Written By : Jeff Nettleton
December 2004

7/ 3DV
As graphics chips increase in programmability, surely it becomes increasingly difficult to implement a single code path that's fair to all. How will you get around this problem as programmability increases?

Tero: Indeed, we have witnessed this and actually in 3DMark05, in some cases we had to make a first exception to our longstanding rule of demanding exactly identical rendering (shadow implementation between hardware that supports DST and PCF and one that does not). It would have been possible to generate identical rendering, but this would have meant an unjust performance penalty for either case, depending on which decision we would have made. Thus, we decided to implement the shadows in a game-like manner and knowing that for that part, there indeed are different code paths. But note, that there are options to force identical rendering if the user so wishes.

8/ 3DV
Will we ever see an OpenGL module/s implemented into 3DMark? Wouldn't this cement your reputation as the ultimate one-stop graphics benchmark?

Nick: We have been discussing OpenGL a lot more now days as it has evolved a lot and as far as I know, soon up to par with DirectX9.0 (OpenGL2.0)? There are no immediate plans to include OpenGL tests into 3DMark, but in our smartphone benchmark, SPMark04, we use OpenGL ES. Time will tell if we will include OpenGL tests into some of our existing benchmarks on the PC, or if we will make a completely separate product testing OpenGL 3D performance on the PC.

9/ 3DV
People love framerates, but with emphasis continuing to shift towards image quality, is there ever likely to be a simple, automated way to accurately rate image quality and fidelity without relying on subjective human input?

Nick: So far we haven't come up with a solution for that. It is impossible to detect errors in the rendering quality, as two different types of hardware do not render the image 1:1. It would be cool to have an "Automated Image Quality Inspection Tool", but we haven't done much research into that yet. An interesting idea though.

10/ 3DV
Rather than try to release a demanding benchmark that's sufficiently taxing to last its expected lifetime, why not make 3DMark more modular so that new or reworked individual tests could be downloaded to bring it back in step with hardware capabilities?

Nick: You mean that 3DMark would become a modular benchmark where the tests could be downloaded separately? Nice idea, but it would make comparing results impossible. If you would have 3DMark05 with 3 DX7 tests, and I would have 3DMark05 with 2 DX8 tests and 1 DX9 test, the results we would get wouldn't be comparable at all. Besides, such a "modular" benchmark would create a lot more work, which is not really feasible.