3DMark06 Quirks Confuse Us All
What's a software release without a few bugs/quirks? The recently released 3DMark 06 from Futuremark can give some misleading numbers under certain circumstances. HDR is a new feature in the synthetic benchmark, and is a feature that requires full Shader model 3.0 support. As The Inquirer explains, this fact can give some interesting results when benchmarking a card such as the Radeon X850 XT PE(SM 2.0b) against the Radeon X1600 XT(SM 3.0).
"A X1600XT card supports Shader model 3.0 while the latter cannot do HDR or Shader model 3.0 and this significantly affects the score. The card with Shader model 3.0 / HDR support will automatically gain a lot of points and end up a little bit faster than the usually much faster card."
