Futuremark Launches 3DMark Cross-Platform Benchmark

2/4
2013

Futuremark Launches 3DMark Cross-Platform Benchmark

Posted by hokiealumnus in News, Software

Today we’re happy to announce a new Futuremark benchmark for everyone to torture their hardware with!

Presents….

If you’ve been waiting for this benchmark for a while, you’re not alone. There were a lot of previews sent out. We published the first one that said this was coming in 2012 (missed that one, didn’t they?). Then another trailer came out in early December. That was followed by a couple more, but there was never a definite release date. Folks ended up becoming just a little frustrated, especially on HWBot.

Now the wait is OVER! Like the post title says, the new 3DMark is a cross-platform benchmark. It comes with three tests – Ice Storm, Cloud Gate & Fire Strike. There will be three tiers of 3DMark much like past benchmarks – Basic Edition (free on all platforms), Advanced Edition (a paid version, there are more options for enthusiasts) and a Professional Edition (for business users and costs a pretty penny).

System Requirements

The system requirements are actually reasonably light for such a new benchmark. Of course, the frames may be crawling by on your screen, choppy as they can be, but it’ll run!

Windows System Requirements

The Fine Print

Being the first cross-platform bench, they also have minimum requirements for mobile devices. This includes phones and tablets.

Mobile System Requirements

There’s also a handy dandy quick reference for test compatibility.

Test Compatibility

Now, on to the benchmarks!

Ice Storm

This is the first (and least intense) test in 3DMark, meant for mobile devices:

Ice Storm is a cross-platform benchmark for mobile devices. Use it to test the performance of your smartphone, tablet, ultra-portable notebook or entry-level PC. Ice Storm includes two graphics tests focusing on GPU performance and a physics test targeting CPU performance. On Windows, Ice Storm uses a DirectX 11 engine limited to Direct3D feature level 9, making it the ideal modern benchmark for all DirectX 9 compatible devices. On Android and iOS, Ice Storm uses OpenGL ES 2.0. The test content, settings and rendering resolution are the same on all platforms and scores can be compared across Windows, Windows RT, Android and iOS.

Cross-platform benchmark for mobile devices.

Includes two graphics tests and a physics test.

Compare scores across Windows, Windows RT, Android and iOS.

Ice Storm, Courtesy Futuremark	Ice Storm, Courtesy Futuremark
Ice Storm, Courtesy Futuremark	Ice Storm, Courtesy Futuremark

Ice Storm isn’t intense, but it’s still a good looking bench. It’s the only one of the three to support DirectX 9.

Cloud Gate

The next test is for older hardware, notebooks and “typical home PCs”:

Cloud Gate is a new test designed for Windows notebooks and typical home PCs. Cloud Gate includes two graphics tests and a physics test. The benchmark uses a DirectX 11 engine limited to Direct3D feature level 10 making it suitable for testing DirectX 10 compatible hardware. Cloud Gate will be available only in the Windows editions of 3DMark initially.

Designed for typical home PCs and notebooks.

DirectX 11 engine supporting DirectX 10 hardware.

Includes two graphics tests and a physics test.

Cloud Gate – Courtesy Futuremark	Cloud Gate – Courtesy Futuremark
Cloud Gate – Courtesy Futuremark	Cloud Gate – Courtesy Futuremark
Cloud Gate – Courtesy Futuremark	Cloud Gate – Courtesy Futuremark
Cloud Gate – Courtesy Futuremark	Cloud Gate – Courtesy Futuremark

Cloud Gate is….bright, very bright. It supports DirectX 10.

Fire Strike

This is where most overclockers will be focusing. Designed to torture the highest of high-end computers (and then some, if you run the Extreme preset), it is the most intense of the three tests:

Fire Strike is our new showcase DirectX 11 benchmark for high-performance gaming PCs. It is our most ambitious and technical benchmark ever, featuring real-time graphics rendered with detail and complexity far beyond what is found in other benchmarks and games today.

Using a multi-threaded DirectX 11 engine, Fire Strike includes two graphics tests, a physics test and a combined test designed to stress the CPU and GPU at the same time. 3DMark Advanced and Professional Editions include an additional Extreme preset for high-end systems with multiple GPUs. Fire Strike will be available only in the Windows editions of 3DMark initially.

Designed for high-performance gaming PCs.

Extreme preset for multi-GPU systems.

Stunning DirectX 11 showcase graphics.

Fire Strike – Courtesy Futuremark	Fire Strike – Courtesy Futuremark
Fire Strike – Courtesy Futuremark	Fire Strike – Courtesy Futuremark

Interesting side note – you can see how they used motion capture to make that tech demo here.

