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AquaMark 3
The latest graphics cards on the market are all DirectX 9 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)
All cards dominate here as the AquaMark 3 engine is getting considerably outdated. Yes indeed, here's that nasty word again, CPU limitation. Let's make it a little harder for the graphics cards:
Above you are looking at the results with 4xAA and 8xAF enabled. It's way better to test this way and to look at performance IQ wise. Unfortunately Aquamark is no longer a good test for high-end cards of this caliber especially Crossfire as it's too CPU bound and simply not complex enough anymore for cards like the X1900 XT/XTX and GeForce 7900 series.
Crossfire X1900 XT here is friggin fast though.
Half-Life 2
Gordon Freeman is back! Along with scientist Eli Vance and his daughter Alyx, your mission is to save the planet from total alien supremacy. See, that petite incident in Black Mesa was just the beginning: now those pesky Xen invaders and a new threat called the Combine have spread across the whole Earth, causing massive amounts of death and destruction. Its up to you to set things right.
The source engine provides a gritty realism that surpasses (marginally) even Doom 3s "Super-real" prowess. While maybe not as visually spectacular as Doom 3, HL2s lighting seems a lot more "natural". Let me put it like this, Doom 3s lighting can seem like someone has inserted a laser light show onto Mars making it almost too spectacular, where as HL2s lighting is just "accepted" by the eye as lights reflect, and create shadows with precision, streaming through windows with an unnerving realism.
For HL2 we recorded our own timedemo. We opted for the riverboat level where complex shaders will make things rough on the graphics card
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Enabled above are 4xAA and 8x AF. You could play at HD resolutions easily, great experience and that's just staggering performance. 122 FPS with every friggin quality setting in-game enabled at 1600x1200.
But hey ... let's make it really complex .. and fire up that awesome HDR level, Lost Coast.
