[H]ardNews 8th Edition

3DMark03 Performance Factors:

Ace’s Hardware has a good write up posted about 3DMark03 performance factors when using a 350MHz Pentium II versus a similarly equipped Pentium4 1.4GHz system the results were surprising to say the least. The same configurations were tested again using real world gaming benchmarks and benchmark scores were almost the opposite of what were reported by 3DMark03. Very interesting stuff, it goes a long way towards our position on the future of benchmarking.

While doing some research on an old 350 MHz Pentium II system, Johan came across some interesting results while benchmarking 3DMark03. When equipped with a high-end video card, like a Radeon 9700 Pro, the 350 MHz Pentium II was able to more than keep pace with a 1.4 GHz Pentium III Celeron and even a 2.8 GHz Pentium 4 in several of the 3DMark03 game tests. *snip* Indeed, if modern 3D games reflected the same performance characteristics, then a PC next in line for the scrap heap could very well become an exceptional gaming machine with one simple upgrade of the video card.