Futuremark has released the latest version of what is arguably the most popular 3D and system benchmarking suite on the market. 3DMark 11 is designed to measure the performance of DirectX 11 hardware running on Windows 7 and Windows Vista; it uses a native DirectX 11 engine created in-house by the company. The benchmark includes six new benchmark tests that make extensive use of all the new features in DirectX 11 including tessellation, compute shaders, and multi-threading.
As in previous versions, your PC's performance is determined by the interactions between different hardware components, the operating system, as well as the type and amount of software running. A higher 3DMark score indicates better performance.
3DMark 11 includes a free Basic Edition which you can download directly from TechSpot. Unlike previous versions, it allows an unlimited number of benchmark runs without registration or expiry.
You can upgrade to the Advanced Edition over at 3DMark.com to unlock all presets, custom settings, benchmark looping, unlimited online results storage, offline results management, and more. We have two Advanced Edition keys for our readers: the first two users who comment on this article saying they would like a key will get one via internal PM.