Full Story:
Futuremark® Announces Patch for 3DMark®03
Ensures Objective Performance Measurements with Latest Hardware & Drivers
Saratoga, California USA – November 11th, 2003 – Futuremark Corporation announced today the immediate availability of a patch to the 3DMark03 benchmark suite. 3DMark03 is the worldwide standard tool for easily and objectively measuring and comparing PCs’ 3D performance.
Available immediately, this free downloadable software patch provides the only valid version (340) of 3DMark03. Only scores obtained through the version 340 and with approved drivers will be used in official statistics, comparisons and services provided by Futuremark.
According to Tero Sarkkinen, Executive Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Futuremark Corporation, “the new version is published to make sure that our customers can get an objective 3DMark03 performance comparison with the latest hardware and drivers. Our customers will be able to perform apples-to-apples performance comparisons between the various IHVs’ graphics cards.”
Parts of the program code have been changed so that possible 3DMark03 specific optimizations in current drivers will not work. 3DMark03 specific optimizations in drivers are against run rules of 3DMark03, because they invalidate the performance measurement results and thus make it impossible to compare performances of different hardware. A list of drivers that have been tested - and confirmed to produce valid 3DMark03 scores - has been published on Futuremark’s website.
3DMark03 sets the standard for easily and objectively measuring and comparing modern PCs’ 3D graphics performance. It features 4 different game scenes to determine the overall 3D performance. In addition to this, it has individual tests and professional tools, such as a 3D audio performance test, CPU performance test and image quality test. 3DMark03 provides detailed benchmark information and is connected to Futuremark’s PC performance database of more than 10 million benchmark results. This allows users to compare their own system performance with virtually any other PC configuration.
Technical Details Associated with the New Patch:
* Patch changes the program's build number to 340;
* Maximum point sprite size is now limited to 256x256 instead of the maximum supported by the hardware;
* Incorporates new version of the Entech library (used to detect the clock frequency of the graphics chip core and memory);
* Provides more detailed and accurate system information and improved detection of hyperthreaded CPUs
Futuremark’s official mirrors carry both a 5.4MB patch download for current 3DMark03 users and a full 177MB download of the patched 3DMark03 for new users. A list of official mirrors can be found at
http://www.futuremark.com/download/. 