AquaMark 3
The latest graphics cards on the market are all DirectX9 compatible these days, and we also see an increasing number of games utilizing the new DX9 features. To be able
to see how well a graphics cards is performing in this new challenging DirectX 9 environment, AquaMark was developed.
The AquaMark3 benchmark delivers scores for specific hardware components as well as an overall score for the entire system. AquaMark3 is highly qualified to meet the needs of gamers because it's as close as possible to a typical game application. The AquaMark benchmarking series is based directly on the huge code and data base of the AquaNox games and the underlying krass™ game engine."
In the past we have used AquaMark 2.3 in our benchmark suite and although still a reputable application, Massive figured it was time for the next best thing. This is AquaMark 3, a benchmark that will utilize some of the finest DirectX 9 capabilities like Pixel and Vertex Shaders 2.0, and yet is by far not as Shader dependant as, for example, Half-Life 2 is. You will notice this in the overall results later in this article.
AquaMark 3, however, is not solely a DirectX9 benchmark; if you are working with a DirectX 8 or 7 compatible graphics card, you will still be able to use it just with a lot of graphical features missing. Make no mistake, AquaMark3 is a DirectX 9 benchmark. But since it's based on a real game engine it has fallbacks to DirectX 8 and even DirectX 7 that makes this software not a 100% DX9 benchmark.
Download: Aquamark 3 (63 MB)
| AquaMark 3 |
800x600 |
1024x768 |
1280x1024 |
1600x1200 |
| x800Pro |
54 |
51 |
47 |
41 |
| x800Pro 3800+ |
64 |
60 |
53 |
46 |
| 6800GT |
61 |
59 |
55 |
50 |
| 6800GT 3800+ |
72 |
68 |
62 |
54 |
| x800XT |
54 |
53 |
50 |
47 |
| x800XT 3800+ |
67 |
64 |
59 |
53 |
| 6800U |
63 |
61 |
58 |
53 |
| 6800U 3800+ |
75 |
71 |
66 |
59 |
Again we can observe tremendous performance shifts when the graphics card is running on a faster system. And again things change towards ATI's side when we enable a few IQ settings like 4xAA and 8x AF:
| AquaMark 3 |
800x600 |
1024x768 |
1280x1024 |
1600x1200 |
| 6800GT |
54 |
48 |
39 |
31 |
| 6800GT 3800+ |
60 |
51 |
40 |
32 |
| 6800U |
57 |
51 |
42 |
34 |
| 6800U 3800+ |
64 |
56 |
44 |
35 |
| x800Pro |
50 |
46 |
40 |
34 |
| x800Pro @ 3800+ |
58 |
52 |
45 |
37 |
| x800XT |
53 |
45 |
44 |
38 |
| x800XT @ 3800+ |
63 |
58 |
50 |
43 |
Aah, the Radeon x800 series show their sheer power. They are just so efficient with their image quality settings. Although in most cases the Radeon series are a bit faster with IQ then NVIDIA we can only see this huge difference with Aquamark 3 though. going back to CPU scaling, again we see that the XT needs to most hefty processor. but when it has just that .. it shows off it's power alright.
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