• DirectX 9 3D game performance benchmark
• Includes separate graphics card and CPU tests
• Produces workloads that simulate next generation 3D gaming requirements
• Advanced 3D game engine supports HDR Rendering with SM3.0 Shaders, in addition to SM2.0 Shaders
• Includes two HDR/SM3.0 game tests and two SM2.0 game tests
• CPU performance testing via AI and physics workloads for both single core systems and multi-threaded, multi-core and multiple processor environments
• 3D graphics feature tests include Fill Rate, Pixel Shader, Vertex Shader, SM3.0 tests, and Batch Size tests

• Intel or AMD compatible processor 2.5GHz or higher
• DirectX 9 compatible graphics adapter with Pixel Shader 2.0 support or later, and graphics memory of 256 MB minimum*
• 1GB of system RAM or more - 1.5GB of free hard disk space
• Windows XP 32bit operating system with latest Service Packs and updates installed
• DirectX 9.0c December 2005 or later
• Microsoft Excel 2003 or XP for some 3DMark functionality
• Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 for some 3DMark functionality
• Microsoft DirectX 9.0c (December 2005) System Development Kit is required to run the image quality test using the reference rasterizer.

* To run the HDR/SM3.0 graphics tests, a DirectX 9 compatible graphics adapter with support for Pixel Shader 3.0, 16 bit floating point textures and 16 bit floating point blending is required. It is possible that 3DMark06 will run on PCs that do not meet the recommendations above, but the benchmark performance may be seriously affected. For example, insufficient video memory will result in texture swapping - this will cause fluctuations during the tests, reducing the reliability of the generated scores.