- Oct 9, 1999
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I use to be a big fan of 3DMark when the first one came out with 3DMark99 (before that I used Final Reality). I used it every time I would test an overclock or a driver change. Since then it seems like video card companies have taken notice of the popularity of 3DMark and have increased performance through their drivers just to make the scores higher. I've noticed time and time again where a driver update would gain 500 points in 3DMark yet decrease Direct3D and OpenGL gaming performance by 3 to 5 percent, or to some extent break compatibility. It would irritate me when I would go into a newsgroup or discussion board and see these sheep praise their video board maker and their incredible new drivers based solely on the number 3DMark is spitting out at them. These types of people fell for it. 3DMark is no longer an accurate benchmarking tool. It?s become more of a marketing tool. How accurate can benchmarking software be if that software has hardware drivers written to take advantage of it? About a year and 1/2 ago I stopped using 3DMark all together. I'm now seeing people who may have started really getting into computers and video cards for only a year to maybe two years use 3DMark like its a religion. Most of the posts I'm seeing here in the Anandtech video forum concerning 3DMark are by people who may have been members for half a year at most. If you were to frequent other boards, such as Beyond3D or others like it who discuss video performance, rarely is 3DMark is ever mentioned. The bottom line is that you won't find many people who have been dealing with testing a 3D-accelerator performance for many years? use 3DMark as the end all determination. It's relevance, to me at least, is pretty much nil.
I'm done with my ranting on the subject... for now.
I'm done with my ranting on the subject... for now.