3DMark 2001SE and 3DMark03
3DMark 2001SE b330- Author: MadOnion/Futuremark
- DirectX Class: 8.1
- Pixel and Vertex Shaders: Yes (Nature test) PS1.1/1.4
There's very little in this benchmark that stretches back to March 2001. The PowerColor 9800XT takes a decisive lead at the default resolution. It's gradually pegged back by the FX 5950 Ultra. The Ultra's massive bandwidth and clock power is helpful in this test that doesn't touch the cards' DX9 abilities. At lower resolutions it's a system test. At 1600x1200 4x AA / 8x AF it's an exercise in grunt power. Image quality was comparable on both ATI and NVIDIA cards.
3DMark03 b340
- Author: MadOnion/Futuremark
- DirectX Class: 9.0
- Pixel and Vertex Shaders: Yes (all tests) PS1.1/1.4/2.0
FutureMark isn't happy with NVIDIA's ForceWare 53.03 driver set, so much so that the driver isn't on the approved list. From that you may infer NVIDIA's trying to raise benchmark performance via dubious means. However, after examining the visual output of both ATI and NVIDIA's cards and comparing it to the original image, there's precious little in it. ATI's 4.1 driver set has FutureMark approval, though. FSAA and AF filtering was set through the application's adjustment panel. FutureMark's two DirectX benchmarks haven't been able to show much performance daylight between the trio.
