Author: Konstantin Ivanov
Vendor: Futuremark Corporation
3DMark2001 by the Finnish company Futuremark Corporation has won fantastic popularity among users. It is hard to find among the gamers who have never ran this benchmark (that is the test) on your computer. In a sense, the last two years we have gone through 3DMark-mania: an overview of virtually any graphics card does not go by without bringing the results of this test, and went to the processors and motherboards – with them, too, demanded more and more parrots (points), but what nick , gone mad, set a daily record, not forgetting to reinstall the drivers and dozens to disperse iron. And all for what? Prove that your system is very steep, well, or at least no worse than Pupkin Vasya from the fifth door.
3DMark'03 came to us as a regular affair. First, I wanted to see how the look-the-art toys. Second, check out how to cope with the new computer tasks. Well, in the third, to keep up with fashion. When on every street corner talking about the new product, it is difficult to avoid the temptation not to try it, especially since 3DMark'03, like its predecessor, is free to download and use.
Ready No1
During the first three days of the developer's site has been downloaded more than 1.5 million copies of the test. You can join those who suffer, but remember that 3DMark'03 weighs no more nor less than 176 Mb, plus a mandatory program requires DirectX 9.0, and it's 35 Mb. It would be nice to remind about the minimum system requirements: CPU with a frequency exceeding 1 GHz, 256 Mb of memory, fully compatible with DirectX 7 graphics card with 32 Mb of memory and gigabytes of disk space.
Now the most important. If you have any GeForce4 MX, then you will only play one of four tests. Even the GeForce4 Ti does not, you can enjoy all the charms 3DMark'03. You need a full support for DirectX 9.0, which currently provide only top-end cards from ATI (9500/9700) and has not yet received by the general availability of the family card GeForce FX (NV30, NV31, NV34) from nVidia.
Full version – the maximum possible
Traditionally, 3DMark is available as a shareware version, ie available for use only basic functions:
test in the resolution of 1024×768;
Demo loss in the resolution of 800×600;
the ability to publish their results online.
Full version 3DMark'03 allows the user to:
exercise full control over the configuration of the output image, including resolution (from 320×200 to the maximum supported video card), anti-aliasing and texture filtering.
repeated arbitrarily the number of tests;
choose any of the tests and run them at discretion;
ordered to take screenshots of the test intervals;
record the results in the form of data Excel.
Game tests
Game1 "Wings of Fury"
Genre: Simulator
Picture: August 3, 1944. In the skies over the Baltic Sea and German fighters are fighting U.S. troops. I do not because the world is the popularity of "Il-2 Sturmovik" is the first game-test is devoted to the battles of World War II fighter planes? Too many similarities you can find, although 3DMark'03 done more arcade (aircraft, for example, flying against each other "bundles").
Load: polygons per frame: 32 000 (Vertex Shader 1.1), the volume of diverted RAM 23 Mb.
Effects: multitexturing (for each airplane model is applied to four textures: color, reflections, light and glare), point sprites (smoking engines).
Game2 "Battle of Proxycon"
Genre: 3D Action
Picture: On a distant space station cosmological pehi keep the fight against the invading army. Movement on the ship's cameras combined with gunfights, sometimes the camera captures the view from inside, followed by visible space. This test is relevant, because in the coming years we expect a lot of shooters next generation engines built on "DOOM III", "Unreal II", which, in fact, will offer a similar gameplay.
Load: polygons per frame: 250 000 (pixel shader 1.1), 150 000 (pixel shader 1.4), the volume of diverted RAM 86 Mb.
Effects: Normal Mapping (prototype BumpMapping), allowing you to create the natural folds in the suit of armor space marines; Dynamic Shadows (dynamic shadows are not programmed in advance, and are created in real time during the game – what a long time we kept saying John Carmack of ID Software) ; Depth Of Field (depth of focus) camera fixes on a particular facility, blurring the rest (I was perfectly understood by those who shoot at the camera); Bloom (over-illumination of objects), arising from strong explosions.
Game3 "Troll's Lair"
Genre: RPG.
Picture: Brave and rather pretty girl warrior makes a dangerous journey to the lair of the trolls. The path leads through a mysterious library with high arched windows with shutters. Magic Sword heroine shines so brightly that illuminates the dark walls and polished floor. The camera shows a close-up of the girl's face (and it looks super natural!): Her large eyes and expressive eyebrows, plump lips, lighted flare the nose and cheeks, and even his hair, which cause the most excitement (they are a collection of thousands of individual hairs are twisted, bend and change their position due to gravity and the breeze). Further, we are waiting for a scene with fighting trolls, which, however, I was not impressed. It seems that these big beasts molded from clay (it is very inexpressive, they came out).
Load: 560 000 (pixel shader 1.1), 280, 000 (pixel shader 1.4), the volume of diverted RAM 85 Mb.
Effects: Anisotropic Lighting (lighting to recreate the hair glavgeroini); Dynamic Shadows and Depth of Field. The latter two effects, as you can see, are used in the "Battle of Proxycon" (generally, these two tests are very similar in nature)
Game4 "Mother Nature"
Category: Demo.
