Say what you will about 3DMark’s accuracy or viability as a synthetic gaming test, the application is still very widely used, and its merits with respect to strict graphics processor testing are evident. However, the latest version of the tool, 3DMark06, came out close to two years ago and lacks DirectX 10 effects being used by games today.
Futuremark is therefore working on a new version of the tool, which will drop the yearly naming scheme and go by "3DMark Next." As what might be considered a teaser for the new app, the company has released minimum system specifications for 3DMark Next in the Game-O-Meter section of its YouGamers website. Those minimum specs are as follows:
Processor: x86/x64 single core CPU with SSE2 support. Performance similar to Intel Pentium D 3.2GHz or better.
Display Card: Fully D3D10/SM4.0 compliant graphics card, 256MB
Memory: 1024MB
Free Disk Space: 2GB
Operating System: Windows Vista (Server editions not supported)
And Futuremark lists the following as recommended:
Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 or equivalent AMD CPU.
Display Card: Fully D3D10/SM4.0 compliant graphics card, 512MB
Memory: 2048MB
Free Disk Space: 2GB
Operating System: Windows Vista (Server editions not supported)
As Futuremark announced back in April, 3DMark Next will say goodbye to DirectX 9-class graphics processors and Windows XP, supporting only the latest GeForce 8- and Radeon HD-series GPUs running on Vista. Processor and memory requirements seem to be quite steep, as well, with a Core 2 Duo E6600 or equivalent and 2GB of RAM recommended. Following Futuremark’s custom, the upcoming benchmark will probably reflect the graphical capabilities of upcoming games more than those of already-released titles.
I agree. Now that I’ve used Vista I don’t ever want to go back to XP. And I’m using the 64 bits version. I rarely run into problems.
We disagree, because I’m extremely happy with my Vista system and it’s by far a better experience than my old XP Pro could have been. And I’m not the average user, I know exactly how to look “under the hood”.
I have to agree, seems game coders are really taking easy routes and not doing an effort and you get stuff that runs slow on supersystems that don’t bring anything more than games that used to run on a damn pentium @ 166MHz and running a voodoo card.
I might exaggerate slightly there but It’s really noticeable sometimes how games that look the same as 4 years ago run slower on new state of the art hardware.
I guess it’s the same phenomenon as you see in Hollywood and TV productions, an awful lot of overpayed chaff which survives merely by massive advertising which is helped by the ever declining ‘alertness’ of the public.
That saying is not what made america great, but I bet bush and monopolizing companies with lousy service like it.
Because technology advances and 3dmark06 already didn’t test some things of card that were out when they released it, so even on DX9 it doesn’t cover the capabilities.
As an inq commenter said: recommended for what? higher scores, haha
It’s a benchmark not a game so all you need to know is what’s required.
recommended….
They should have written the damn thing in opengl.
*[
That would be true, if it weren’t so that you need dreadful vista for dx10(.1)
Do you recall a game that uses DirectX 8 as its basis? They’ll drop DirectX 9, too, as if it were hot. I don’t think it’ll stay for 1 year, let alone “many”.
most game engines for many years to come will have a dx9 path or they will lose a significant part of the market, making futuremark benchmarks even less relevant than they are now.
I’m hoping for something else to happen.
Suddenly Ubuntu does the unthinkable and everyone installs Linux?
Suddenly Mac OSX is open to all X86 platforms?
Suddenly OpenGL makes DX10 pointless?
I can hope can’t I?
Remember in the dos / win 3.1 days when software was written to be optimized ? Every game / utility was made to squeeze every ounce of power from your system ?
Nowadays if a performance “bottleneck” is reached we brute force it. Quad-core ? Come on. If our OS, games, and applications were written by some passionate programmers and not just Mr. Anyguy fresh out of ITT tech with his computer science degree maybe we wouldn’t need all this junk.
but i guess my argument doesn’t count because I myself, am not a programmer, so I don’t know how difficult it is and blah blah blah…
my point: futuremark is nothing more than a propagation of this whole industry, which pushes new technology without actually delivering “improvements”.
at least he doesn’t delete the text of his posts.
LIES. ALL LIES.
