Remember when 3DMark impressed?

Any PC enthusiast in the early 2000’s knows of Futuremark’s 3DMarks benchmarking suite. It was the de facto standard that all video manufacturers measured performance with. They even went as far as to implement driver cheats just to come out of ahead.

Those days are long gone though.

I used to be excited for 3DMark releases because they used to give a glimpse to what was possible with real-time graphics. Nowadays? They’re far less impressive. Crytek and Epic Games real-time tech demos offer more sizzle and more importantly: tangibility.