Page 13 - 3DMark and Stalker

Synthetic benchmarking: 3DMark 05 & 06 Business Edition

Literally millions and millions of benchmark results have been submitted to Futuremarks Online ResultBrowser database. It has become a point of great prestige to be the holder of the highest 3DMark score. A compelling, easy-to-use interface has made 3DMark very popular among game enthusiasts. Futuremarks latest benchmark series, 3DMark03 up-to 3DMark06, continues this tradition by providing a Microsoft DirectX 9 benchmark.

The introduction of DirectX 9 and new hardware shader technologies puts a lot of power in the hands of game developers. Increasingly realistic 3D games will be available over the next year and a half. The use of 3D graphics will become more accessible to other applications areas and even operating systems.

For your reference, the 3Dmark 05 and 06 results.

Gaming: S.T.A.L.K.E.R. - Shadow of Chernobyl

Shortly after another disaster in Chernobyl, the authorities surround the area with the Russian equivalent of the U.S. National Guard, and they begin to hear weird screams and rumblings coming from within. After a while though, most of them are returned to earlier posts. Curiosity gets the better of some people, so they sneak into the 30-kilometer area to do some good old-fashioned investigating. These people are called Stalkers, and they report back to the authorities with their findings.

The 3D engine shines in a few key areas, all crucial in shaping the game's atmosphere. It's got a huge draw distance, which leads to the palpable feeling that this is a big world. Lighting and shadowing are its other big strengths. For this benchmark we have the in-game settings at maximum (AA/AF enabled), Dynamic lighting was disabled as this feature is really for next-gen graphics cards performance wise.

Image Quality setting:

• In-game Software Anti Aliasing enabled
• 16x anisotropic filtering
• Dynamic lighting disabled

As stated we went for the games maximum quality settings, yet with static lighting. This will give us a very good overall framerate. IQ settings wise this is what 98% of you will be using. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. does not support hardware anti-aliasing, yet uses a software applied method which is enabled.

Again look at the 3850, even the 149 USD 256Mb model is up-to a third faster than the fastest GeForce 8600 model available.