12. 3DMark05

3DMark05 runs a series of video source materials through the system and measures their graphics performance at two different settings selected by the benchmarker: first with anisotropic filtering (No AF) and anti-aliasing (No AA) turned off; then with 4x anti-aliasing (4xAA) and 8x anisotropic filtering (8xAF) turned on. These results show how the graphics subsystem performs with (4xAA 8xAF) and without (No AA No AF) complex shading and edge filtering mechanisms enabled. Without these visual enhancements turned on scores go up, but the video is less attractive; with these visual enhancements enabled scores go down, but the video looks better. This matters much more for gaming than for DVD video, but does provide a useful metric for graphic subsystem performance.

A couple of interesting observations result from viewing these graphs: The degree of variance by resolution is greater for the AMD- than the Intel-based setup, while the range of values between filtering versus no filtering is greater for the Intel processors as compared to those from AMD. Either way, we think this is a wash for a media PC, where encoding and decoding put the heaviest load on these processors, and where those from both makers appear to hold up well when playing one HD source and capturing another.