Futuremark's Latest Attempt: 3DMark06 Tested
by Josh Venning on January 18, 2006 11:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Final Words
As we've said before, 3DMark is a somewhat specialized benchmarking tool with the ability to measure a lot of different aspects of a gaming system, and while it may not be best suited for testing performance between cards, there are many other things this program is useful for.
3DMark06 is quite useful for doing more focused comparisons with hardware components. For instance, comparing 3DMark results between a card and an overclocked version of itself can give a good idea of how a given card's clock speeds scale. Another use would be for testing drivers and to determine what kind of improvements certain features may have had between updates. We typically use looped game benchmarks when testing the stability of a graphics card while overclocking, but 3DMark would make a good tool for this as well. With 3DMark's demos, any graphical tearing or visual anomalies would very easily be seen. By taking screen shots, 3DMark would also be a great tool for comparing image quality in Anti-Aliasing or filtering for example.
There are likely many other uses for this program, which we can't mention here, and there is no doubt that 3DMark will remain a popular benchmarking program. Our uses for this program mostly involve more specific feature comparisons rather than those between the performance of different cards. Again, real-world tests show how 3DMark test scores don't really reflect actual performance in a game, particularly when you consider that different games will always favor different graphics hardware.
The bottom line is that a graphics card was made for playing games. Futuremark has developed a nice tool with excellent graphical elements in this latest version of 3DMark, which hopefully game makers will aspire to achieve in future games. Regardless of how you use it, 3DMark06 shows off some very impressive graphics and is a definite improvement over 3DMark05 both in visual quality and in the types of performance tests used. We certainly won't be focusing on 3DMark scores in future graphics card comparisons, but we may see some of the feature set tests or image quality comparisons pop up down the road.
As we've said before, 3DMark is a somewhat specialized benchmarking tool with the ability to measure a lot of different aspects of a gaming system, and while it may not be best suited for testing performance between cards, there are many other things this program is useful for.
3DMark06 is quite useful for doing more focused comparisons with hardware components. For instance, comparing 3DMark results between a card and an overclocked version of itself can give a good idea of how a given card's clock speeds scale. Another use would be for testing drivers and to determine what kind of improvements certain features may have had between updates. We typically use looped game benchmarks when testing the stability of a graphics card while overclocking, but 3DMark would make a good tool for this as well. With 3DMark's demos, any graphical tearing or visual anomalies would very easily be seen. By taking screen shots, 3DMark would also be a great tool for comparing image quality in Anti-Aliasing or filtering for example.
There are likely many other uses for this program, which we can't mention here, and there is no doubt that 3DMark will remain a popular benchmarking program. Our uses for this program mostly involve more specific feature comparisons rather than those between the performance of different cards. Again, real-world tests show how 3DMark test scores don't really reflect actual performance in a game, particularly when you consider that different games will always favor different graphics hardware.
The bottom line is that a graphics card was made for playing games. Futuremark has developed a nice tool with excellent graphical elements in this latest version of 3DMark, which hopefully game makers will aspire to achieve in future games. Regardless of how you use it, 3DMark06 shows off some very impressive graphics and is a definite improvement over 3DMark05 both in visual quality and in the types of performance tests used. We certainly won't be focusing on 3DMark scores in future graphics card comparisons, but we may see some of the feature set tests or image quality comparisons pop up down the road.
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MrKaz - Wednesday, January 18, 2006 - link
That means that R580 will boom GTX512 like X1800XT gets boomed by it now.4 X1600 cores (R580) will give some 6855 total score, not bad…
defter - Saturday, January 21, 2006 - link
"That means that R580 will boom GTX512 like X1800XT gets boomed by it now."Here are some X1900XT benchmarks: http://www.overclockers.ru/images/news/2006/01/21/...">http://www.overclockers.ru/images/news/2006/01/21/...
They used a faster CPU, but if we ignore the CPU tests results should be comparable with Anand's results:
PS2.0 score:
X1900XT (625/1450) with FX-60: 2081
7800GTX 512 with FX-55: 2167
X1800XT with FX-55: 1611
PS3.0 score:
X1900XT (625/1450) with FX-60: 2279
7800GTX 512 with FX-55: 2204
X1800XT with FX-55: 1697
X1900XT seems to be a little slower than 7800GTX 512 while X1900XTX should be a little faster. In any case the difference is only 2-3%.
defter - Thursday, January 19, 2006 - link
"4 X1600 cores (R580) will give some 6855 total score, not bad"Will R580 have 4x memory bandwidth? X1600XT has 22GB/s of memory bandwidth.
I wouldn't call X1600XT scores very impressive. X1600XT is running at 590MHz core/590MHz memory and with 12 pipelines is 34% faster than 500MHz core/500MHz memory 8 pipeline 6600 GT (which is 1.5 years old chip).
Boushh - Tuesday, June 19, 2012 - link
I came across this old 3DMark06 and thought: why not test it with my current setup and see how it does against the fastest cards of early 2006 ?The result is actualy shocking:
Total: 14301
SM2.0: 6180
SM3.0: 7886
CPU: 2780
It's not that I have any kind of super game machine. It's just a WindowsXP machine with an Intel E-7600 and a Nvidia 560 Ti. Not overclocked or anything.
That is roughly tripple the score. And not even tested on an high-end system B-)
Thanks for letting my add a comment to this old post Anandtech, many sites do not allow that.
If any one else reads this, please take the time to test your setup as well. If not, I may be back in a few years and test again :-)
Boushh - Tuesday, August 11, 2015 - link
And I'm back again !!Now the test was done with the same system, but with a GeForce GTX760. Oddly enough, the scores are lower ?
Total: 12295
SM2.0: 5342
SM3.0: 6031
CPU: 2785
I had at least expected double the score or something like that B-(
l, let's see how it goes when I have a new card....