Fire Strike is where our team spent their time since receiving the benchmark last week. We were able to throw together a quick comparison for you with a few high-end GPUs. One thing we were struck by was the fact that threads don’t really matter to this benchmark. There is a large difference in Physics score, but relatively little in overall score. Here is a comparison between a 3770K @ 4.0 GHz and a 3960X @ 4.0 GHz, both with HD 7970s clocked at 1100 / 1500.

If you want to delve more deeply on what you’ll need to increase your 3DMark score, you can check out page 26 of the 3Dmark Technical Guide, which outlines how the scores are calculated.

3770K + HD 7970 – 7365

3960X + HD 7970 – 7482

Our comparison graph all ran on our standard GPU benchmarking platform with a 3770K at 4.0 GHz and RAM at DDR3-1866, 9-9-9-24. The only change was to the GPU.

3DMark – Fire Strike Comparison

So far, it looks like AMD is going to be the way to go in 3DMark for now. Either the bench favors AMD overall or AMD’s recent drivers just rock for rendering this bench. I did run Fire Strike with the 3960X at 3.9 GHz (ASUS “stock”) and the HD 7970 at its original stock clocks (925/1325), which scored 6626. Accounting for the 3960x-to-3770K difference, (call it 100 points), that’s still over 700 marks better than the GTX 680 with the HD 7970 at stock.

CrossfireX and SLI scaling aren’t doing so well with 3DMark yet. After speaking with Futuremark about it, this appears to be a driver problem only. The software is fine, but Fire Strike is a very complex scene and multi-GPU setups are currently struggling. MattNo5ss tried a GTX 680 & GTX 670 in hybrid SLI, but the score was no better than with a single GTX 670. As you can see, CrossfireX scales pretty well with two GPUs (though there are flickering issues inside the scenes, which Futuremark says is all driver). However, once you put a third HD 7970, the score drops right back down to where it was with only one HD 7970. So far, it looks like CrossfireX with two GPUs works, but that’s it. Tri-fire and Hybrid SLI both failed to do anything.

This wouldn’t be overclockers if we didn’t throw down the gauntlet of course, so here’s a challenge – beat the best score I came up with: 14313. This is with a 3770K @ 4.8 GHz, RAM at DDR3-2600 / 10-12-12-31 and 2 x HD 7970s at 1270 / 1750.

3770K @ 4.8 + ASUS ARES II – 14313

Now, go download the bench and let’s see what your systems are made of!

- Jeremy Vaughan (hokiealumnus)

Tags: 3dmark, benchmark, cloud gate, fire strike, Futuremark, ice storm, new, release

37 Comments:

trekky

02-04-13 06:07 PM

HWbot should soon add this to make points hopefully

wagex

02-04-13 06:19 PM

now they just need to make it work on xbox and ps to make them console junkies shut it about power lol, like ps3 and their "7 core" cpu that is so powerful

that is what i was thinking when they said cross-platform lol.

EarthDog

02-04-13 06:25 PM

As with all new benchmarks, it takes time. People are going to try to find ANYTHING to get the best score out of it so that stuff needs to be tested... so, I imagine it will be, just dont expect it soon if their history is anything to go off of.

trekky

02-04-13 06:26 PM

true true think i can run one now and than turn it in later?

EarthDog

02-04-13 06:28 PM

Id imagine so, it depends on their requirements for it (as far as GPUz, CPUz, details of the bench, etc) but why not just run it when it is actually a boint receiving benchmark.

EDIT: I do wonder if the SLI scaling would be better with like cards as opposed to the Hybrid config tested though? Clearly its an issue from the AMD side, I just wonder if the Hybrid 'hack' has anything to do with it.

hokiealumnus

02-04-13 06:52 PM

In my brief conversation with Futuremark, NVIDIA needs as much work on their drivers as AMD does to get multiple-card scaling to work properly.

One thing I think I forgot to mention in the article that's nifty - 3DMark has the ability to detect when you turn Tessellation off in Catalyst. If you do so, it will tell you your run was invalid. Thus, all runs listed here were run with Tessellation (and detail, for that matter) at default.

The same cannot be said about LoD. I don't have a green card at the moment, so I can't test whether LoD makes any difference, but 3DMark can't detect that because of the way it's implemented.

EarthDog

02-04-13 06:57 PM

There is an ATI LOD app as well.. I dont recall the name but I think its in the LBB.

trekky

02-04-13 07:04 PM

its called SetLOD it works Meh

Bobnova

02-04-13 07:24 PM

Futuremark's been able to tell about tessellation for a while now, 3d11 has that ability too. It just shows up on the Orb though, not in the main window.

For myself, I'd rather they didn't add yet another benchmark you have to pay for to HWBot, especially when it's not testing any new features (3d11 for instance added DX11, Vantage added DX10).

hokiealumnus

02-04-13 07:56 PM

I doubt they'll be adding this to the bot very soon.

