurdly expensive card you bought three months ago is now obsolete.

      The video card industry is certainly not guilty of planned obsolescence. In fact, it's exactly the opposite. The two major competitors are in a non-stop fight to the death, pushing the technology at a remarkable pace, not to mention driving the cost to the consumer down. This is one of the rare industries where the biggest "winner" of the competition is th

  • Time for a driver redesign.. (Score:5, Funny)

    by StikyPad ( 445176 ) on Wednesday January 18, 2006 @05:09PM (#14504440) Homepage
    DAMN IT!

    -ATI [theregister.co.uk]
  • Tried it, I almost doubled my mark result by upgrading drivers for GPU.
    But still, 270 isn't really something to brag about :/

    oh well, back to play minesweeper..
    • almost doubled my mark result by upgrading drivers for GPU.
      Which almost certainly means that newer drivers detect the benchmark's presence, and are designed to optimize certain specific functions in order to give a high result. I seem to recall some sort of fiasco related to this a couple of years ago. Of course, this is why I don't trust benchmarks. Give me FPS from actual gameplay averaged over several different games. Much harder to fake.
  • What if I'm a Linux user, how do I benchmark my card? I see glxgears scores posted on forums sometimes, but somebody always comes along to say that's not a valid benchmark, because it varies with display bit-depth etc.

    Is there a free portable graphics card benchmarking tool suitable for comparing two card's Linux performance or for comparing a single card's Linux vs Windows performance?

    (Sorry if this is a little off topic)

  • Disappointing. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by c0l0 ( 826165 ) on Wednesday January 18, 2006 @05:10PM (#14504450) Homepage
    I probably would have checked the neat graphics on some Windows box of one of my into-games-friends, but the whole things looks like nothing more than a SLIGHTLY revamped 3dmark05. Seems they just had to add more details to the existing demos noone would really notice in fast-paced games at all, just to drive video card sales to new heights. Read: "Nothing really new and exciting to see for you here, please move along."

    • Re:Disappointing. (Score:3, Informative)

      by ichigo 2.0 ( 900288 )
      Looking at the screenshots [anandtech.com], I would have to say the changes are very noticeable. And there is one new test. But yes, it is just a refresh of 3DMark05, expect a 3DMark07 after DirectX 10 comes around.
    • I haven't seen the new benchmarks yet, but what's wrong with that, exactly? There hasn't been any revolutionary new graphics card feature since last year except for faster cards. These stress your graphics card just a little more and are up-to-date versions of last year's benchmarks. Besides, not all games are fast-paced, thank god.
  • Someone tell HardOCP.com, so they can be the first to flame it (as always)

  • Ugh...Overclocking (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Luke PiWalker ( 946528 ) on Wednesday January 18, 2006 @05:11PM (#14504466) Homepage Journal
    You have to take all overclocking claims with a bit of salt, because for some people it's like the size of their penis depends on it. They'll be... very creative and selective in what they tell you, and that's putting it very mildly.

    I've briefly been into the overclocker willy-waving scene myself, so you can take that as an admission. Guilty as charged, guv'nor.

    Anyway, I've played with it long enough to know that there very rarely is a hard point where the card works 100% flawlessly, and 1 MHz higher it just locks up. There's more of a gradient grey zone where the card sorta works enough to finish one particular benchmark, but glitches, is unstable, or eventually overheats. And where it might work at that frequency in one game or benchmark, but lock up hard in 20 others.

    The big overclocking brag-fests you read are usually from this grey area, not from the 100% stable zone.

    Yes, you see some screenshots of a mondo 3DMark number there or of some utility showing the card running at 4 gazillion megaherz, but what you don't see is that it runs stable only for the 10 minutes needed to finish the benchmark. After that it overheats and starts artefacting, or outright locking up.

    Be even more suspicious of brag-fests where they only ran half of 3DMark, and hand-waved the other tests as "bah, they didn't make much of a difference on the score anyway." (Ever notice how the biggest overclocking claims fall in that category?) Usually it means it crashed or locked up in those tests.

    So I wouldn't take those as a baseline or as "_all_ 6800 cards make it that high with no problems, and it's just the mean MBAs at Nvidia marking them down." Fully expect that any card you buy might not be quite stable that high.

