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Synthetic benchmarking: 3DMark 05 & 06 Business Edition

Literally millions and millions 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.

In 3Dmark05 we push a score of 17169 points with the HD2900 PRO; which is rather staggering. We see a crushing 9272 points in 3DMark06. It really is a nice score.

Gaming: War Front - Turning Point

For those who just cannot get enough of the Second World War, War Front: Turning Point offers enough spin on the traditional model to offer a very satisfying experience. Graphically, the game is great, and is configured to run on a myriad of systems with different specs. Higher-end PCs will be treated to a nice amount of eye candy, including detailed vehicles, great environments and excellent special and explosion effects.

A game that has not been tweaked to death at driver level as it is very uncommon to benchmark; which is really why we include it.

We enabled all possible in-game eye-candy and with 4xAA and 16xAF at 2560x1600; although mediocre we can still play at 26 FPS. The performance here is reasonably good.