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Image Quality
Numbers of Raw Speed only tell so much. A very important aspect in benchmarking 3D Acceleration is Image Quality. 3DMark has several Image Quality tests built in that show how the 3D Accelerators perform in real-life game scenarios and in theoretical worst case scenarios. The Image Quality test has a separate section in a Database. If you have run the Image Quality tests in 3DMark, you will see thumbnails of the images here. The leftmost column always has the "Reference Images" visible.
When you double-click on a thumbnail, the image will be opened up in "Image Viewer", which is a powerful tool for comparing reference images and 3D Accelerated Images.
If you prefer to use some other image viewer than the one built into Result Browser, you can do that by:
- Right-clicking on a thumbnail and selecting "Open"
- Right-clicking on a thumbnail and selecting "Copy" and then opening up a picture editor, such as Adobe Photoshop and selecting "Paste".
- Double-click on a thumbnail and select "File \ Save As..." to save the image in .bmp format.
- Loading the .bmp file from the disk to your image viewer. The IQ pictures have been saved to a "Quality" folder in the same place as you saved the project file to. NOTE: You must save the project or the database file before the images will be transferred to a folder on your computer.
Adobe Photoshop is a trademark of Adobe Systems Inc. Windows is a trademark of Microsoft Corporation.
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Reference Images
3DMark ships with "Reference Images" that have been rendered with Direct3D Software. They are not ment to be perfect images, but represent a common reference point. For a more detailed description of the Reference Images, please see 3DMark Help.
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Using Image Viewer
After double-clicking on a thumbnail, you will be opened up to the Image Viewer. Some of the features in the Image Viewer are:
- You can zoom in, pan around and overlay images.
- You can quickly jump back-and-forth between a 3D Accelerated image and the Reference Image.
- If you have several images open, their Zoom and Panning are locked so you can easily compare the exact same position of the images.
Generic usage:
Moving and Panning: To move around the image, click somewhere picture area. You will notice that your mouse pointer has changed to a hand (
) . Now hold the left mouse button and drag the mouse.You can also use the horizontal and vertical scrollbars or click on the thumbnail.
Zooming: You can use the Zoom menu or the keyboard shortcuts ( + and - keys). The maximum zoom ratio for the Theoretical Image Quality pictures is 700% and 400% for the Game Scenes. The maximum zoom ratio depends
Changing the Image: You can select a different Project or a different Test from the Menus. Pressing the space bar will swap you back and forth between a selected project and the Reference Image.
Menus options:
File
- Save As: Saves the current image in .bmp format
- Open in Default Viewer: Opens the current image in your default .bmp viewer
- Close: Closes the current Image Viewer window
- Close All: Closes all Image Viewer windows.
Edit
- Copy: Copies the current image to the clipboard. You can paste it to a text editor or an image processing program
- Paste Special - Xor: Performs an "Exclusive Or" bit operation with the currently open image against the image in the clipboard.
- Paste Special: And: Performs an "And"" bit operation
NOTE: With the Copy & Paste Special operators you are able to compare different 3D Acclerated images against each other on a bit-level. The normal "Compare" menu options always use the Reference Images.
View:
- Thumbnail: Enables or disables the Settings and Thumbnail area above the images.
- Swap: Changes the current Project to the "Reference Image". Pressing space again or selecting Swap again will restore it to the original picture.
Compare:
- Restore Image: Will refresh the Image Viewer window with the original Image Quality test data that you have performed. This is useful when you want to get a clean start when doing XOR & AND comparisons between images.
- Compare to Reference (XOR): Performs a bit-level "exclusive or" operator that compares the current 3D Image to the
- Compare to Reference (AND)
Example results from a XOR comparision. The more black there is in the final result, the close the image was to the Reference Image.
Good XOR result
(lots of black)Bad XOR result:
Project:
- Shows a list of all project in the database. Here you can select which project's images are viewed.
Test:
- Game 1 - The Race
- Game 2 - First Person
- Subpixel Accuracy
- Mip-Mapping
- Additive Alpha Blending
- Multiplicative Alpha Blending
- Alpha Blending
- Bilinear Filtering
- Texture Resolution
For a more detailed technical descriptions what the tests actually do, please see 3DMark Help.
Zoom:
- Set %: Jumps to a selected zoom ratio.
- Zoom in: Zooms in closer in the image.
- Zoom out: Zoom out of the image.
Window:
- Set Active
- Cascade: Arranges all open Image Viewer windows in a cascading order.
- Tile: Arranges all open (minimized windows are not concidered being open) Image Viewer windows so that they fit to the desktop.