    Which brings me to another point. To paraphrase another saying "overclocking gives you something for 'free', if your time is worth nothing." Because in the end the price you'll pay is a lot of time tweaking and testing that overclock... for each new game you buy, time replaying 30 minutes worth of something _again_ because the card locked up just before the save point, etc. It can end up a passtime in and by itself.
    • ..., because for some people it's like the size of their penis depends on it.

      Well, I overclocked my CPU by 12 inches! Yeah, that's right 12 inches ...a whole foot! So there!

    • Small-gain overclocking is well worth the time, though, if you don't charge yourself for free time. I have lots of free time, but I do not have lots of money. Time != money when you have time you can't get paid for.
    • I knocked my P4 Northwood from 3.0 GHz up to 3.4 GHz without fancy cooling. I have a nice budget heatsink/fan ($23 when I bought it) from Vantec. My full-load CPU temp is about 67 C. With the extra gig of Corsair RAM I got for Xmas (total 1.5GB now) my system really flies. I have a 6600GT and can run HL2 on full visuals and FEAR on Medium for most things pretty well. My case is not water cooled, and I have only added one fan to the case. According to Newegg, the price difference between two processors like
    • I used to over clock cpu/gpu/memory back when i had a 486/p1/p2 but the last cpu i over clocked was a celron 300A sence then i have had no complaint with (not the best) but a decent set of equipment .. there was a long time when over clocking gave you a noticable diffrence.. but now it is really pointless
    • See, I always thought that was true, too. Then, last spring, I got a GeForce 6600GT.

      Happy with the performance but of course curious about what else could be done with the card on a software level, I quickly located a file online named CoolBits.reg. This file adds an entry to the GeForce Properties section for Clock Frequency Settings. This setting lists the current clock speed of both memory and core in 2D and 3D, and includes a handy button that says 'Detect Optimal Frequencies'. I have run this featu
      • Yeah, CoolBits rock; It's been around seen the GeForce 2/3 days.

        The "Detect Optimal Frequeinces" is definately very cool. Just bump the settings down just a few notches from the detected settings, and you've got the best stability/overclock ratio.

  • Speaking of which (Score:3)

    by Trogre ( 513942 ) on Wednesday January 18, 2006 @05:13PM (#14504494) Homepage
    Does anyone know of any decent cross-platform OpenGL/openal/SDL benchmarks?

    Preferrably in the form of a shiny demo with techno music, of course :)

    It would be nice to compare the performance of OpenGL implementations on different systems.

    • Re:Speaking of which (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I think there's a recently developed an X-Plane benchmark that is supposed to work under Windows, Linux, and OS X. You might want to check that out...

    • Re:Speaking of which (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      apt-get install amoeba
      • Thanks, but that's just a Little Graphics Demo.

        A pretty nice Little Graphics Demo to be sure, in fact it won first place [pouet.net] at a Little Graphics Demo competition in 2002.

        But it's hardly a benchmarking suite, and since it hasn't been maintained since 2002 (it is a one-off for a compo after all), it can hardly be expected to test OpenGL 2.0 extensions.

        I guess an fps count in Nexquiz [nexuiz.com] is one way of doing it...

  • Graphics cards or networking/disk subsystem? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Tackhead ( 54550 ) on Wednesday January 18, 2006 @05:17PM (#14504520)
    Boldly going where fools fear to tread, Futuremark announced today the release and immediate availability of 3DMark06 by means of a front-page article on Slashdot.

    Weighing in at a suicidal 575 megabyates, 3DMark06 expands benchmarking from beyond the graphics subsystem to include an array of hard drives, CPU and server failover tests for overall performance measurement of current and future web serving systems when the ever-loving fuck being Slashdotted out of them.

  • my girlfriend (Score:4, Funny)

    by RedLaggedTeut ( 216304 ) on Wednesday January 18, 2006 @05:17PM (#14504525) Homepage Journal
    My girlfriend can do the same scan of a face in 0.33 seconds.
    • Yeah that's all good, but what's the point of having a fast-face-scanning girlfriend while I can enjoy playing Hot Coffee with better framerates?