3Dmark was more fun when the demos included were like the olden-times demoscene stuff. It is still kinda like that, but less abstract insanity now days. 🙂
I still find it useful as a quick way to figure out if a video card is performing about where it should. It’s pretty too! Glitter sparkles!!
Because edventualy nearly all gaming computers will be running Vista and have a DX10 capable card. This may not happen overnight, or even in the next year or so. Futuremark is just putting themselves ahead of the curve with this release.
Besides, if you really wanted to benchmark a DX9 game, you could just use 3DMark06.
DX 10 will undoubtedly get more and more presence since pretty much all the cards available now are DX10 compatible, and performance will go up with each generation. It will take some time, but DX10 will surely replace DX9 in a few years.
I thought most games in the future will be DX9/DX10?
I don’t see a lot of people moving to Vista and a lot of people are happy with their DX9 cards.
So how could this be an accurate benchmark for the future?
Agreed. Benchmarking applications are useless. They stress PC components to give you a baseline score that you are supposed to do what with?
1.) Wank your e-penis.
2.) Determine what applications can run on your system.
Oh, wait — wouldn’t it be smarter to just benchmark the applications in question? Yeah…
Sure vista has a couple things that are better….but there are also a few things that are worse…strange bugs….currently I like XP slightly more, and I have two computers, one with vista, one with XP…..so I do know what I am talking about.
And I am fine waiting(and I am infact too lazy to bother switching even with good reason). I was on 98 till doom3 came out.
it gives good numbers for potential, but not actual performance. don’t the 2900xts pump out insanely high 3Dmark scores?
it’s the same as saying the PS3 is a powerful system because of the Cell processor. potential means nothing unless the software is tailored to the architecture… which is far less relevant on the PC than on a console.
Because you’re a horrible troll 😛
I don’t care one whit about 3d Mark, I always skip those “benchmarks” when I read a review. Which reminds me, why am I posting here? 😉
Trying to convert people is an exercise in futility. People either see the benefits of Vista, or don’t.
Most people that I’ve seen who don’t want to switch view Vista as nothing but a window-dressing upgrade and refuse to acknowledge the many under-the-hood changes to the OS. But it’s not like XP is broken, so I understand those who don’t switch.
Only problem I ever have is with people who refuse to acknowledge that Vista is more than XP+Aero.
Which is why TR uses it.
They run a fixed system for tests, and swap 1 ingredient, which can be categorized as within limits of the “upgrade” you were talking about. Then they note the differences.
You’ll wait for quite a while, because Windows 7 is not going to come any time soon. Vista is not bad, just face it and try switching. Alan Wake *will not* be the only game that drops XP support, just like XP games started dropping Win98 support.
no….but I cant be bothered to switch to vista for one game. Plus if it works out, I hope to skip vista and get whatever comes after. Having used vista for a while, I cant say I would be willing to pay money for it.
l[
§[<https://techreport.com/articles.x/11855/10<]§ Might want to do your research before spouting off next time.
Double post. Doh.
Wrong. Does TR use this in their reviews? No. The reason behind this is because Futuremark has been quoted as saying that they don’t want to use their benchmark as anything that would compare two completely different systems. They say that people should only use it to compare the same system when you upgrade a part, or similar systems, etc.
Oh, I was just skimming the reading. Sorry, they were talking about 3DMark and then Futuremark got mentioned which threw me off.
LOL
For me, it’s 3DMark NEVER
because I never touched it for years
I wouldn’t say completely useless. 3dmark scores are useless but the data is not.
alan wake is vista only?….guess I wont be playing that game then…
SIMILAR to Pentium D. Not EXACTLY LIKE Pentium D.
It means you need one hell of a single core, better start collecting the liquid nitrogen for it.
Like it or hate it I think we all can agree it has a stupid name.
Ditto. For any review ever, I skip anything that centres on synthetic benchmarks and go stright to the section on apps that fit my planned usage – in my case, almost entirely video encoding benchmarks as I don’t really give a crap about games (as long as the one or two I own operate at playable framerates). Similarly, I’m sure gamers are more concerned over how well a rig plays Game X than Synthetic Game Benchmark Y, since I’ve yet to see a bench that cuold successfully emulate how every current game engine behaves (and even games using the same engine use different types of textures, heavier/lesser AI, less/more shader effects, etc).