Side note - we received an email with pricing info and (most importantly) announcing a 25% discount for the advanced edition if you already have a 3DMark 11 license.

MattNo5ss

02-04-13 09:29 PM

Still have to do some RAM timing, GPU core, and GPU vRAM tests. Here are a couple graphs and a table...

CPU speed from 4.0-4.8GHz increased the overall score by 0.83%

122750

RAM speed from 1066-2133MHz increased overall score by 0.5%

122751

From the table below combined with the CPU speed chart from above, we can tell that the Graphics Score doesn't care about the CPU, and that CPU cores/threads are more important than CPU speed for the Physics score. Also, it looks like the CPU doesn't start bottlenecking the GTX670 in the Combined Test until we get down to 1c/2t or 1c/1t.

122752

Xenohitsu

02-05-13 01:45 AM

my scores:

Operating system
64-bit Windows 7 (6.1.7601)
Motherboard
BIOSTAR Group TA785GE 128M
Memory
8,192 MB 4x2 Module 1
2,048 MB Corsair DDR2 @ 400 MHz

Detailed scores

3DMark Score
4670 3DMarks
Graphics Score
5211
Physics Score
6178
Combined Score
2179
Graphics Test 1
24.34229278564453 FPS
Graphics Test 2
21.19338035583496 FPS
Physics Test
19.615468978881836 FPS
Combined Test
10.136276245117188 FPS

Catalyst 13.2beta
Phenom II X6 1065t
Gigabyte 7950
8GB RAM

txus.palacios

02-05-13 11:44 AM

3DMark for Steam is not working for me, complaining about Steam not being on. It obviously is. I think it's something on Valve's side, as 3DM11 isn't working either.

PS: I finally finished my yearly watercooling rebuild (Of all the things, I ran out of TIM. I usually buy 2x30g MX-2 syringes. I was not expecting this

). Feels great to use a mechanical keyboard and a 470 SLi again...

Frakk

02-05-13 02:50 PM

Nice review Hokie, does anyone find the picture quality lacking in contrast?

Seems a bit, Milk.

My score.

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/44226

Score 5605 with AMD Radeon HD 7870(1x) and AMD Phenom II X6 1090T

CPU: 4.1Ghz | GPU: 1200 / 1500

Graphics Score 6258
Physics Score 8731
Combined Score 2417

hokiealumnus

02-05-13 02:52 PM

In Cloud Gate, it absolutely lacks contrast. It's like you're in the clouds, which seems like their intent....but it's so cloudy & sunny, you can barely see anything.

Frakk

02-05-13 02:57 PM

Yeah... There needs to be a higher definition between objects and the background, it almost all merges together.

peanutbudder

02-05-13 03:50 PM

Man, the firestorm demo was almost unwatchable on my rig and during the benchmarks I was getting like 7fps... my 3mark score was 4769marks. It also used 1021mb of my vram

I need newer cards for this.

EarthDog

02-05-13 04:06 PM

Ambient Occlusion overkill?

Xenohitsu

02-05-13 08:19 PM

3D Mark can also be downloaded from Guru3d and Techpowerup without Steam:
http://www.guru3d.com/files_details/..._download.html (links at the way bottom)
http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads...ark_v1.00.html
You might need to login to get it activated, then try running it in Offline mode, unless it has to run online so it can upload the results to Futuremark. My drivers are beta, so I didn't bother.

hokiealumnus

02-05-13 08:20 PM

There are seven mirror links here, plus the steam link: http://www.futuremark.com/support/downloads

txus.palacios

02-05-13 09:06 PM

I got it to work using the 32-bit mode. But Fire Strike is not working for me.

theELVISCERATOR

02-06-13 05:21 AM

drivers will catch up shortly...but correct poor sli scaling right now..

http://www.3dmark.com/fs/58640

9245 daily driver settings...

122842

Hilight

02-06-13 07:50 AM

My best score so far on Fire Strike is 5776. I'm using an 8350@5016 and a 7870@1250-1450. My ram is running at 1204. I like this new 3DMark. Hope they include all the tests for points on HWBot including the Fire Strike extreme

122846

txus.palacios

02-06-13 12:16 PM

You won't be able to run Extreme. You have a 1920x1080 resolution and Extreme requires 2560x1440.

EDIT: OH! It registers CPU and GPU temperature too? Sweet!

hokiealumnus

02-06-13 12:26 PM

This bench can scale to your monitor's resolution but still render in the higher one.

MattNo5ss

02-06-13 02:10 PM

If you click that orange "View Run Details" button, you can customize the chart to show what you want between the following: