Will 3DMark03 ever become popular?

[Cotita]

I think the reason why 3dmark 2001 became so popular is because of its MAX-FX engine. People tought there were going to be several games based ot that engine, unfortunately only Max-Payne used it.

Several review sites have reported that they won't be using 3dmark 03 as a benchmark, while other will just post them for reference but rely more on 3dmark 2k1.

Wether 3dmark 03 represents the performance of future games is questionable. We'll just have to wait and see.

How ever, I think that the majority of games, specially 1st/3rd person shooters, racing games, sports games and the like will probably use one of the already popular 3d engines, like Lithtech, Unreal and Unreal2 engines, the quake engine, AMP II, EAGL and last, but certainly not least, the Doom3 engine.

So to better reflect the performance of future games, I think that reviewers should use benchmarks that use those engines.

I know that if my pc can handle UT, then it should have no problems running Undying, or if my vidcard runs Alien vs predator2 then it should run No one lives forever2 quite well, and if my pc runs NFL2003, then it can run Fifa2003 or NFS6 or NBA 2003 without a hicup.

These are games people actually play, not a sinthetic 3d benchmark.

So in the end it doesn't really matter if the Radeon9999 Plus Ultra Hyper is faster than the geforceFX Warp25 Omega Turbo in 3dmark03, but which one is faster in real games.

[kyleb]

your just lissening to the vocal minority Cotita. 3dmark03 is just as good if not beter at its inteneded purpose than the last one; look at 3dmarks backers for a moment and ask yourself why they would support a bad benchmark:


Strategic BETA Members:
AMD, ATI, Intel, Microsoft


Active BETA Members:
Creative, Matrox, S3Graphics, SiS


BETA Members:
ALi, Dell, CNET, Gateway, Imagination Technologies/PowerVR, InnoVISION Multimedia Trident Microsystems


found here.

[gokickrocks]

Originally posted by Cotita

Several review sites have reported that they won't be using 3dmark 03 as a benchmark, while other will just post them for reference but rely more on 3dmark 2k1.

review sites stated that they WILL use 3dmark03, just not the FINAL scoring

[jbirney]

I think the reason why 3dmark 2001 became so popular is because of its MAX-FX engine. People tought there were going to be several games based ot that engine, unfortunately only Max-Payne used it.

Do you remember who was hyping 3dmark2k1 the most? nV was at the launch of the original GF3 card. It was the only "tool" at the time that showed off what a programmable TnL (Ie VS/PS) can do for a card/game. NV at that time was the King for the last few years. They had their PR machine in full view and a lot of people said ahhhh nice benchmark. Since NV said its good, then a lot of people did not bother to think. I do agree a real engine was a plus. But we all know that MAX-FX engine performance != Unreal Tournament performance != Serious engine performance, != Volition (red faction) performance , pretty much it does not equal any of the game engines you listed so what good is it then? Then how many real games were based off that engine vrs all the others? Right a couple at best (I can only think of Max Payne) vrs a whole bunch. So I don't buy a real engine as the contributating factor.

Several review sites have reported that they won't be using 3dmark 03 as a benchmark, while other will just post them for reference but rely more on 3dmark 2k1.

Yeap its too bad these sites can not think for themselves and have to rely on NV PR. Did you read TR or B3D 3Dmark stuff? If so you can see that most of NV claims do not hold that much water. And the fact that it does not represent real games? WTF? IT has NEVER EVER represented real games. Not once. If they were really upset about this then they should have wrote the PDF back when 3dmark1999 came out.

Wether 3dmark 03 represents the performance of future games is questionable. We'll just have to wait and see.

Well we are still waiting to see if 3dmark2001 was representative of games But yea jury is out on 3dmark2k3....

So to better reflect the performance of future games, I think that reviewers should use benchmarks that use those engines.

Can not happen. I agree real games is the best but forward looking? What happens when the game engine gets complete overhauled? Based on your statement I could look at how UT preformed and make a prediction based off that of how a card will work in UT2k3? Will a video card today runs JK2, SOF2, RtCW will give me an idea how it will perform in DOOM3? Heck you can not even look at the same engine and predict how different titles will react. Case in point. Frame rates for cards in Q3 do not carry over to RtCW, JK2, SOF2. For example the 8500 looses big time in standard Q3 benches to the GF4 ti4200. But its right on the heels if not ahead of a GF4 ti4200 in the other Q3 based games (RtCW, JK2, SOF2, ect). So even from one game to the next you can not really predict how things are going to run.

