Guidelines for reliable testing

For consistent and reliable testing, these procedures must be followed. The following guidelines are not necessary in order to run 3DMark06 but they will help to ensure that any analysis you make of the test results is more meaningful.

3DMark06 testing guidelines

• Restart the computer before running the benchmark and after making any driver/hardware changes.
• Disable any networking connections and file sharing. Network activity may affect the tested system and its performance.
• Close and disable any open applications and background programs, like automatic disk defragmentation or virus scanners with automatic update features.
• Repeat each test at least three times. When using the 3DMark test repeat functionality, each test is repeated the set amount of times and the given result is the average of the repetitions. This will help to ensure that the effect that any anomalous result has on the final result is kept to a minimum.
• Hardware comparisons should only be done with systems tested under the same settings (i.e. resolution, texture filtering mode, etc).
• Do not attempt to initiate any other system activity while 3DMark06 is benchmarking. During all tests, 3DMark06 will instruct the graphics adapter drivers to disable Vsync. However, some driver revisions and older pieces of hardware will ignore such instructions. Futuremark therefore recommends that users make additional checks to guarantee that Vsync is disabled.

For professional level testing, the following suggestions will help to ensure a greater level of consistency:

• It is recommended use the same monitor and monitor settings, such as refresh rate.
• Compare hardware and detailed settings only by running benchmarks on "clean" systems. This can be done using applications (such as Norton Ghost http://www.ghost.com) that can restore a system configuration to an exact format for each testing run.
• When comparing the performance of different systems, verify that the 3DMark settings, the display driver settings, Microsoft DirectX settings and possible operating system settings that may affect the results are as close as possible in the systems to be compared.
• When using display settings that are not on by default in 3DMark06, use the 3DMark settings to enable them instead of forcing them from the driver settings dialogs.

Note: No benchmark results from 3DMark06 can be compared to those obtained from any previous version of 3DMark, as each one uses a completely different rendering system and test procedure to obtain the final results.

Non-comparable results and 3DMark specific driver optimizations

During the lifetime of the 3DMark benchmark series, it has sometimes happened that eager users and even professionals have tried to skew the 3DMark results in order to increase the performance measurement of their systems or the hardware products they represent. It is against the 3DMark EULA to distort the performance measurement.
Requirements for a valid 3DMark06 default score:

• The graphics driver used should be selected from the ones that Futuremark have reviewed and recommends for 3DMark06 usage. An up-to-date list can be found at www.futuremark.com
• The graphics driver settings should be set for maximum quality, since mipmap bias can otherwise be downgraded and other similar tweaks producing less than the desired image quality.
• If a separate slider is available for texture quality or mipmap settings, these should be set to maximum quality, 'bias=0' 'application specific', or the value that produces the DirectX default mipmapping.
• No graphics card tweak software may be used when running a default score. The system should be freshly booted, and as many background programs as possible should be switched off or disabled.
• Forced AA or higher/lower quality texture filtering should be turned off, since this may produce a lower score than the system is capable of. All this kind of settings should be set to 'application specific'. For AA performance benchmarking, please enable AA from the 3DMark Settings dialog.
• The graphics driver may not display the content differently than how it was originally meant to be displayed / rendered. For example textures that are not originally compressed may not be compressed by the driver. This is why only Futuremark approved drivers are to be used.
• Vertex shaders may not be forced to be run on the CPU in a default run. There is an option in 3DMark06 to run all vertex shaders on the CPU, but the graphics driver may not alter this setting in any way.

In general, the graphics driver may not have any 3DMark specific settings, it should run in a mode as default as possible. 3DMark is meant to measure general 3D gaming speed, and this is not obtained in 3DMark specific driver modes.

Publishing benchmark results

Only Professional Edition users may publish benchmark results in marketing materials, hardware reviews or in any media or publication. Make sure that you follow instructions set forth in the license agreement and in our testing guidelines. Also, include the official 3DMark06 logo with a link or referral to Futuremark. Logos can be found here.

More Information

We have published an extensive 3DMark06 whitepaper. It contains detailed descriptions of each test and documents the scoring methodology. The whitepaper is available at our web site: 3DMark06_Whitepaper_v1_0_2.pdf

Any Questions?

If you have any questions about the 3DMark06 Usage Guidelines, or need more information about of anything of the above, please find our contact info here.

Distribution guidelines

3DMark06 or parts of it can not be distributed without a specific written permission from Futuremark.
Please contact sales@futuremark.com for more details on how to obtain distribution rights or custom branded versions of 3DMark06 Basic Edition.