3DMark has announced that it will be releasing Speed Way, a new benchmark, on October 12. First teased in February 2022 and developed in partnership with Lenovo, Speed Way is a DirectX 12 Ultimate benchmark that is designed to showcase the graphics technology that will power the next generation of gaming experiences, such as mesh shaders and variable rate shading, alongside ray tracing and real-time global illumination for rendering realistic lighting and reflections. Speed Way will be available in a few ways, including an upgrade DLC for those who already own a copy of 3DMark.
From UL Solutions:
3DMark Advanced Edition – New price from October 12 – $34.99
From October 12 onward, Speed Way will be included in the price when you buy 3DMark from Steam or our own online store.Since we released Time Spy in 2016, 3DMark users have enjoyed many free updates, including Time Spy Extreme, the 3DMark CPU Profile, 3DMark Wild Life, and multiple tests demonstrating new DirectX features. With the addition of Speed Way, the price of 3DMark on Steam and 3DMark Advanced Edition will go up from $29.99 to $34.99.
3DMark Speed Way Upgrade DLC – $4.99
Owners of 3DMark Advanced Edition and 3DMark on Steam will be able to purchase the Speed Way Upgrade DLC for $4.99 on the UL Solutions website and Steam.3DMark Professional Edition
Speed Way will be available as a free update for 3DMark Professional Edition customers with a valid annual license. Customers with an older, perpetual Professional Edition license will need to purchase an annual license to unlock Speed Way.Changes when adding 3DMark standalone licenses to Steam.
Due to a Steam policy change, standalone 3DMark Advanced edition licenses purchased after October 12, 2022, and 3DMark Speed Way upgrade licenses cannot be added to your Steam account.
3DMark currently costs $29.99 on Steam. It includes 16 items: 3DMark, 3DMark Port Royal upgrade, 3DMark Time Spy upgrade, 3DMark Wild Life benchmarks, 3DMark Night Raid benchmark, 3DMark Fire Strike benchmarks, 3DMark CPU Profile benchmarks, 3DMark Mesh Shader feature test, 3DMark PCI Express feature test, 3DMark VRS feature test, 3DMark Sky Diver benchmark, 3DMark Cloud Gate benchmark, 3DMark Ice Storm benchmarks, 3DMark API Overhead feature test, VRMark Preview, 3DMark Sampler Feedback feature test.
Discussion (5 replies)
Join Discussion →Must be DLSS3, and have special light effects.
You know, I used to LOVE 3DMark back 20 years ago.
But more as a technology demo than an actual benchmark.
It was so cool to see what was theoretically possible if you challenged the hardware of the day to its absolute limits.
I remember spending lots of time in awe watching the demos from 3DMark 2000 and 3DMark 2001:
[embedded media]
[embedded media]
I didn't know it at the time, but there was a reason these were very reminiscent of Demoscene competition entries of the 90's. MadOnion (later Futuremark) were essentially most of the same guys behind the Finnish 90's Demo goup "Future Crew" which ran the annual demo party Assembly.
For shits and giggles, here is Future Crews winning demo entry from the 1992 Assembly party:
[embedded media]
(Keep in mind, this was pre-3d rendering hardware. I can't seem to find the competition rules for 1992, but I'm guessing it limited to a high end 386 or a low end 486 to make it accessible)
So, it was great nostalgia.
But honestly, as benchmarks they were never terribly useful.
I guess I share in Kyle's distaste for "Canned benchmarks".
You get epeen cred for getting the most points in a title that no one ever plays, but that's about it.
I ran Time Spy just for shits and giggles when I picked up my 6900xt, but that's the first time I've run a 3DMark benchmark since 3DMark 2001.
My favorite benchmark used to be Q2
timedemo 1
map demo1.dm2
Kyle was one of the first to really push the idea of real-world gameplay over canned/synthetic benchmarks, and that was one of the main reasons I found myself on circa 2001. I remember when was also blowing the whistle on GPU driver cheating with synthetic benchmarks later in the 2000s.
My previous job was working for a freelance software QA company. We tested everything from video games to mobile phone apps/games. nVidia was one of our biggest clients. We primarily did GPU driver testing for them. So through that I've gotten familiar with all the 3DMarks since 2001, and various other random-@ss synthetic benchmarks.
Yeah, that was their only real useful purpose, to go "oooh" and "aaaaah" at all the pretty tech shinies. Not representative of real gameplay, but interesting to see an actual implementation of new tech in APIs and hardware. I see 3DMark is keeping up the tradition busting out more DX12 Ultimate benchmarks.
It was weird some when games like the first Max Payne included 3DMark scores with the minimum and recommended system requirements on the retail packaging/game cases.
I still like to f*ck with GPU driver demos from time to time. The nVidia Flex demo is fun to mess around with, and to this day has some of the most realistically-behaving interactive water I have ever seen in a virtual environment. Flex was more of a physics demo than a graphics demo. There was a lot of PhysX stuff in there, for example.
I really want to play with the nVidia Marbles At Night demo and the Racer RTX demo (if I ever get hardware that can run them), but they are stuck behind nVidia Omniverse. I wish they release them standalone.
It makes me sad when I can't run nVidia demos on Radeons and Radeon demos on GeForces, haha!
I didn't realize they did that. I guess it made more sense for them than for anyone else, as they used the same "Max-FX" engine as 3DMark did at the time. I don't think the businesses were ever officially related, but MadOnion and Remedy Entertainment were both founded by ex-Future Crew guys, so there was probably some coordination between the two.