Scoring Calculations Dissected
TOM'S HARDWARE: "3DMark06 added HDR content, which needs hardware that supports SM3.0 with FP16 textures and blending. I must say that the eye candy looks amazing, but there is one concern. When calculating the score for cards that do not support floating point, you take 75% of the shader model 2.0 score to compensate for the lack of support. However, ATI's current hardware generation supports HDR with AA, while Nvidia currently does not support floating point blending and multisampling antialiasing together, as coded in 3DMark06. Do you believe it is fair to not output a score when the hardware does not support the features together, since you calculate a score for cards that cannot support HDR? Why not make an adjusted score as you did with the other scenario?"
Nick: "We spent a lot of time researching how to come up with a score formula that works for both SM2.0 and SM3.0 generations of graphics cards. One thing that we wanted was to enable SM2.0 hardware users to run 3DMark06 and get a comparable 3DMark result.
Basically, 3DMark06's score calculation "run rule" is that if a card is capable of running all four (or two as with a SM2.0 graphics card) graphics tests with the default benchmark settings, it must also be able to run them with any extra benchmark settings (AA & level of AA, AF etc.) turned on. This is not an IHV specific rule, and all cards are treated this way. This was done in order to prevent any misinterpretation or misuse of the 3DMark score."
