Next generation 3DMark will be Windows Vista only

http://www.yougamers.com/blogs/nick_r/
3DMark Next - Part 1
Apr 27, 2007
Though we aren't really ready to spill all the beans about our next generation 3DMark, I thought to share some info about it anyway.. You could call it an "insider leak" if you'd like.
First of all (and this shouldn't come as a shocker to anyone) the next generation 3DMark will be Windows Vista only, and will require DX10 compliant hardware. You may ask: Why no fallback to DX9 then? Well, we already have a Vista enabled DX9 benchmark (3DMark06) and the last three 3DMarks have all been DX9; 3DMark03 has one test which requires SM2.0, 3DMark05 requires SM2.0 for all tests and 3DMark06 uppers the requirements for two tests to SM3.0. I think both we and the rest of the world are ready to step into the next generation - DX10. There's no reason to go backwards, if you know what I mean.
I haven't been following up on all articles about DX10 on the net, but it really is a great step in the right direction compared to DX9. I can't go into details here (our PC product director and our sales & marketing guys would hang me by my beloved ones if I did), but the whole environment surrounding DX10 feels like a fresh breath of air. It's clean, nice, and tidy. Something completely the opposite to my apartment..
We have been working really hard on new advanced volumetric effects for the next 3DMark. 3DMark06 has some nice volumetric rendering going on, and though we were very pleased with the results, we want to go into 6th gear in the next 3DMark. This (along with the other cool things we have in the pipeline) will bring the next 3DMark into an era of "cinematic rendering", as we like to call it.