If there is one benchmark that has stood tall over the years, it is the 3DMark series from Futuremark. Ever since the release of 3DMark99 back in 1998, Futuremark has continued to provide us users (and reviewers) with a way to compare our video cards in a reproducible way. True, the benchmarks have been surrounded with some controversy the last few years, and many have questioned the use of synthetic benchmarks. The controversy hasn’t changed the fact that the 3DMark programs have always been the benchmark to use when you want to brag: “I got 11,000 in 3DMark03, what did you get? 8000? Hah, that’s … pretty good …. (I rule!)”.

Today, we will be looking at Futuremark's latest in video benchmarking: 3DMark05.