Picture: Prototype Test No4 from 3DMark2001. The same "mother nature", but with a more detailed embodiment. A special delight is a trickle: clear water, bubbling and foaming, flowing through a crevice, which are scattered along the edges of the stones, while the surface reflects the sun's rays and glare.
Load: polygons per frame: 780 000 (pixel and vertex shaders 1.1, 1.4, 2.0), the volume of diverted memory 113Mb.
Effects: All of the motion of objects in this test are carried out with Vertex Shader 1.1. When rendering the land uses pixel shader 1.4. Superimposed on the surface of the earth 6 textures: texture color, detail, lighting, bevel, shadow of the clouds and cubic normal map. To create the water used pixel shaders 2.0.
The test results
Test System:
The test results 3DMark'03:
The main estimates are derived from the results of four game tests. The approximate formula that calculated the score looks like this:
3DMark'03 score = (G1fps * 7,3) (G2fps * 37) (G3fps * 47,1) (G4fps * 38,7),
where G1, 2,3,4 fps – output 1, 2, 3, 4 test.
It is clear that any graphics card has not passed all the tests, a lot of losing. So all is not on the basis of 3DMark'03 compare the performance of new and old maps.
Additional tests
Following the game tests are tests for the CPU and the CPU Test 1 CPU Test 2. "Wings of Fury" and "Troll's Lair" run in the resolution of 640×480; feature of the test is that the task of handling Vertex Shaders are shifted to the video card to the processor.
Further there are familiar to us on the 3DMark2001 tests Fill Rate for Single / Multi-Texturing (the picture is almost the same as its predecessor), Vertex Shader (here instead of shooting each other fellows roam matrix trolls tyukaya each other with clubs), and Pixel Shader 2.0 ( instead of the conic, we untwist the elephant and rhinoceros, provided that our video card supports DirectX 9.0).
Ragtroll – yet another text, the like of which was not there before. 16 Troll (taken from the Troll's Lair) alternately jumping from great heights and flop against the ground (remember, the "Unreal Tournament 2003" is on several levels deep traps). Each model consists of about a troll 5500 triangles. Portrayal of the characters is made in four passes with Pixel Shader 1.1. Dynamic lighting is calculated using pixel shader 1.4. This test shows how the system can load balance between the graphics card and processor. This should help in the selection of optimal binding CPU and graphics accelerator.
In the games is important not only graphics but also sound, so sound-tests 3DMark'03 came in very handy. To test used "Wings of Fury": First game goes silent, then in the next 2 stages include 3D-sound with 24 and 60 threads. At the end of benchmarkera we can see how the performance drops, depending on the audio content (by the way, the difference is quite noticeable, and, as a rule, 7-25 fps, depending on the speed of CPU).
Demo
Demo greets us a long preparation for the beginning of the first splash screen. Black and white ribbon brings us to an atmosphere of confrontation air aces of World War II. Under the appropriate music camera captures flight maps, old photographs eckadrilii, cap pilots. And then there are planes in the sky, the picture is gradually replaced by a monochrome to color, and the battle begins. However, all the fighting we have seen in the tests, the new will be only an extreme landing in a village (there is already incorporated pixel shader to recreate a more detailed conditions).
Further video of me totally disappointed. Nothing new – just a banal repetition of those scenes that were in the tests. But in the demo 3DMark2000/2001 notable for their exclusivity. In version 2001 we were even shown on the engine recreated MAX-FX 3D fragment from the Matrix. Ended up bringing all the action a very long list of developers. More demo I was not involved.
Additional Features
Image Quality Tools
This utility is built into 3DMark03, to evaluate the quality of rendering. You can choose any frame or sequence of all the accompanying tests and write them in BMP format on the hard drive. Thus, we can successfully compare the quality of the graphics output different video cards.
Texture Filtering Tool
But this option will help you to check – how good the graphics accelerator with anti-aliasing and texture filtering. Changing the position of the camera or the picture, you can: set the bilinear, trilinear or anisotropic filtering, add color or black and white textures, modify Magnification, Minification, Mipmapping. I think the utility is not excessive for professionals.
Findings
A. 3DMark'03 cool ahead of time and will be relevant only after six months – a year when the video market will be filled with graphics cards with full support for DirectX 9.0. Data only makes sense to compare video accelerators, or because of unequal conditions (not passing all the tests), we obtain an unfair over-rating of one card over another.
Two. Run out and buy Radeon 9700 pro / GeForce FX (just between us, it is better for the same money to buy my mother a new washing machine 
import for points and see all the test is not necessary. Remember that the most important thing – it's still playing. Do not even released "DOOM III" is based on DirectX 8.1, and the projects with support for DirectX 9.0 has not yet been announced.
Three. Lovers of beautiful videos and pictures will be slightly disappointed that the demo in 3DMark'03 practically identical to the gaming tests. This is, believe me, not worth the downloaded 176 Mb (unless of course you do not have free Broadband).
4. Registered version gives 3DMark'03 a lot of very useful additional features, so that professional testers are encouraged to work with her.
Additional information:
DooM 3 as a benchmark
Max Payne as a benchmark
Serious Sam as a benchmark
Benchmark suite 3DMark 2001 Pro
3DMark 2000 benchmark suite
The understanding and calculation of the fill rate (fillrate) accelerator