3DMark 2001 Question!

[rogue1979]

How come my Geforce 2 chipset will not support the Nature benchmark, it runs it on the Demo just fine! I feel like my benchmark score is getting cheated! Sounds like a conspiracy to give newer video cards that support full DirectX 8 features an unfair advantage. Maybe all the developers that are planning to release DirectX 8 games are paying the bills at Mad Onion. According to all the crap from card manufacturers and software developers and especially Microsoft itself, my kids Duron 750@1050 with a Voodoo 3 should not be playing games worth a darn. Heck, I can sit down at it and play all the latest games and it still rocks with a good image and decent speed.

 

[chizow]

Yah, its the same reason many of the responsible review sites do not put such a huge emphasis on 3dmark2k1. The features it benchmarks either aren't fully implemented yet in the majority of games or don't even use them at all. I think people who benchmark put a greater emphasis on their results than game makers or software companies. Its a great tool for seeing how your video card handles the cutting edge of graphic features and to see how your system fares against similar ones, but its obviously not a good test to see how well your machine handles the majority of games available today.

Chiz

 

[Sunner]

Your GF2 doesn't support some features that are used in the nature test, its as simple as that.

It doesn't mean it wont handle todays games or anything, it just means you can't run all of 3DMark 2001.

 

[Rand]

The Nature demo benchmark is intentionally disabled by MadOnion if your card doesnt support all DX8 features in hardware. The demo does not even let you run it in software emulation, ironically if your card does have DX8 capabilities the demo will run even if you intentionally disable all DX8 features and force it to run in software emulation.

It's one of the reasons I hate 3DM2001, because it artificially inflates the score of any DX8 supporting card, by refusing to allow previous cards to run the Nature demo even though damn near any modern card is capable of running it in software even if it can't run it in hardware.

There used to be a whole pile of complaints about that on MadOnion's 3DM2001 message board.