Originally posted by: bunnyfubbles
LOL, this is hilarious. Too many of you are getting worked up over this bench. Yeah 10,000+ looks impressive in 3DMark2k1, but this is 03, and guess what it is testing? DX9. If your card does not officially support DX9, then you are SOL and ignorant for thinking your "killer" system is ready for DX9 games.
Comes no surprise to me that the "mighty" GF4 is crashing and burning in this test... 9500 Pro = 4000 marks whereas a Ti 4600 = 2000 marks. Why is this when the Ti 4600 is right up there everywhere else? Could it be the fact that the 9500 Pro is a piece of hardware built to support DX9 while the Ti 4600 only DX8?
Yes, you're right there. The reason the GF4 is crashing and burning is because by not being able to run the DX9 test, it automatically gets a score of 0, as opposed to assigning it no weight. Doom 3 uses Vertex Shadar 2.0 I believe (a DX9 feature), and also will run on DX8/7 cards (slower and with fewer effects on, naturally), so some games using DX9 features will also support lower cards, just with fewer effects and worse framerates.
What would be really interesting to see is a GeForce FX run this test. Something tells me it might blow away a stock R300, especially on the standard settings...
HardOCP did that
here. With the release drivers the GF FX got spanked. With the new 42.67 drivers, it was neck-and-neck compared to the 9700: ~5000 marks for the FX vs ~4800 marks for the 9700. The GF FX got
killed in the Pixel Shadar 2.0 test, however.
Just because your system might royally blow hardcore on this test means jack squat unless you expect your current rig to be ready to play unhindered DX9 games. This is basically a bench for owners of video cards powered by an R300 core...for everyone else you get a slide show of what you could have with smooth frame rates should you have such a piece of hardware. IMO the games available and tested on my Radeon 8500 looked very very very badass, I now have the urge to go out and by a 9700 Pro or better because of this benchmark, I want to be able to play things like "Game test 2" with respectable frame rates!
I wouldn't bother buying a Radeon 9700 to play games like "Game test 2" until games like "Game test 2" actually come out on the market. By then, you will be able to buy a faster card (ie the R350+) and probably for less money too!
Don't put down the benchmark either, it seems to me that it seems far more polished than any past version and it seems as if it actually measures your systems ability to play games (future ones mostly) far better than 3DMark2k1, at least that is my opinion. Notice the first person view of the second game test...seems reasonable to me...that test was more taxing than Doom III...
This benchmark was done with the best of intentions, and tries to give a good gauge of future performance, but don't think that it's solely a DX9 test, not by a long shot. The four main tests which comprise the bulk of the score are based on (in order of Game 1-4): Direct X7, DX8.1, DX8.1, DX9. It's only the Nature test that actually uses DX9, and with some DX8 features to boot!
Also, supposedly the "Game 2" was written very sloppily - it's a display of shadows like in Doom III, but poorly coded, and thus not a great indication of true performance. This part is speculation, but I wouldn't doubt it too much. How could they have created a Doom 3 esque engine to benchmark with in much less than the time it is taking id to create the Doom 3 engine? Obviously, some corners must have been cut.