Futuremark's 'Vantage'

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Processor Test 1: AI

Designed to focus on a game’s artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms (essentially 3D path finding), this test involves competition among numerous airplanes, each of which slaloms through gates, avoiding collisions. Technically, this test is, of course, entirely parallelized (one thread per core) and should run perfectly on systems with multi-core CPUs. The processors won’t provide a more fluid frame rate, but will calculate much better trajectories for the planes, with the score expressed in the number of operations per second, corresponding to the number of paths calculated for the planes during the test.

Though this test also uses the same 3D engine as the preceding ones, the impact of the GPU is reduced as much as possible by the absence of post-processing (except the tone mapping indispensable for the HDR-only engine), complex shaders and shadows. It also uses a simplified geometry. So, during our tests with the different graphics cards, we noted only a maximum performance difference of 2.6% on the overall CPU score, based on the two CPU tests.

We now see what the performance was like based on the frequency and number of cores.

Unsurprisingly, unlike currently available games (we’re speaking here in terms of overall performance), this test is more sensitive to the change from four to two cores than to a 33% reduction in clock frequency. The scores here are almost exactly proportional to the number of cores and the frequency - the QX6850 scored 100% higher than the E6850, and a processor clocked at 3 GHz was 43% better than the same processor at 2 GHz.

Florian Charpentier
21 Comments Comment from the forums
  • honestjohn
    Why should I pay good money tobe shown that my close to state of the art overpriced hardware sucks.
    Reply
  • clay12340
    Because chicks love it when you post the high numbers from your overclocked machine in forums.

    I think they might have underestimated how cheap a lot of the PC community is. $20 for a utility to get some arbitrary number seems a bit high to me.
    Reply
  • bourgeoisdude
    What an incredibly stupid move. In the long run futuremark will make less money because, as Florian says, popular support for this product is indispensable. Now that Tom's is shooting it down, it has already lost a significant amount of share. This product has been all about hype, and there seems to be little hype for it this time around. I'm certainly not paying for what appears to be more of the same. With two years instead of just one, and DirectX 10 instead of DirectX 9, I would have expected something better.
    Reply
  • bpogdowz
    When I tried to get my results I get this fatal error: http://img508.imageshack.us/img508/6963/captureir4.png
    Reply
  • hannibal
    Well this is the first and only pure DX10 title you can test on. Every other (real games) use DX9 engine with DX10 makeup. (Ofcourse, because it would be economical suisade to make only DX10 game at this moment (too few Vistas out there))

    So is you want to know if you graphic card is any good in DX10 environment, this is the only test you can use. What it's good for... Well not much at this moment, because it will take years untill we will see pure DX10 game engines, because the DX9 support is too important to the game makers!
    But one day those DX10 games will come out, so until then this is the one and only test that you can use to test yours gpu's DX10 power...
    Reply
  • caskachan
    duuuuuuuuuur huuuuuuuuur lets use sintetic benchamrks instead of real world game tests


    seriously i am happy tomshardware wont be using 3dmarks newest applet anymore =D
    Reply
  • wingless
    Its amazing what some Hotfix drivers can do. 477% on a useless test is still pretty impressive. Imagine what ATI and Nvidia could do with their present day lineup if they took the time to optimize the drivers for each game. I mean REALLY optimize the drivers. Nvidia should be much better at this since they've had so long to optimize for the G80. ATI should probably spend more time optimizing than trying to get a new driver out each month. Their drivers sometimes degrade performance.

    As far as 3DMark Vantage goes, its useless in the real world. We should have Unreal 3 powered benchmarks since so many games actually use that game engine.
    Reply
  • If 3Dmark Vantage is anything like PCMark Vantage, stay away. It's the most aggravating, stupidest program I've ever used. I wasted $20 on this piece of crap. To view your results you are directed to a web site that has literaly hundreds of pop-up adds all mixed in with your results. Realy, realy stupid
    Reply
  • arius
    I can run free TRIAL VERSION asm many as I want - just click UPGRADE LATER and RUN !
    Reply
  • thomasxstewart
    with fire GL v. it won't work, although most OTHER test do work, not vantage.

    Signed:PHYSICIAN THOMAS STEWART VON DRASHEK M.D.
    Reply