Hydra performance - 3D Mark Vantage

3DMark Vantage (DirectX 10)

3DMark Vantage focuses on the two areas most critical to gaming performance: the CPU and the GPU. With the emergence of multi-package and multi-core configurations on both the CPU and GPU side, the performance scale of these areas has widened, and the visual and game-play effects made possible by these configurations are accordingly wide-ranging. This makes covering the entire spectrum of 3D gaming a difficult task. 3DMark Vantage solves this problem in three ways:

1. Isolate GPU and CPU performance benchmarking into separate tests,
2. Cover several visual and game-play effects and techniques in four different tests, and
3. Introduce visual quality presets to scale the graphics test load up through the highest-end hardware.

To this end, 3DMark Vantage has two GPU tests, each with a different emphasis on various visual techniques, and two CPU tests, which cover the two most common CPU-side tasks: Physics Simulation and AI. It also has four visual quality presets (Entry, Performance, High, and Extreme) available in the Advanced and Professional versions, which increase the graphics load successively for even more visual quality. Each preset will produce a separate, official 3DMark Score, tagged with the preset in question.

The graphics load increases significantly from the lowest to the highest preset. The Performance preset is targeted for mid-range hardware with 256 MB of graphics memory. The Entry preset is targeted for integrated and low-end hardware with 128 MB of graphics memory. The higher presets require 512 MB of graphics memory, and are targeted for high-end and multi-GPU systems.

Download: 3DMark Vantage

Above the results for a single GeForce GTX 285 and Radeon HD 5870 and then combined. You'll notice that through our benchmark session this is a good combo.

Here we have a Radeon HD 4770 and GeForce 9800 GTX+ working together like the devil's advocate. Really good score.

Third is the R-mode -- this is a Radeon HD 4850 and 4890. Paired you will see an increase, not as big as X-mode though. Something that we'll constantly observe.

Last and least is a combo of a Radeon HD 4770 and Radeon 5870. As you can see, it is not a good idea to combine a relatively slow card with a high-end one. The result is something in the middle.