Chicago (IL) - The developer of the ShaderMark has release a new program version which is the first graphics benchmark to support Shader Model 3.0.

Developer ToMMTi Systems claims that ShaderMark 2.1 currently is the only DirectX 9.0 pixel shader mark written in Microsoft's High Level Shading Language (HLSL), Futuremark's 3DMark03 and Massive's AquaMark 3.0 are based on hand written assembler shaders or partly HLSL shaders.

According to the company, ShaderMark does not allow changing the underlying HLSL shader code, to make it impossible to optimize a driver for a certain shader, instead of the whole shader pipeline - which potentially could set an end to driver cheating issues.

The benchmark software now has been changed from shareware to freeware and supports Shader Model 2.b and 3.0. Users can test dynamic pixel shader flow control, floating point texture filtering performance, multiple render target performance and run multiple shader tests. Also included is a hardware rasterizer versus Microsoft reference rasterizer test.

Shadermark 2.1 can be downloaded here .