Page 13 - 3DMark 05, 3DMark06 and War Front
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.
In 3Dmark05 we push a score of 17936 points with a HD2900 XT; which is a new record for a single card. We see a lovely 10768 points for 3DMark06. Crossfire is pushing 19180 points in 05 and 13796 on 3Dmark06.
It really is a nice score, but makes one wonder how reliable the score actually is.
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 with a single card we can still play at 30 FPS. The performance here is definitely not okay.
Crossfire however was completely bugged and unplayable. This is an ATI issue. If Crossfire isn't supported properly then you are bound to see stuff like this. Horrible and you'd need to revert back to single card mode.
