3DMark to Launch Speed Way DirectX 12 Ultimate Benchmark for Gaming PCs on October 12

[Tsing]

3DMark has announced that it will be releasing Speed Way, a new benchmark, on October 12.

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[Grimlakin]

Must be DLSS3, and have special light effects.

 

[Zarathustra]

You know, I used to LOVE 3DMark back 20 years ago.

But more as a technology demo than an actual benchmark.

It was so cool to see what was theoretically possible if you challenged the hardware of the day to its absolute limits.

I remember spending lots of time in awe watching the demos from 3DMark 2000 and 3DMark 2001:

I didn't know it at the time, but there was a reason these were very reminiscent of Demoscene competition entries of the 90's. MadOnion (later Futuremark) were essentially most of the same guys behind the Finnish 90's Demo goup "Future Crew" which ran the annual demo party Assembly.

For ****s and giggles, here is Future Crews winning demo entry from the 1992 Assembly party:

(Keep in mind, this was pre-3d rendering hardware. I can't seem to find the competition rules for 1992, but I'm guessing it limited to a high end 386 or a low end 486 to make it accessible)

So, it was great nostalgia.

But honestly, as benchmarks they were never terribly useful.

I guess I share in Kyle's distaste for "Canned benchmarks".

You get epeen cred for getting the most points in a title that no one ever plays, but that's about it.

I ran Time Spy just for ****s and giggles when I picked up my 6900xt, but that's the first time I've run a 3DMark benchmark since 3DMark 2001.

 

[Denpepe]

My favorite benchmark used to be Q2
timedemo 1
map demo1.dm2

 

[DrezKill]

I guess I share in Kyle's distaste for "Canned benchmarks".

Kyle was one of the first to really push the idea of real-world gameplay over canned/synthetic benchmarks, and that was one of the main reasons I found myself on [H] circa 2001. I remember when [H] was also blowing the whistle on GPU driver cheating with synthetic benchmarks later in the 2000s.

I ran Time Spy just for ****s and giggles when I picked up my 6900xt, but that's the first time I've run a 3DMark benchmark since 3DMark 2001.

My previous job was working for a freelance software QA company. We tested everything from video games to mobile phone apps/games. nVidia was one of our biggest clients. We primarily did GPU driver testing for them. So through that I've gotten familiar with all the 3DMarks since 2001, and various other random-@ss synthetic benchmarks.

You know, I used to LOVE 3DMark back 20 years ago.

But more as a technology demo than an actual benchmark.

It was so cool to see what was theoretically possible if you challenged the hardware of the day to its absolute limits.

Yeah, that was their only real useful purpose, to go "oooh" and "aaaaah" at all the pretty tech shinies. Not representative of real gameplay, but interesting to see an actual implementation of new tech in APIs and hardware. I see 3DMark is keeping up the tradition busting out more DX12 Ultimate benchmarks.

It was weird some when games like the first Max Payne included 3DMark scores with the minimum and recommended system requirements on the retail packaging/game cases.

I still like to f*ck with GPU driver demos from time to time. The nVidia Flex demo is fun to mess around with, and to this day has some of the most realistically-behaving interactive water I have ever seen in a virtual environment. Flex was more of a physics demo than a graphics demo. There was a lot of PhysX stuff in there, for example.

I really want to play with the nVidia Marbles At Night demo and the Racer RTX demo (if I ever get hardware that can run them), but they are stuck behind nVidia Omniverse. I wish they release them standalone.

It makes me sad when I can't run nVidia demos on Radeons and Radeon demos on GeForces, haha!

 

[Zarathustra]

It was weird some when games like the first Max Payne included 3DMark scores with the minimum and recommended system requirements on the retail packaging/game cases.

I didn't realize they did that. I guess it made more sense for them than for anyone else, as they used the same "Max-FX" engine as 3DMark did at the time. I don't think the businesses were ever officially related, but MadOnion and Remedy Entertainment were both founded by ex-Future Crew guys, so there was probably some coordination between the two.