New benchmarking and support tools

[AzBat]

Thought some of you might find these tidbits interesting...

RightMark Gathering is planning to release a new test, called RightMark 3D (RM3D)! RM3D will be meant for objective performance measurement of 3D accelerators. It will consist of three parts: synthetic tests and two game tests based on a real game engine. These game tests will use the same textures, models and scripts, but different APIs: OpenGL 1.4/2.0 and DirectX 9. RM3D will be available shortly after the release of DirectX 9.

...

MadOnion.com today announced a strategic partnership with NVIDIA Corporation, which will result in enhanced customer support experience and drive down costs for NVIDIA system builders. By utilizing MadOnion's expertise in PC information collection and processing, NVIDIA now offers its system builders the ability to collect critical data on individual PC configurations -- before spending time with the end-user. MadOnion's service enables real-time capture of respondents' hardware and software configurations. This results in substantial cost savings for customer support organizations. Until now, attempts to determine reliable configuration data by asking end-users resulted in increased time on the phone and higher customer support costs.
Read the full press release.<ul>
More information on MadOnion.com's SupportMark
NVIDIA's Select Builder Program
[/list]

I found all of this at BenchmarkHQ.ru. Nice site I might add. The first one says it's an "Independent Open-Source Project". Unfortunately the rest of the site is in Russian. As for MadOnion's new SupportMark technology, it looks like an extension of their Performance Analyzer plug-in. I find it kind of strange that MadOnion still lists ATI as using their Performance Analyzer when it seems ATI quit using it over a month ago. Maybe they quit using it due to the new strategic partnership with NVIDIA? Anyway, BenchmarkHQ also list additional benchmarking tools and links to download them.

Tommy McClain

 

[Dreadnought]

A comparison tool for both APIs sounds interesting and may be useful. Tbh I never was a big fan of 3dmark which seems more an exercise in jumping though certain hoops than real games performance.

 

[KimB]

To date, however, we have yet to see a real game that was able to show a good comparison between Direct3D and OpenGL. The actual difference has always seemed to be based solely upon the level of optimization of the game's engine and the quality of the GPU's drivers. There's never been a good objective analysis, and I don't think there will be or can be one.

 

[Hyp-X]

objective performance measurement

This will only be true until they release the benchmark.
If it will become a popular benchmark then IHVs will start tweaking their drivers for it.
And there goes the objectivity.

The only objective benchmarks are the ones the IHVs cannot get their hands on.