The New NBF Benchmark System - Page 2

Yeah Im one of the other 2 people who cant handle light or dark style AT ALL and rep OLD Style!!! woot


But on to business:

Steve, while I appreciate the effort, it would seem that industry experts(Read industry leaders HardOCP) feel that this may actually be a disservice to the community as benchmarks dont reflect real world gaming performance.

Experts say boo for benchmarks!


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Yeah, one person's editorial is totally representative of public opinion.

Um lets see if you mean public opinion as dumb and influenced by box art instead of facts then.... well still no.

If you dont know who Kyle and team Hard is, educate yourself before making such a dumb post Wooster.

Benchmarks give you a relative idea of how your system will perform ... and they also give you a baseline to compare to if you make changes or need to do some troubleshooting down the road. Running benchmarks on a new system is also a good way for a user to familiarize themselves with their system. So, IMO, a good idea but not an absolute must do.

Using benchmarks to predict gaming performance, especially for the newer games like Crysis may be problematic, but doesn't make them worthless. Some people benchmark for bragging rights ... nothing wrong with that, as long as the average user doesn't go out and spend $$$ for an extra 500 points in 3DMark06 - thinking it's going to allow them to play Crysis on Very High settings

Unfortunately thats the exact attitude team Hard feels is the problem.

Over the last few years they have documented quite thoroughly the relative uselessness of benchmarks reflecting real world performance. With things such as companies posting drivers optimized to boost a 3dmark score but does absolutely nothing for game visual quality or fps.

Sure there is still a small place for benchmarks, but if you think just b/c one grfx card has a better 3Dmark score means it is somehow better than another then I have some of Jack's magic beans to sell you. Hard has extensively tested game performance compared to benchmark performance and the data doesnt lie, benchmarks are pretty rubbish.

Sure a 3Dmark score of 1000 on an Radeon 9200 is not gunna be as powerful as a 10,000 from a Radeon HD 3750 (for example) and this might help a noob not understanding that the larger model number in this case doesnt mean faster, but in general a higher model number means a stronger card, that is if the price doesnt give it away. But comparing a HD3750's 10k marks to a NV 8800 GTX that scores only 8500 marks doesnt mean crap when game settings can be set higher on the NV card, runner a faster frame rate, and even on similar quality settings the NV card renders a better image. In this case (which prevails the industry right now) 3Dmark means shit. (Disclaimer the card names/versions and scores were just pulled out my ass just to illustrate the point. Unlike where I had to pull names/numbers out my ass, Hard has years of documentation of precisely what I have put here.)

If you didnt know this fact, or are somehow disgruntled that I might have the audacity to post this, go over to Hard and educate yourself, or have fun living in the bliss of ignorance.

It doesnt change the fact that benchmark scores dont represent anything but an artificially generated number and doesnt give any significant reference between gameplay quality on cards running games like crysis, cod4 or WOW.

I liken PC benchmarks to taking your car to the dyno. Of course it doesn't reflect real-world performance, but it still is a good measure of the basic power of your vehicle. Benchmarks won't tell you how well certain games will run on your computer, but they will allow you to compare your system to others on the market.

also, since common benchmarks can be downloaded for free, they are a good way to determine reasonable performance expectations without spending money on a game only to later realize it's unplayable.

@Djembe, Steve@NBF, and nyako ... you guys all miss the point. Because "team Hard" (I call 'em that, cause I'm cool), doesn't like benchmarks, they can't be worthwhile.

re my laptop benchies ... will try to post some, but I am currently bandwidth challenged.

because of course team hard-on is soo much more important than everything else and their word is law! my word, we better shut down the benchmark system right away before we hurt ourselves because its useless!

Such anger in that one.

while that may have been archalien's point, I thought posting moderate opinions was still okay around here. Maybe not- it is Off-Topic.
ooh, yay! I would like 17,000 magic beans. (I can pay for those in NBF credits, right?)

You guys need to recode the old style.