3DMark for Windows 8 to Benchmark Everything: Smartphones, Tablets, Laptops, Desktops by VR-Zone.com

Futuremark just announced that the company is developing a unified benchmark suite for Windows 8 operating system. Available in 2012, the benchmark currently known as "3DMark for Windows 8" is targeting all Windows 8 platforms, from rare high-end smartphones to commonplace tablets, ultrabooks and desktops.



The new benchmark is the first to support multiple iterations of DirectX - 9 and 11. This decision was made in order to support the variety of devices, which as we all know will range from high-end smartphones and tablets to ultrabooks, notebooks and desktop PCs. Given the diversity of the platforms, we had our doubts in complexity of the test scenes. However, Oliver Baltuch, President of Futuremark Corporation quickly addressed our doubts.

3DMark for Windows 8 will enable apples-to-apples comparison between ARM and X86 powered devices. It's going to be quite interesting to compare contemporary ARM products such as Nvidia Tegra or Qualcomm Snapdragon versus AMD Fusion and Intel Atom/Core processors.

3DMark will continue to feature "Entry", "Performance" and "Extreme" levels of detail, albeit the difference in detail will be larger, as previous "Entry" mode was simply too complicated for Intel's embedded graphics. One of potential scenarios in 3DMark for Windows 8 would be that a tablet user sees all of the test scenes, while a graphics processor in let's say Intel's earlier Core i3/i5 processors (Arrandale/Clarkdale) fails to do so.

Naturally, the reverse role applies as well, with AMD Fusion processors rendering what for instance, Qualcomm Snapdragon, NVIDIA Tegra or TI OMAP4 cannot.

The benchmark is scheduled to debut alongside Microsoft Windows 8 operating system, probably sometime during 2012.