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3DMark 03/05 Professional
The latest in the 3DMark benchmark series built by Futuremark Corporation (formerly known as MadOnion.com). More than 5 million 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, 3DMark03, 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. In this new environment, 3DMark03 will serve as a tool for benchmarking 3D graphics.

This benchmark is not based on any game. Please remember this, never buy a graphics card based solely on the 3DMark score. I'm not bashing the 3D Mark suite here, it's good software but definitely not the sole basis for you to make an informed decision on to buy a graphics card. Especially after what happened in 2003.

For the sake of it I'm including a few scores. Well you have to admit, the importance of these results can be discussed in many way and varieties, yet according to one of our polls what you want to see are the scores and the scores are simply fantastic.

Last but not least I wanted to show you the bandwidth effects with Synthetic gaming software in the form of the 3DMark series. The big advantage is that this software is not too CPU dependant. Thus the memory bandwidth increase will show very objective performance differences. Differences are minimal, but they are there alright. Default is the standard 1024x768 reference test run from FutureMark with all options set to default.