Futuremark Launches 3DMark® Vantage

With four preset benchmarking levels, Futuremark offers users the benefits of four ground-breaking benchmarks for the price of one

Espoo, Finland - April 28th, 2008 - Futuremark ( www.futuremark.com ) brings users one step closer to understanding the performance potential of their personal computers with the launch of 3DMark® Vantage. Gamers, media and OEMs now have a modern gaming performance benchmark to measure native DirectX 10 and multi-core CPU performance with large amounts of physics, AI and graphics.

3DMark® Vantage was created by a select group of Futuremark artists and engineers working in close cooperation with the Benchmark Development Program (BDP) members [Ageia, AMD, Compal, Dell, Gateway, HP, Intel, Microsoft, NVIDIA, Sapphire Technology, Velocity Micro, Vivante Corp., Qimonda] , "3DMark smashes out of the box in delivering a view to virtual reality that pushes the performance envelope of the latest in PC Hardware for years to come." said Jukka Mäkinen Ph.D., Vice President of the PC Business Unit at Futuremark. "Consumers to professionals will be able to get immediate comparisons with thousands of others using our online results browser, helping them to fully understand the results and how they can improve their computer’s gaming performance potential."

3DMark®Vantage is composed of four full-bore benchmarking tests (2 different CPU tests and 2 different GPU tests) and 6 feature tests. Four presets, a groundbreaking new feature, vastly augment the variety of PCs that can be tested with the product. Presets range from value through performance to high end cinematic rendering resolutions and features. By creating a new set of high end presets, 3DMark®Vantage is future proofed for the new multi-core CPU and Graphics Processing Unit products as well as supporting the Physics Processing Unit to expand the range of technology, testing and prevent the benchmark from being bottlenecked for its users.

The Latest GPU Features:

• Completely new DirectX 10 rendering engine developed by Futuremark, taking full advantage of geometry shaders, vertex stream out and the new shader model 4.0.
• Advanced post-processing effects including lenticular halos, anamorphic and lens flares, streaking, bloom, depth-of-field, motion blur, color correction, depth fog and volumetric fog.
• GPU-simulated physics content including planet surface shockwaves, firestorms and atmospheric evaporation; reactive cloth, physical particle effects and a completely new interactive water simulation with large-scale waves and foam formation.
• High-fidelity, physically based surface shading models, including anisotropic materials like brushed metal and plastic and concrete.

• Heavily multi-threaded artificial intelligence (AI) featuring co-operative 3D-pathfinding algorithms, utilizing a state-of-the art lock-free task scheduling core.
• Next-generation physics workloads featuring fluids, rigid bodies, joints, cloth and soft bodies.
• Support for Physics Processing Unit hardware acceleration.

3DMark Vantage Pricing and Availability
3DMark Vantage is available in Basic, Advanced and Professional editions. Futuremark furnishes 3DMark Vantage to qualified members of the IT press and media on request. All editions are available at www.futuremark.com/products/3dmarkvantage/.

Pricing and licensing details are as follows:

3DMark Vantage Basic
• 6.95 (download only - limited, free trial edition also available)
• Licensed for non-commercial and Personal Use only
• 3DMark Vantage Advanced
  • $19.95 (download only)
  • $29.95 (CD-ROM)
  • Licensed for non-commercial and Personal Use only
• 3DMark Vantage Professional
  • $495.00/seat (download version)
  • $495.00/seat (CD-ROM)
  • Licensed for Full Commercial Use

About Futuremark Corporation
Futuremark® Corporation is the leading provider of performance analysis software and services for PCs, smartphones. Futuremark® is known around the world for its benchmark products, including the 3DMark® and PCMark® Series, SPMark™ and VGMark™ (with more than 35 million copies distributed worldwide) and value-added services powered by, Online ResultsBrowser (ORB), a database of 20 million real life benchmarking results. Futuremark® maintains offices in Saratoga, California and Helsinki, Finland. For more information, please visit http://www.futuremark.com

© 2008 Futuremark® Corporation. 3DMark®, PCMark®, SPMark™, VGMark™ and YouGamers™ trademarks and logos, Futuremark® character names and distinctive likenesses, are the exclusive property of Futuremark Corporation.