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3dmark03 is the newest benchmark from Futuremark, and the only benchmark in common use that is designed specifically for Direct X 9.0 graphics hardware.

This test is especially challenging in that it exerts a heavy pixel shader and vertex shader load on the graphics adapter. Today's popular game titles still tend to use a fixed-function DX7 style of rendering, with a few optional shaders thrown in for special effects. While the current crop of game-based benchmarks can be made to create a heavy fillrate load (by increasing resolution and adding AA and/or AF), they do not stress the portions of the graphics processor that will become critical in next-generation titles - the shader engines.

3dmark03 contains multiple scenes that are completely shader-driven and as such is highly valuable as a forward-looking benchmark test.

ATI have stated that the RADEON 9800 PRO offers full-time precision Pixel Shaders. Nvidia may be able to produce shader performance that is close to the RADEON 9800 PRO by falling back to a half precision (16bit) floating point mode. 16bit precision in the Pixel Shader calculations may improve performance in some cases, but at the cost of image quality.

	Image Settings	0xAA 0xAF	2xAA 8xAF	4xAA 16xAF	6xAA 16xAF
Resolution
1024x768		5419 marks	3684 marks	2712 marks
1280x960		4291 marks	2860 marks	2053 marks
1600x1200		3219 marks	2053 marks	1492 marks	998 marks

Recently there was a great deal of discussion over 3D Mark optimisation and what, if anything was an acceptable optimisation. Following this debate ATI have taken the step of removing any 3D Mark specific optimisation from their drivers. Therefore these tests represent the raw un-optimised power of the Radeon 9800 Pro.

At standard benchmark settings the 9800 Pro scores an excellent 5419 3D Marks. Running a Radeon 9700 Pro on the same system produced a score of approximately 4900 and therefore the 9800 has a 10% performance increase over the previous high end Radeon card.

Applying AA and AF to the image results in acceptable performance hits given the massive increase in image quality. At 1600x1200 for example, moving to 2xAA and 8xaf gives stunning image quality with a performance hit of 1200 marks (36%). This may seem a large hit however when you consider that at 1600x1200 and 2xAA 8xAF the 9800 Pro is scoring more than the top end Geforce 4 card does at 1024x768 with NO AA or AF then you really do see the awesome power of this card.

Next: Benchmarking in Codecreatures & GL Excess