7 - 3Dmark06 & War Front - Turning Point
Synthetic benchmarking: 3DMark 06
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.
Quite stunning results here actually. One GX2 gives us 16233 points in 3DMarks06, two setup in Quad SLi actually decreases that value with almost 100 points. Now that's the nature of 3Dmark06 .. it's too CPU bound at its default test @ 1280x1024 with standard no AA.
Take a good look at the last three results to the right. Check the score of 15509, that's again the default test at a resolution of 2560x1600, that is just an amazing score !
Resolution
Pixels
%
1024x768
786432
100
1280x1024
1310720
167
1600x1200
1920000
244
1920x1200
2304000
293
2048x1530
3133440
398
2560x1600
4096000
521
See if 1280x1024 is the standard resolution, then your graphics card needs to fill 1.3 Mpixels. At 2560x1600 that's over 4 Mpixels per refresh (on average we really want 4 Mpixels x 60 frames per second) and thus there is roughly four times more pixels to fill at 2560x1600. So please try to understand the complexity of what we are dealing with.
At 2560x1600 when we flip on 4xAA we still achieve 14156 points. Only at 8xAA versus 2560x1600 the Quad SLI setup starts to get a little grumpy, yet still manages to push out 8255 points, nice !
Gaming: S.T.A.L.K.E.R. - Shadow of Chernobyl
Shortly after another disaster in Chernobyl, the authorities surround the area with the Russian equivalent of the U.S. National Guard, and they begin to hear weird screams and rumblings coming from within. After a while though, most of them are returned to earlier posts. Curiosity gets the better of some people, so they sneak into the 30-kilometer area to do some good old-fashioned investigating. These people are called Stalkers, and they report back to the authorities with their findings.
The 3D engine shines in a few key areas, all crucial in shaping the game's atmosphere. It's got a huge draw distance, which leads to the palpable feeling that this is a big world. Lighting and shadowing are its other big strengths. For this benchmark we have the in-game settings at maximum (AA/AF enabled), Dynamic lighting was enabled.
Image Quality setting:
- In-game Software Anti Aliasing enabled
- 16x anisotropic filtering
- Dynamic lighting enabled
We went for the game maximum quality settings, we enable everything possible, also dynamic lighting (as requested recently in our forums). S.T.A.L.K.E.R. does not support hardware anti-aliasing, yet uses a software applied method which is enabled.
The image quality settings applied are quite honestly really steep. The minute we hit 1600x1200 we see Quad SLI kick in well, though remaining a modest improvement.
