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MadOnion is the publisher of several popular synthetic benchmark applications. Its 3DMark series analyzes system performance at both the processor and subsystem levels. Though it was originally designed to evaluate 3D video performance, the stress 3DMark places on the processor, chipset, and memory buses allows 3DMark to effectively benchmark of overall system performance.
3DMark2000 can test the effectiveness of the processor alone. It separates the video card's advanced 3D functions from the rendering pipeline in order to isolate the processor's performance independent of the video card. Be sure to disable any hardware transform-and-lighting (T&L) operations when configuring the test environment, so that the processor-related tests rely totally on software rendering routines. The 3DMark2000 also offers a looping demo mode that can be used to test system stability over time. In the SE version, internal rendering pipelines have been updated to support Microsoft's DirectX 8.1 D3D hardware acceleration routines.
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