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AquaMark 3The 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)
AquaMark 3 800x600 1024x768 1280x1024 1600x12006600 4xAA 8xAF 128 MB 31 24 17 125750PCX 35 29 22 17x600 37 31 24 196600 128 MB 43 37 28 226600 256 MB 46 40 31 256600 128 MB Overclocked 55 50 41 336600GT 59 55 47 39
Since this is the new PCI-Express system with the even newer 3.6 GHz Pentium 4, I can't present you more graphics card results then this. But granted even here the card shows really good results. The GT dominates easily though.