More real world benches, please. Are there any tech sites out there using x264 benches? I’d kill for the first site to do one of those. Since it’s heavily threaded (I use x264farm myself which distriutes it through half the computers in the house, and it’ll max out both cores on any box I throw it at) it sounds like an ideal bench for testing multi-core computers as well, more so than windows media or xvid.
IMHO synthetics are only generally any use when you want to debate particular architectural differences by measuring things like cache speed and the like.
“Processor: x86/x64 single core CPU with SSE2 support. Performance similar to Intel Pentium D 3.2GHz or better.”
Errr… isn’t the Pentium D a dual core :\
He’s right, r[<3dmark is useless<]r. I haven't compared my own 3dmark score for years. For website reviews using 3dmark, I usually skip the entire section. I used to use 3dmark for comparing my own overclocks, but I find that pointless too.
I’m not uptight. It’s funny you draw conclusions as to my mental state by a series of 1s and 0s on an electronic screen.
I’m speaking my mind as well. And now I’m done speaking my mind. I hope you’re not as unhappy in real life as your statements on TR make you out to be.
r[<<]rr[<<]rr[<<]rr[<<]r<3
If you don’t even want people to care about your comments, then why post anything in the first place? Save us the trouble and evict yourself.
Nah, you are too easy to provoke.
“OMFG, the internet is serious business!”
It is funny that you get uptight over a simple string of word that is really a sequence of binary numbers that get processed through as electrical current.
I am just speaking my mind on the original subject matter. Contrary to what you type, I do make positive and neutral opinions.
Why couldn’t you continue using 3dmark06? It’s a software program, it’s not like you have to install this new one over the last. They’ve never done that, why would they do it now?
That’s like saying Warcraft 3 replaces Warcraft 2 so if you upgrade, you can’t play 2 anymore *boggle*.
Thats true…but thats just relying on the assumption that you can use the previous version to test DX9. That is to say …this version does not REPLACE the old version, only supplements it.
Yep, that’s me. Biggest pessimist ever. All I do is go from thread to thread and post to post making sure to spout negativity and venom at anyone who doesn’t agree with me. Boy am I the big hypocrite.
You’re hopeless.
Dude!
They let you test NEXT GENERATION software and hardware to determine performance in NEXT GENERATION titles. There’s absolutely no point in testing DX9 cards with this, get 3DMark06 for that.
About Vista, we all know good upcoming games are dropping XP support. A prime example is the well-awaited early 2008 title, Alan Wake (for Vista and XBox 360 only).
pot calling the kettle black
ROFL, I like these flames.
What bone am I picking? I don’t care either way about 3dmark. I’m just sick of every thread I go in having you crapping in it.
Shit in your toilet, not on TR.
You’re wrong. It’s a very important testing facility, for both in-house tests by nVidia and ATI, and reviews such as the ones you find on Tech Report. E-penis point collectors are just one of the groups who use this.
I sincerely think it makes good old Scott’s work easier when testing cards that have just come out.
r[
Why do you even care? It seems that you are picking a bone on a non-issue.
Anyway, I am afraid that most of non-epenis crowd shares the same sentiments regrading 3Dmark.
Only 256 is required on the card. 512 is the recommended amount.
Do you ever have anything good to say about anything?
You should listen to the old saying “If you’ve got nothing nice to say, don’t say anything at all”.
Recommended, not required. Read again 🙂
3Dmark has been irrelevant for years.
They are trying to sell yet another pointless DX10 tech demo.
I wonder who is paying Futuremark this time around? Nvidia? AMD?
512mB is required for the graphics card? Well, there goes the 8800 GTS 320mB owners..
Well, how would you compare DX10 performance on a DX10 card to DX9 performance on a DX9 card? That’s a bit apples to oranges in my opinion, even if the same game has DX9 and DX10 modes.
Err wow…they maintain zero backward compatibility. Although I guess that makes some sense in a benchmarking tool…although it means you can compare with previous generations.