  • 3dmark (Score:5, Informative)

    by FadedTimes ( 581715 ) on Wednesday January 18, 2006 @05:18PM (#14504529)
    In my opnion 3dmark scores should not be considered in hardware reviews. I have seen video cards get low 3dmark scores, yet play all the latest games out of the box with out problems with speed. I take actual game benchmarks more in to consideration.
    • The 3DMark05 benchmark is generally a good indicator of 3DMark05 performance. Any similarity to real gaming is coincidental.
    • That's great for someone whose buying a video card for today's games. However, most people spending upwards of $650-750 want a card that will run tomorrow's games without any trouble. That's the point of 3DMark, a cutting edge synthetic benchmark for the latest generation of technology.
    • But that doesn't help me if I don't own the same games the reviewer has used. Or I haven't kept them installed.

      It bugs me when reviews run only a certain set of games when reviewing things. I want to be able to run the same benchmarks that the reviewer has used.

      I want a single program that will give me some idea about how a system and all its components compare to another system. I want to know how well my old video card will compare with one I'm thinking of buying.

      When I build a new system, I usually go
  • MajorGeeks Torrent here [majorgeeks.com]
  • Well, it's pretty, and it's a amazing. I suggest that if you own SM3.0 supported graphics card you should check this out. I don't own such luxurie but I can tell that when I need a update to graphics card without these stypid benchmark programs. They are like computer art and brobably the first programs to be featuring life-a-like graphics. I am fine with my 10~30 frames per second in lastest interesting enought to play games. Think about F.E.A.R it just sucks. I played it thought on hardest level in about

  • Goodluck downloading: 3dmark + empire at war demo (Score:3, Informative)

    by jigjigga ( 903943 ) on Wednesday January 18, 2006 @05:29PM (#14504624)
    Good luck guys. Ive been following 3dmark for a long time, and since 3dmark2001 downloads keep getting worse. Not only is the benchmark a big file (560+MB) but there is something else going on today... The Empire at War demo is out, coming in at 742MB. For those who dont know, empire at war is a StarWars RTS from the makers of Command and Conquer and has positive reviews. Just a heads up

  • I wonder... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Aggrajag ( 716041 ) on Wednesday January 18, 2006 @06:15PM (#14504947)
    If my GeForce FX 5500 will break the 1 FPS barrier with this one :)
    • I was kind of wondering myself if my PIII-700 with a Geforce 2MX would break the 1 fpm barrier. Eh, I'll just put it up and if anyone asks I'll tell 'em they're slides from my last vacation...on Proxycon...or something. Whatever.
    • ha ha... I actually bought a GeForce FX 5500 today... as an upgrade from some nvidia relic from 1999 (CT6970, GeForce256 32MB)... /me well behind the curve
    • Sad, but possibly true...

      Thing is, my Geforce 5200 FX probably would get pwned in this test, but I can play HL2 with almost all the settings cranked up just fine. Why do I care about a stupid test?
      • I played through HL2 with a Geforce 4200 Ti, and it looked nice for sure. My only gripe is that I can't play Riddick on anything other that the ultra-lowest settings.

        Speaking of graphics cards, what's a reasonably nice card > 4200 Ti, that doesn't require massive cooling that pierces my eardrums?

      • HL2 is over a year old, and was intended to be released 2.5 years ago. It can "run" on a GeForce 2 MX, and was designed to run optimally on the Radeon 9500 / 9600 / 9700 / 9800 series.

        In addition, HL2 is one of the ONLY games to feature a mixed-mode DX9 specially designed for Nvidia FX-series cards to make up for their poor pure-DX9 performance.

        Most of the people who are interested in tests like this have already played HL2 to death, and are looking forward to the next batch pf PS 3.0 games :D

  • Video cards and penises (Score:4, Insightful)

    by doofusclam ( 528746 ) <slash@seanyseansean.com> on Wednesday January 18, 2006 @06:24PM (#14505009) Homepage
    I had a bit of an emergency at work today - we're doing a demonstration tomorrow and the VIVO (Video In/Video Out) graphics card on one of our demo setups died, so we had to go to a local store and buy *anything* that matched this spec:

