Aquanox Aquamark

This content was originally featured on Amdmb.com and has been converted to PC Perspective’s website. Some color changes and flaws may appear.

AquaMark is a stress test for DX8 drivers and hardware. The underlying krass-Engine floods any graphic card that is currently available with data. The krass-Engine is the first engine available that fully exploits DX8 VertexShaders and PixelShaders. However the engine does not rely on PixelShaders which can be emulated at some extent through the automatic usage of DX8 TextureStage pipeline. With the benchmark program AquaMark you are able to test the affectivity of the video card of the user’s computer under real world conditions. This means, that AquaMark is not a common demo-benchmark. It contains a fully working game engine. The first published version of AquaMark (2.1) is based on krass™ engine, that serves also for 3D-realtime-rendering. AquaMark 1.0 and 2.0 were non-public versions. AquaMark has been optimized to compare DX8 on different video cards and supports all necessary features such as the VertexShader or PixelShader (GeForce 3), etc. After AquaMark has calculated the efficiency of the video card, the result of the benchmark test is saved on the hard disc drive as “aquamark.txt”.

Technical Features

  • Full DirectX8 support makes heavy use of DX8 hardware, (nFiniteFX).
  • Environmental effects like plankton, plants etc.
  • Photorealistic materials, Radiosity lighting, reflections, rt-shadows etc.
  • Visually stunning layered, multicolored, volumetric fog effects
  • Full support for FSAA increases visual quality once more.

Visiontek GeForce 3 Review - Graphics Cards 22
Click to Enlarge

Referencing the AQUANOX Aquamark benchmark illustrates the extreme performance advantages of the GeForce 3 when coupled with an application that is expressly designed for the nFiniteFX engine of the GeForce 3. As shown, the GeForce 3 runs circles around the GeForce 2 Ultra. In the attempt to create a somewhat equal criteria and because the GeForce 2 Ultra doesn’t support Pixel Shaders, other than DirectX 8 emulation, I provided results with the Pixel Shaders enabled and disabled; which proved to be a non-factor in the GeForce 2’s downfall.

Visiontek GeForce 3 Review - Graphics Cards 23
Click to Enlarge

This benchmark shows off nVidia’s new Quincunx Antialiasing™ (multisampling). By using a multisampling process, the GeForce 3 is capable of antialiasing that looks better than 2X, with only a slight performance hit. And according to the results, this holds true. Though difficult to discern, the graphic quality did seem to be an improvement. Note the red zeros denote a failed benchmark at that respective resolution.

« PreviousNext »