Oh deary me, got snowed in so I couldn't go to work today.

Good, now I got that out of the way, time for today's little bit....

Decided to benchmark the new PC, so a download of Directx9 and 3DMark 2003 were the order of the day. The new 3DMark is aroun 180MB so you really REALLY have to want it, to be bothered with it. After a considerable wait, interspersed with snow shovelling and car skidding, it was ready.

Forgot to try it BEFORE updating DirectX but no matter, as it didn't work anyway. Even with new graphics drivers it refuses to let me further than loading the first demo in and then quite unspectacularly crashing out. I say crashing, if you can call crashing simply exiting to the desktop with no hint of anything having previously been running.

So after finding I don't have a spare copy of 3DMark 2001SE lying around, another less hefty download (39MB) of that put me where I wanted (and hoped I would find myself)....with the default benchmarking FPS counter going into the hundreds and not the tens (if I was lucky) before...

A quick insertion of the new graphics drivers and my 3DMark score was worse. Overall it was an apparently measly 6697, where as before the new drivers it was 26 points higher..... oh well. According to the futuremark results I should be getting something around 10000, but then it always has been odd that somebody somewhere ALWAYS insists they can run it at ten times the resolution and 3 billion fps, on a casio digital watch, or some other piece of not-very-gaming-hardware. As far as I see it, it's just a benchmark with a soft, warm, pink, heart shaped edge to it.....ahhhh

Mind you if I had gotten 3DM2003 then I am sure I would have missed out on the chance to actually see how wonderful all this new hardware really is....now all I need to do is download the rest of the Unreal 2003 demo to make it do something worth while.