3DMark2001 25 years later
3DMark2001 is back in the conversation 25 years after its March 13, 2001 release, and UL still hosts it on the company’s legacy benchmark page. UL describes it as a DirectX 8 benchmark built around four game tests, Car Chase, Dragothic, Lobby, and Nature. The company also notes that 3DMark2001 SE later added DirectX 8.1 support, and the download page still includes the full-version unlock key.
Back then, this was more than a simple score test. MadOnion presented 3DMark2001 as the first 3DMark with DirectX 8 support, with three new game tests plus a fourth scene that required full DX8 hardware acceleration. The suite also added feature tests for vertex shaders, pixel shaders, and point sprites, along with DOT3 and environment-mapped bump mapping, texture compression, and full-scene anti-aliasing.
UL is clear that its legacy benchmarks are no longer supported, should not be used to test current hardware, and may not work properly on current operating systems. So 3DMark2001 may make makes sense for older systems, retro benchmarking, and unusual driver or platform bring-up, but not as a serious performance metric for current GPUs.
PC Gamer recently went back to 3DMark2001 for its 25th anniversary, running the full 17-test sequence on an RTX 5090 at 4K as a nostalgia trip and a reminder of how important the benchmark was during the GeForce 3 and DirectX 8 era.
They mention that despite being old, it still works on modern hardware, although not without some issues, including an MMX-related warning on a Ryzen 9 7950X system and an HDR problem that had to be sorted out before 4K would run properly. Overall, it is a fun look at how far graphics have come, with a modern flagship GPU pushing through a benchmark that once helped define the early shader era.
Source: PC Gamer , UL/3Dmark Download
