In the world of hardware, points make prizes. Chipmakers pile on the megahurtz to woo potential punters. The bigger the hard disk, the more the buyer may be tempted and the faster the system the more desirable it appears.
So, performance tests are important. The hardware sites pull parts apart to see how they work and how fast they are. And the traditionally-thick computer magazines run performance tests to select the kit they"ll recommend for their readers.
In this competitive arena extra performance squeezed out of components can make the difference between an "award-winning" system and an also-ran.
Testers devise their own benchmarks to run on systems and various different components, but in the case of 3D graphics cards, 3D Mark from www.madonion.com is king.
Virtually all graphics card testers rely on this suite of tests to compare the performance of competing cards. And the graphics card makers are well aware of this.