Here’s 8 minutes in nostalgic benchmark heaven, with me running 3DMark2001 on an RTX 5090 to celebrate its 25th birthday is currently attracting attention in the technology world.
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The 3DMark benchmark has been synonymous with PC gaming hardware for the longest time, almost ever since Remedy lent its MAX-FX engine to the very first iteration, 3DMark99, way back in 1998. But it was DirectX8 and the use of programmable shaders in its 2001 benchmark that enabled it to really showcase what PC graphics were properly capable of.
So, to celebrate 3DMark2001’s release on March 13, 2001, I thought it worth seeing what the benchmark, which would have pushed the Nvidia GeForce 3 to its very limits back at the start of the century, would look like on the most powerful consumer GPU of 25 years later.
So here’s the RTX 5090 running at 4K in the full 8 min, 17 test 3DMark 2001 benchmark.
Okay, the eagle-eyed among you might have spotted a rogue ‘SE’ in the video, which is because the only version of 3DMark2001 which is available at the moment (at least from a legitimate source) is the Second Edition version which launched the following year.
Aside from a couple of new pixel shader tests tacked on—which had no effect on the final score—and some extra CPU and GPU compatibility, the Second Edition is actually no different to the original. What I’m saying is that this still counts, okay?
Nick, who once worked for MadOnion, later Futuremark, has gone to town on testing the relative 3D graphics tests of the 2001 benchmark against today’s 3D game worlds, so do check out his far more thorough breakdown of what the tests are doing.
But for me honestly, it was surprising just how easy it was to get running; not something I actually expected 25 years after launch. Especially not after the initial error pop up which complained about my Ryzen 9 7950X not having MMX compatibility. But it still ran, begrudgingly, though wouldn’t initially allow me to change resolution.
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Strangely, disabling HDR in Windows, however, changed that sticky situation, and so, 4K 3DMark2001 it is.
I would be very surprised if a PC from 2051 is able to run today’s 3DMark Speedway test without some serious emulation. If indeed PCs are still around in any similar form 25 years from now. We may well just be back to bashing rocks together by then…
Dave has been gaming since the days of Zaxxon and Lady Bug on the Colecovision, and code books for the Commodore Vic 20 (Death Race 2000!). He built his first gaming PC at the tender age of 16, and finally finished bug-fixing the Cyrix-based platform around a year later. When he dropped it out of the window. He first started writing for Official PlayStation Magazine and Xbox World many decades ago, then moved onto PC Format full-time, then PC Gamer, TechRadar, and T3 among others. Now he’s back, writing about the nightmarish graphics card market, CPUs with more cores than sense, gaming laptops hotter than the sun, and SSDs more capacious than a Cybertruck.
Why This Matters
This development highlights the rapid pace of innovation in the technology sector.
Companies are constantly pushing boundaries in order to stay competitive.
Analysts suggest that such changes could influence future product design,
user expectations, and industry standards.
Looking Ahead
As technology continues to evolve, developments like this may shape the next
generation of digital services and consumer experiences.
Industry watchers will continue to monitor how this story develops and what
impact it may have on the broader technology landscape.