Passmark 3d Mark Results

3D Graphics technology has come on in leaps and bounds over the last few years and this test measures how fast 3D images can be created and displayed.

Microsoft provides a set of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) called DirectX, which allow developers to create games and other high-performance multimedia applications. DirectX provides support for two-dimensional (2-D) and three-dimensional (3-D) graphics, sound effects, music, input devices, and networked applications such as multiplayer games.

The Advanced 3D Graphics Test has been designed to benchmark the how well your video card performs when using the most common features of DirectX. It renders a number of spheres to the screen in windowed or full screen mode. As such, Performance Test requires DirectX version 9 or above.

Apart from individual graphics card speeds and abilities, the test illustrates a single video card's drop in performance as the rendered scene becomes more complex. A scene with more objects, more textures and more DirectX features implemented may well look more impressive, but will more than likely result in a reduction in frame rate.

While I love using Passmark's Performance Test suite to benchmark system memory because of its consistent results, I am not as impressed with the light-load graphics test it offers to video cards. Sure, it runs through the various 3D chores a computer might encounter, but these aren't nearly as demanding as higher-end video games will require. The test does prove one theory I have developed, and that is the G80 GPU's are optimized for higher volume low-demand graphical calculations, whereas the G92-based GPU in the GeForce 9800 GTX and 9800 GX2 video cards is designed to eat up high-demand calculations at a faster rate thanks to NVIDIA's ROP compression system which has been enhanced to improve performance at extreme resolutions such as 2560 x 1600. It appears that the enhanced compression will help keep memory usage lower than previous G80 products, and help performance in high resolution antialiased scenarios.

In the next section Benchmark Reviews gives a detailed look into the GPU performance in Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance.

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