It's biased towards DX9 cards since it's a DX7,8, and 9 benchmark. Not necessarily purposely designed for ATI, and I am sure older cards w/o DX9 drivers from other brands do badly as well. As far as my opinion on the benchmark as a whole, I dunno. I actually find it fun to try and tweak my system to the max and reach a new goal by overclocking my existing hardware a bit further. It's a fun diversion from time to time. That to me has value. Am I going to base my buying decision only on 3dmark03? No way. The questions I have usually are from my previous experiences:
"Did ATI ever get truly stable drivers?"
"Did NVIDIA ever get GOOD image quality?"
"Is this card going to just ****ing blow me away compared to my GF3?"
That's pretty much it. My first step in buying a card is to determine my budget. If a card runs much hotter than another one then account for aftermarket cooling needs too. Then I would go check the rage3d forums before buying any ATI card and verify its driver goodness. I would ask around for honest opinions about 2d and 3d IQ regarding nvidia cards since I have been burned badly by that before. And THEN I would look at benchmarks from all the big hardware sites and see if I could get them to converge to some meaningful decision.
I am about 99% likely to buy an ATI card next though. I have been really happy with the Radeon 7000 in my HTPC and the mobility 7500 in my notebook. And I HATE companies trying to rip off consumers. Hate it.
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