    ATI (cos we didn't want to rewrite some of our code)
    PCI Express
    VIVO

    So we got stung for ~£200 for an ATI X800 variant. Which I don't mind, but it came in the biggest-ass box you've ever seen. The cover had some rendered image of a woman with enormous tits and the heatpipe had the manufacturers name stamped in it, as if the thing had been carried down by Moses straight from /dev/deity

    Why can't somebody just do a nice card with *stable* 2d and nice video acceleration under Linux, with 3d acceleration as good as you can get without pumping out loads of heat or having a fan? Matrox are nice for 2D but you couldn't ever play the occasional 3D game on them. Why does every card have to be marketed to the sort of kid who has neons underneath their car?
    • When the matrox mystique came out, it was almost competitive in terms of power. I bought one, and it played Accelerated Mech 2 and Tomb Raider ok. Best thing about Matrox is still the DAC though. And maybe the only good thing, considering how much they charge for even their low-end cards.
    • This is because you got a brand name retail box.

      A few suggestions:

      • Asus Extreme AX300/TD has a passive heatsink and VGA, DVI and SVideo ports
      • Both Asus and MSI have a lot of cards with heat sinks which are not too large.

  • I never realised I was so out of date... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by wiresquire ( 457486 ) on Wednesday January 18, 2006 @06:47PM (#14505189) Journal
    The min specs [futuremark.com] are 2.5GHz CPU, 1GB of RAM, 256MB of vram.

    How many people can really run this??

    • Re:I never realised I was so out of date... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by yeremein ( 678037 ) on Wednesday January 18, 2006 @07:00PM (#14505266)
      The min specs are 2.5GHz CPU, 1GB of RAM, 256MB of vram.
      How people can really run this??


      It's impossible to get a good 3DMark score without spending $500 on a video card (or, I suspect in '06, a pair of $500 video cards in SLI). I suspect video card manufacturers pay Futuremark handsomely to make sure their benchmark runs like tar on all currently shipping cards, ahem, I mean showcases the capabilities of the new generation video cards. Yeah, that's it. A year or so ago when I still played computer games, I found that 3DMark05 was nothing more than a pretty slideshow on my computer. Yet Doom III, one of the most taxing new games, ran just fine.
      • For those with older hardware:

        The new "mark" runs poorly on my 3800+ venice core, 1gbram, 7800GTX (only 256mb) rig. Sure.. its not top of the line; but I did expect to see something more fluent. I get 15 frames at the most - but some sequences are truely slideshowy. It looks as if the settings are maxed out in the demo (reswise, filtering etc), and you cant get too see tests in any other setting - unless you buy it. Props to the animators (some of the sequences are really cool), but i cant even enjoy them
    • The point of the new version is to be able to differentiate between different implementations of the feature set they are testing. The old version of futuremark tested most (all?) of the features of the Nvidia 6800s and ATI X800s - so this new version is for testing Nvidia 7800s and 8800s and ATI X1800s and X2800s. This peice of software is designed to compare the high end graphics cards that will be released for the next two years. Testing today's junk low end graphics card (Up to and including the Nvidia

  • Will it work on my Canopus 3D? (Score:3, Funny)

    by shoolz ( 752000 ) on Wednesday January 18, 2006 @08:53PM (#14505957) Homepage
    I've got the 2 Meg version, not the inferior 1 Meg card.
  • Seriously, there's no way someone should get quadruple my score just because they had a GeForce 7800.
    Take a look

    http://service.futuremark.com/orb/projectsearch.js p [futuremark.com]

    I got ~1500 on my brand new rig (Athlon X2 3800+, Radeon X800GTO) Someone got over 10000! This makes me sad. :-(

    • You are comparing a $150 card to a $600 top-of-the-line consumer card. The 7800 kills everything else, it is the king of the hill.

      For those wanting to download 3dmark - the torrent works great.
    • I'm sorry to be the one pointing out that it's a waste to run a Radeon X800GTO when you spent on the money on a Athlon X2 3800+. The X800GTO doesn't even support Shader Model 3 which new games like FEAR are using. If you can return it, do so and get either a 6800GS or X16000. I believe the 6800GS is normally cheaper and it's definately easiler to find, and it runs for $200. If you really want to see what your PC can do you'd have to get either a 7000GT, GTX or X18000 depending on how much you want to sp
  • bah, Second Reality was better. It's all been downhill since Assembly 93.

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