(Quick Test) New 3DMark Gaming Benchmark Available

The new 3DMark is available. You can download the Windows version from this page: 3DMark downloads.

You have to call it 3DMark and not 3DMark13 or something else. Here is the explanation from Futuremark:

This new version is cross-platform (Windows, Windows RT, Android and iOS devices) and includes three tests:

• Ice Storm (1280×720)
• Cloud Gate (1280×720)
• Fire Strike (default:1920×1080, extreme: 2560×1440)

Ice Storm

Ice Storm is a cross-platform benchmark for mobile devices. Use it to test the performance of your smartphone, tablet, ultra-portable notebook or entry-level PC. Ice Storm includes two graphics tests focusing on GPU performance and a physics test targeting CPU performance.

On Windows, Ice Storm uses a DirectX 11 engine limited to Direct3D feature level 9, making it the ideal benchmark for modern portable devices targeting that feature level. On Android and iOS, Ice Storm uses OpenGL ES 2.0.

3DMark Ice Storm is the ideal benchmark for modern mobile devices such as tablets, netbooks, ultra-portable notebooks and entry-level PCs that support Direct3D feature level 9.

Ice Storm uses the same engine on all platforms and supports the following features.

• Traditional forward rendering using one pass per light.
• Scene updating and visibility computations are multithreaded.
• Draw calls are issued from a single thread.
• Support for skinned and static geometries.
• Surface lighting model is basic Blinn Phong.
• Supported light types include unshadowed point light and optionally shadow mapped directional light as well as pre-computed environmental cube.
• Support for transparent geometries and particle effects.
• 16-bit color formats are used in illumination buffers if supported by the hardware.

Here are my scores with a GTX 660 and a HD 7970:

Cloud Gate

Cloud Gate is a new test designed for Windows notebooks and typical home PCs. It is a particularly good benchmark for systems with integrated graphics. Cloud Gate includes two graphics tests and a physics test. The benchmark uses a DirectX 11 engine limited to Direct3D feature level 10 making it suitable for testing DirectX 10 compatible hardware. Cloud Gate is only available in the Windows edition of 3DMark.

Cloud Gate tests use same engine as Fire Strike, but with a reduced set of features including a simplified lighting model and some fallbacks implemented for Direct3D feature level 10.

Here are my scores with a GTX 660 and a HD 7970:

Fire Strike

Fire Strike is the new showcase DirectX 11 benchmark for high-performance gaming PCs. Using a multi-threaded DirectX 11 engine, Fire Strike includes two graphics tests, a physics test and a combined test designed to stress the CPU and GPU at the same time.

The Fire Strike engine includes all latest technologies: multithreading (based on DX11 deferred device contexts and command lists), tessellation, deferred rendering, surface illumination with combination of Oren-Nayar diffuse reflectance and Cook-Torrance specular reflectance or basic Blinn Phong reflectance model, volumetric illumination, particle illumination, depth of field, lens reflections, bloom, antialiasing (MSAA and FXAA) and smoke simulation.

Here are my scores with a GTX 660 and a HD 7970: