Good morning. As most of you know, Futuremark released the latest version of their popular benchmarking software 3DMark03 yesterday, which contains the slogan "The Gamers Benchmark."
On the eve of the 3DMark03 launch, I was in a conference call with NVIDIA's Public Relations Director Brian Burke and Mark Daly, Director of Technical Marketing. I met Mark at NVIDIA headquarters a couple of years ago while attending the pre-launch of the GeForce3. There's no question that Mark's credentials in 3D graphics technology are impeccable as he was responsible for demonstrating the features of NVIDIA's leading-edge graphics hardware by developing interactive technical demos.
Now that you've had a chance to read the various 3DMark03 reviews, you probably noticed references to NVIDIA, which on the surface appear to totally discredit 3DMark03. Let me assure you that this was not the impression I had based on my conference call. Mark brought up key points that NVIDIA has questioned in regards to the game tests and the methods that were used to program specific graphics effects.
Brian Burke expressed an on-going concern with synthetic benchmarks, which has plagued NVIDIA, as well as others in the graphics industry. His concern centers around the amount of time and effort the driver development staff spends on optimizing performance for 3DMark when in reality the optimizations don't affect the performance of the games we play. Brian even presented me with a series of drivers yesterday as each new version increased my 3DMark03 score, but had no noticeable effect on my game play in Unreal Tournament 2003.
And that's where the issue lies. NVIDIA feels that 3DMark03 misrepresents the gaming experience and takes exception with 3DMark being referred to as "The Gamers Benchmark." Having looked over various reviews I've written, you see that I've always looked at 3DMark for what it represents.
GeForce4 Ti 4600 Preview - Keep in mind that you don't play 3DMark2001 - it's a synthetic benchmark and should be treated as such.
GeForce3 Ti Preview - Although it's referred to as a synthetic benchmark, the battery of tests in 3DMark2001 contains a variety of state-of-the-art simulations.
GeForce3 Preview - The overall 3DMark2001 score is derived from the four game tests which simulate processing that may be used in future games.
Those of you who've been long time visitors to nV News have seen my graphics card reviews take on a new direction by emphasizing game play. I receive e-mail from visitors who've come to trust my judgment and have purchased NVIDIA-based products based on my game play analysis. It's ironic that the reason my 3DMark03 article wasn't ready is because I'm working on a new section at the site that will provide my game play experiences using popular games. After all, that's the real reason we buy graphics cards, right?