Futuremark Corporation today announced 3DMark05, the world's most demanding
graphics application for PCs. 3DMark05 is the fifth generation of the
product line, which boasts a distribution of over 50 million copies.
3DMark05 sets the standard for accurate and objective measurement of
graphics performance of DirectX 9 in running next generation of 3D
games.

3DMark05 enables objective cross-platform performance comparisons and
incorporates many groundbreaking new features and technologies. The
all-new engine and tests were developed within Futuremark's Benchmark
Development Program whose members include: 3DLabs, AMD, ATI, Dell,
Gateway, Imagination Technologies (PowerVR), Innovision, Intel,
Microsoft, NVIDIA, S3, and XGI.

3DMark05 is designed to measure the performance of a Windows-based PC
in running as advanced technology of DirectX 9 graphics as possible.
Next generation of games will deploy technologies and levels of
workloads found in 3DMark05. Consumers, who are purchasing PC
technology, can use 3DMark05 today to assess how good their investment
will be with the more advanced games of 2005 and 2006. Futuremark
further helps consumers with an Online ResultBrowser service which
provides users with real-time comparisons and scoring from over 10
million real-world benchmark results.

3DMark05 is the world's most advanced benchmark in its class and
features the latest DirectX 9.0c shader models; 2.0, 2.a, 2.b and 3.0.
The all-new engine utilizes the latest DirectX 9 effects and offers
never before seen fidelity and realism in real-time 3D graphics. With
an average of over one million rendered polygons per screen, and peak
levels of up to over two million polygons per screen, 3DMark05 is by
far the most demanding graphics benchmark ever created.

"Alienware chose to become a 3DMark sponsor for a second time to help
Futuremark continue their great work in the industry. 3DMark has set
the standard by virtue of its leading-edge technology and
next-generation game workloads", said Frank Azor, Senior Vice President
at Alienware Worldwide Product Group. "Alienware has found 3DMark to be
one of the best applications available to demonstrate the capabilities
of Alienware's high-performance systems and an ideal way to reaffirm to
customers the value of their purchase."

"3DMark05 stresses our hardware beyond the means of current games,"
said Andy Thompson, Director, Advanced Technology Marketing, ATI
Technologies Inc. "By using 3DMark05 as a performance analysis tool we
have already found ways to make improvements in our current and future
products that will make games run even better. When 3DMark03 was
introduced it gave gamers an indication of how the available graphics
hardware would perform on future games and we expect the same from
3DMark05. We stand by our commitment to allow 3DMark05 tests to run
unaltered by application specific optimizations so that customers can
rely on the benchmark results on ATI hardware as a true indication of
future game performance."

"Futuremark has once again raised the visual bar with this latest
version of 3DMark," said Dan Vivoli, Executive Vice President of
Marketing at NVIDIA. "With support for DirectX Shader Model 3.0 and
other innovative new features, 3DMark05 is one of the most graphically
advanced benchmarks in the industry."

"With 3DMark having such a big weight in the industry, we feel
tremendous responsibility for the ultimate end-user of our products: PC
technology consumers. I am happy to say that 3DMark05 proudly continues
the tradition of the 3DMark product line by being an objective and
relevant benchmark", said Tero Sarkkinen, Executive VP of Sales and
Marketing at Futuremark Corporation. "3DMark05 is essential for any
serious gamer because it enables gauging how 'future proof' their
investment in a new graphics card or a PC is."

New Features in 3DMark05 include:

- Full support for Microsoft DirectX 9.0c;
- Supporting the latest pixel- and vertex shader models (2.0, 2.a, 2.b
and 3.0)
- Three new game tests, all requiring hardware for DirectX 9.0 with
support for pixel shader 2.0 or higher;
- Two CPU tests, the other one presenting a multithreaded AI
implementation, especially suitable for virtual or physical
multiprocessor systems;
- New feature and batch size tests;
- New and improved image, filtering and anti-aliasing quality tools;
- New graph tool for in-depth performance analysis
- The ultimate showcase of Windows-based real-time 3D graphics:
Dazzling demo with original soundtrack.

New engine:

- Dynamically builds shaders for each material in High-Level Shader
Language (HLSL) format
- Shaders are runtime compiled to best fit the installed hardware;
- Uses exclusively shader model 2.0 and 3.0 for all vertex and pixel
processing;
- Renders real-time light scattering for atmospherical effects;
- Uses improved Perspective Shadow Maps (PSM) with Depth Stencil Texture
(DST) and hardware accelerated Percentage Closest Filtering (PCF) if
supported.

New and improved tools to assist reviewers and test labs:

Image quality inspection tool:
- Ability to export frame by frame using different options and settings;
- Pre-rendered Reference Rasterizer image database for comparison;
Texture filtering and anti-aliasing quality inspection tool:
- Anti-Aliasing;
- Bilinear/Trilinear/Anisotropic filtering;
Graphs of runtime statistics:
- Frame rate;
- Frame duration;
- Polygon count;
- Vertex count;
- State change count;
- Drawing batch count;
System Info utility, which provides an in-depth analysis of the status
and features of the system's components;
Extended Online ResultBrowser for Pro users:
- MultiComparison;
- Dynamic compare URLs;
- 18 filters for search and comparison.

Pricing and Availability

3DMark05 is available immediately for consumers from
http://www.futuremark.com/products/3dmark05/ for $19.95 (download) or
$29.95 (CD-ROM) and for business use for $250.00 (CD-ROM) or $240.00
(download). There is also a limited functionality evaluation version
available for free at
http://www.futuremark.com/download/?3dmark05.shtml.

From around the web, publications are posting their own views on the latest in 3DMark's benchmarks. Catch the 3DM05 coverage here....