These are games people actually play, not a sinthetic 3d benchmark.

Synthetic benches give us a guess how cards might perform in future games. A good review will have real life bench and a few synthetic thrown in. You should never base a review off one or the other.

[creedamd]

it would be dumb for Hardware reviewers not to show the 3dmark2003 score, if a graphics card runs 2003 smooth, the chances are exceptional that it will run current games like butter, 2001 is less reliable, it is cpu intensive.

To not use 3dmark03 is ignorant, and nvidia biased.

[Cotita]

I wonder what will happen if the nv30 outperforms the r300 significantly in doom3.

Not likely, but several people are claiming that the true performance of the nv30 will be seen in doom3.

If I remember correctly, hard ocp won't be using 3dmark03 at all, beyond3d won't post final scores (like they do with 3dmark01), a few others are "evaluating" it and some others like tech report will include it in their set of benchmarks.

There has been rumors that one of the main reasons why nvidia stepped out from 3dmark03 is because futuremark refused to use CG for its pixel shader tests and used assembly instead.

[Shinri Hikari]

The debate will not end here, as some will agree and some will not. And who said their a minority? More like 50%, I will guess. And some just do not care!

[abb]

Will 3DMark 03 ever become popular?--Yes, it already is. The majority of reviewers have already stated that they will implement this benchmark in their testing. The only ones that are opposed to this benchmark is Nvidia. The only reason tor that is because they do not have the technology yet (and probably will not for some time) to take full advantage of this benchmark. The Ti4600's score of 1688 (avg), really makes Nvidia look like crap. Especially that being their cadillac right now. Then again, remember when 3DMark 2K1 came out, and the only card to score a high score was the GeForce 3? Well, same story except that now it is not Nvidia and they do not like it.
Abb

[Cotita]

Originally posted by jbirney


Can not happen. I agree real games is the best but forward looking? What happens when the game engine gets complete overhauled? Based on your statement I could look at how UT preformed and make a prediction based off that of how a card will work in UT2k3? Will a video card today runs JK2, SOF2, RtCW will give me an idea how it will perform in DOOM3? Heck you can not even look at the same engine and predict how different titles will react. Case in point. Frame rates for cards in Q3 do not carry over to RtCW, JK2, SOF2. For example the 8500 looses big time in standard Q3 benches to the GF4 ti4200. But its right on the heels if not ahead of a GF4 ti4200 in the other Q3 based games (RtCW, JK2, SOF2, ect). So even from one game to the next you can not really predict how things are going to run.



Synthetic benches give us a guess how cards might perform in future games. A good review will have real life bench and a few synthetic thrown in. You should never base a review off one or the other.

That analogy applies exactly the same with 3dmark03, if the radeond9700 beats the geforceFX in 3dmark03 (or even if it was the other way around) means nothing to doom3 because their 3d engine is completely different.

Even games that share the same engine have different results. As you mentioned the radeon 8500 was slower than the ti4200 (and even the geforce3) in quake 3, but almost meet the ti4200 when running MOF and in sometimes even beat it in RTCW.

I think that benchmarking has become much more complicated, since its becoming much more difficult to have apples to apples comparison when you have so many different variables.

[tamattack]

Exactly. That's why you want to use more tests, not less. That's another reason to add 3dMark2003 to your benchmark test suite.

[Admiral Horror]

When does the geforceFX Warp25 Omega Turbo come out? Do u have any info on the specs?

[DaveBaumann]

Originally posted by Cotita
If I remember correctly, hard ocp won't be using 3dmark03 at all, beyond3d won't post final scores (like they do with 3dmark01), a few others are "evaluating" it and some others like tech report will include it in their set of benchmarks.

There has been rumors that one of the main reasons why nvidia stepped out from 3dmark03 is because futuremark refused to use CG for its pixel shader tests and used assembly instead.

A.) Beyond3D, as a general rule, does not use the final score from any version. You may find it in a few reviews (dunno, haven't looked at all of the other reviewers reviews) but it certianly won't have been used in mine or Rev's in the past year or so.

B.) Why would Futuremark use Cg in the first place? 3DMark is a DX benchmark and considering DX has its own HLSL it would frankly look very odd if they even thought about using Cg!