3DMark 2000

Explore PC graphics at the turn of the millennium with 3DMark2000, a real-time performance benchmark from MadOnion.com. Built around Remedy’s MAX-FX engine and DirectX 7, it combines detailed environments, animated characters, lighting, and effects in repeatable workloads. Each sequence follows a predetermined course, giving different processor and graphics-card combinations a consistent set of scenes to render. Helicopter and Adventure form the core of the benchmark. Helicopter stages aerial combat over terrain whose geometry, trees, objects, and explosions scale with the selected detail level. Adventure combines animated characters, environmental objects, and lighting, using distance-based levels of detail for both characters and scenery. Each scene runs at low, medium, and high detail. The frame rates from these six tests contribute to the overall 3DMark score, showing how the system handles progressively more demanding content. Hardware transform and lighting is a major feature of this release. Compatible graphics cards can take on these calculations, while optimized software paths support processors including Intel Pentium III and AMD Athlon, alongside AMD 3DNow! technology. A separate CPU test renders fixed frames from the high-detail scenes in a 640×480 viewport. With a software T&L path selected, it provides a CPU-focused comparison using geometry-heavy game content. Individual feature tests examine the graphics pipeline in greater detail. Fill-rate tests cover single-textured and multitextured rendering, while high-polygon workloads draw dense geometry under different numbers of lights. Texture tests travel through a tunnel using workloads ranging from 8MB to 64MB. Emboss and environment bump-mapping tests explore the performance cost of adding surface-detail effects. Custom settings allow independent control over resolution, display and texture color depth, Z-buffer format, and buffering mode. The Professional Edition adds batch testing, a local ResultBrowser, and image-quality tests. These tools automate runs across several configurations, collect results for comparison, and provide reference images for examining rendering output. Saved projects preserve the settings and measurements needed to revisit a hardware or driver change. The demo mode brings the technology together in a continuous presentation synchronized with an original soundtrack. Expansive scenery, particle effects, displacement effects, and water with motion and refraction unfold through a sequence of real-time scenes. Lighting, characters, and environmental animation give contemporary 3D accelerators a visual showcase alongside the benchmark’s numerical results.