The reality benchmark

Before getting to the issue at hand regarding nVidia GPU performance under DX9, we will take a brief look at what AquaMark 3 is all about and what Massive have to offer.

As mentioned in the introduction, AquaMark 3 is a DX9 benchmark based on the Krass engine which is used with such games as Aquanox and Aquanox 2 which will become available to the public, free of charge, on the 15th of this month by German based company Massive Development.

Since this article is not purely focused on AquaMark 3, we will not be spending a lot of time looking deep into the program, just the basics. Massive offer AquaMark 3 for free (basic version) as mentioned, however if you wish to access advanced options in the benchmark you have the option of paying for four different levels of licenses, these include:

- AquaMark 3 Professional

- AquaMark 3 Professional Plus

- AquaMark 3 Commercial

- AquaMark 3 Commercial Plus

The basic version, which will be for free, still includes a lot of options but you are very limited in what you are able to test. You will only be able to test with the default settings - 1024x768x32, with no AA and 4x AF.

The professional version is similar to the basic version except you have much more freedom to choose how you wish to test; in fact, your options are unlimited. You also get access to more special features such as the screen capture service which automatically takes a screenshot every 500 or 1000 frames into the test and dumps them to your HDD in high quality *.TGA format at around 5MB a pop.

Then we have the professional plus version which offers the same features as professional but with the ability to run multiple tests as once aka batch testing.

Next up is the commercial version which offers the complete range offered by AquaMark 3 as well as the rights to publish your results in media publications.

The final version is commercial plus and this is the exact same as commercial but gives the ability to run the benchmark on 10 different computers - perfect for websites such as ours.

No pricing information is available at this stage; however, we do know that the top of the line commercial plus version will cost $199.99 US.