25 years on, 3DMark2001's Nature test shows how far 3D graphics have come

A quarter of a century ago MadOnion released 3DMark2001 alongside Nvidia's GeForce 3, and those early DirectX shaders felt like a revelation. That period led me to work for the company after it rebranded as Futuremark, and to spend years immersed in gaming and graphics.

The first graphics test in 3DMark2001 averaged about 68,000 triangles per frame and used roughly 16 MB of textures, a serious strain on GPUs at the time. By contrast, modern titles can use two or three times as many polygons for a single vehicle in games like Forza Horizon 5, and textures now reach several hundred times the old sizes.

Draw distances and open worlds have also expanded: vistas that once served as backdrops are often explorable environments today. Other 3DMark2001 scenes show the limits of that era.

3dmark2001, geforce 3, directx shaders, madonion, futuremark, triangles, textures, gpus, forza, open worlds