[Skippy]

Intel® or AMD® compatible processor 2.5GHz or higher

Wee! Disqualified already!

The line beow is cool too :

DirectX® 9 compatible graphics adapter with Pixel Shader 2.0 support or later, and graphics memory of 256 MB minimum

[Shade]

Intel® or AMD® compatible processor 2.5GHz or higher

Wee! Disqualified already!

Heh, even an AMD X2 4800+ needs to be overclocked or it's disqualified from the get go. A bit draconian if you ask me 

[Taristin]

Intel® or AMD® compatible processor 2.5GHz or higher

Wee! Disqualified already!

The line beow is cool too :

DirectX® 9 compatible graphics adapter with Pixel Shader 2.0 support or later, and graphics memory of 256 MB minimum

well, my vid card has 256 Mb but I don't think it is PS2.0. I have no idea really. >..>

[Turnsky]

I just found out this software was half a gigabyte.. I really don't care enough to download that much.

i just DL'd the empire at war demo which wieghs in at over 700 meg so i'm not gonna bat an eyelid at 500 meg or so

[Fineus]

Oh you guys misunderstand... it's not that it's incredibly huge. I just can't be bothered to try considering what I'd be getting. It doesn't seem worth it. 

[aldo_14]

What the hell is the point of a benchmark program that automatically excludes over half the market, anyways?

[CP5670]

well, my vid card has 256 Mb but I don't think it is PS2.0. I have no idea really. >..>

The 9x00 line fully supports SM2.0 (except a few of the low end 8500-based cards), although it won't run that stuff very well.

Some of the tests use SM3.0 though, so the final score tanks on cards not supporting that.

Intel® or AMD® compatible processor 2.5GHz or higher

Wee! Disqualified already!

I hate how they always show the frequency in Intel terms in these system requirements. Although I have my opteron at 8x375 so I'm covered either way.

[SadisticSid]

What the hell is the point of a benchmark program that automatically excludes over half the market, anyways?

More to the point, what the hell is the point of a benchmark which alters its own performance criteria every year? I know cards' featuresets are getting larger all the time, but the last big thing we've had was shaders, and they've been around for absolutely ages. If FutureMark actually gave a damn about providing useful comparisons, rather than causing e-penis envy to get people to buy the latest cards, we'd be getting roughly the same scores for our systems regardless of the version.

[CP5670]

The problem is that about two years after a 3dmark version comes out, all the video cards start to get the same scores due to CPU limitations. It has happened very quickly with 05 due to the emergence of dual card setups and generally the amazing rate at which video cards have grown faster since 05's release. For example, two 7800GTs, two X1800XTs and two 512MB 7800GTXs all score within 1000 points of each other in 05 despite their real performance being very different. So they have to keep changing the thing in order to keep up with newer games and make the differences show up.

I think this is going to happen even faster with this new 06 version, as the best current video card setups are already breaking 10k with it and there are much faster cards coming out very soon. The X1900 line will launch this Monday and G71 is reported to come out in early March.

[Turnsky]

nothing much changed over 3dmark 05, only some bells and whistles