3DMark2001 is a relic from the golden age of PC 3D gaming

Graphics cards (i.e. GPUs) are mind bogglingly more powerful now than 20 years ago, however I found the late 90’s and early 2000’s era to be a far more interesting period of graphics history to live through.

Going hand in hand with this period of furious innovation and experimental in 3D graphics was the benchmarking software.

Certainly you could and should run your Quake time demo, along with Unreal Tournament and other era appropriate games. However every gamer at the time was likely also familiar with the 3DMark series of benchmarks.

These were preceded by the Final Reality benchmark, but it was with 3DMark that this series hit it’s stride.

If you watch (or have already seen) the demo above I hope you’ll twig The Matrix reference and the Max Payne vibe.

This is due to 3DMark being created by Remedy, formed by a group of demo scene developers who then went on to create Max Payne, Alan Wake and Control. All graphical powerhouses of games.

Perhaps this is why the obvious joy of playing with the sheer raw power graphics cards of the day offer is obvious when watching the 3DMark benchmarks.

The benchmark element is almost a side-benefit of a series of explorations of the new gaming worlds that were then just becoming possible to create on computers of the era.