3DMark Vantage will need a Ninja PC

THE WORLD+dog awaits the release of 3DMark Vantage, the next-generation benchmark upon which millions of computer users rely on to see what kind of performance they can expect.

To kick-off the marketing and technology spiel, Yougamers came up with a new revision of Game-O-Meter. This test checks your system for possible problems in running the desired application, mostly in the range of all components of decent speed.

The development of 3DMark Next, or 3DMark Vantage is now drawing to its final moments, with the latest step being defining the system requirements.

So, the system required to run 3DMark Vantage is following - starting with minimum one:

X86/x64 single-core processor with SSE2 support - Athlon 64 2800+ and Pentium 4 Prescott are bare minimum here.
Fully D3D10/SM4.0 compliant graphics card, 256MB - entry-level GeForce 8 or Radeon HD 2000. Expect FPM (frames per minute) if you own these boards.
1024MB RAM - nothing unreasonable here, 1GB of memory is a very bare minimum for Vista
2GB Free Disk Space - in case swap file goes crazy + the installation files themselves
Windows Vista (Server Editions not supported) - With DX10, sadly mandatory Vista comes along. Let's hope MS can fix the OS with SP1, even though... glass is either half-full or half-empty. And we do advise you to have a dual-boot.

In case of recommended system, guys went a bit more in depth:

Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 or equivalent AMD CPU - we would add or equivalent Intel CPU, since most of users buys lower spec CPUs and overclocks them to heavens' high. In case of AMD, play around with HyperTransport and overclocking, you do need 2.4-2.6 GHz clock speed for your dual-core CPU.
Fully D3D10/SM4.0 compliant graphics card, 512MB - nothing earth shattering here. You need 2900XT, 8800GTS with 640MB. New 8800GT and 38x0 are expected to do just fine.
2048MB RAM
2GB Free Disk Space - same as above.
Windows Vista (Server Editions not supported) - same comment as minimum spec applies.

No doubt a story about 3DMark Vantage or PC Mark will bring another avalanche of "canned benchmarks" e-mails in my in-box, but when it comes to synthetic vs. real-world, can anyone with reasonable logic dispute the need for existence of the two?

When you buy a car magazine, you'll read the impressions of test drivers about the car they've drove -but if publication is any good, they will have test on a race track or a closed course, which has specific

3DMark, PCMark, Everest, SiSoft Sandra, SPEC - the performance in these tests is important. Whether 3DMark Vantage turns out to be Hungaroring/Monte Carlo or Monza/Spa, remains to be seen - All we see is a lot of curves ahead