Futuremark's 'Vantage'

Features
By Florian Charpentier
published

Introduction

We’d been expecting it sooner (3DMark06 is more than two years old now and DirectX 10 and Vista have been out for over a year), but only now is Futuremark lifting the veil from its latest 3DMark - sporting the name "Vantage" instead of the expected "3DMark08." As with each edition, we’ll do a quick presentation, since the philosophy of this benchmarking program hasn’t really changed (any more than its inherent problems), and we don’t see any more need to use it than we did for previous versions. As we’ll see, drivers optimized specifically for 3DMark are already available (Nvidia is making its ForceWare 175.12 beta available today for the occasion), and the test scenes use a rendering engine that isn’t used by any game (even if that is the direction in which the company wants to move with its Futuremark Games Studio).

3DMark’s goal has always been to simulate the demands future games will make before the fact and to determine the resulting hierarchy of graphics cards. However, it has failed in that goal, as the results of 3DMark06 show - it favors AMD cards over Nvidia’s and does not offer reliable benchmarks for most current games. Not to mention 3DMark’s rendering, which hasn’t evolved and is still "cartoonish." But despite all that, it remains the tool both manufacturers and overclockers use. So let’s see what this new version is made of and what scores the current crop of cards can attain.

Florian Charpentier
21 Comments Comment from the forums
  • honestjohn
    Why should I pay good money tobe shown that my close to state of the art overpriced hardware sucks.
    Reply
  • clay12340
    Because chicks love it when you post the high numbers from your overclocked machine in forums.

    I think they might have underestimated how cheap a lot of the PC community is. $20 for a utility to get some arbitrary number seems a bit high to me.
    Reply
  • bourgeoisdude
    What an incredibly stupid move. In the long run futuremark will make less money because, as Florian says, popular support for this product is indispensable. Now that Tom's is shooting it down, it has already lost a significant amount of share. This product has been all about hype, and there seems to be little hype for it this time around. I'm certainly not paying for what appears to be more of the same. With two years instead of just one, and DirectX 10 instead of DirectX 9, I would have expected something better.
    Reply
  • bpogdowz
    When I tried to get my results I get this fatal error: http://img508.imageshack.us/img508/6963/captureir4.png
    Reply
  • hannibal
    Well this is the first and only pure DX10 title you can test on. Every other (real games) use DX9 engine with DX10 makeup. (Ofcourse, because it would be economical suisade to make only DX10 game at this moment (too few Vistas out there))

    So is you want to know if you graphic card is any good in DX10 environment, this is the only test you can use. What it's good for... Well not much at this moment, because it will take years untill we will see pure DX10 game engines, because the DX9 support is too important to the game makers!
    But one day those DX10 games will come out, so until then this is the one and only test that you can use to test yours gpu's DX10 power...
    Reply
  • caskachan
    duuuuuuuuuur huuuuuuuuur lets use sintetic benchamrks instead of real world game tests


    seriously i am happy tomshardware wont be using 3dmarks newest applet anymore =D
    Reply
  • wingless
    Its amazing what some Hotfix drivers can do. 477% on a useless test is still pretty impressive. Imagine what ATI and Nvidia could do with their present day lineup if they took the time to optimize the drivers for each game. I mean REALLY optimize the drivers. Nvidia should be much better at this since they've had so long to optimize for the G80. ATI should probably spend more time optimizing than trying to get a new driver out each month. Their drivers sometimes degrade performance.

    As far as 3DMark Vantage goes, its useless in the real world. We should have Unreal 3 powered benchmarks since so many games actually use that game engine.
    Reply
  • If 3Dmark Vantage is anything like PCMark Vantage, stay away. It's the most aggravating, stupidest program I've ever used. I wasted $20 on this piece of crap. To view your results you are directed to a web site that has literaly hundreds of pop-up adds all mixed in with your results. Realy, realy stupid
    Reply
  • arius
    I can run free TRIAL VERSION asm many as I want - just click UPGRADE LATER and RUN !
    Reply
  • thomasxstewart
    with fire GL v. it won't work, although most OTHER test do work, not vantage.

    Signed:PHYSICIAN THOMAS STEWART VON DRASHEK M.D.
    Reply