Futuremark to Launch Latest 3DMark on February 4th

The wait has been long, but Futuremark has finally announced a release date for its latest 3DMark benchmark: February 4th. Unlike previous 3DMarks, this one foregoes a suffix - it's not "3DMark 13", but simply "3DMark". This simplification might be due to the fact that for the first time, this software isn't exclusive to Windows. Instead, Futuremark will be offering the exact same suite for Windows RT, Android and iOS - the release for these versions will come after the Windows one, however.

We've already seen quite a bit revealed about Futuremark's latest benchmark up to this point, so instead of sending along even more in-benchmark screenshots, the company has given us a preview of the results pages we can expect to see - and boy, there are some great additions. To start, have a look at the basic overview page:

What you might notice are the graphs to the right - totally new to this version. But we're not only dealing with FPS results here, but GPU and CPU temperatures as well. Yes - 3DMark can finally detect and monitor temperatures so that you can see which part of a given benchmark pushes your gear the hardest. This kind of information could also help serious overclockers achieve even greater scores, as this level of detail simply wasn't available before in such an accessible way.

When you click the "Details" box under any one of the tests, you'll see a page like this:

Here, the graph expands with system information strewn underneath it. Futuremark notes that this graph is totally interactive - you can zoom in / out just fine. In the top-right, you can see that you can quickly change the current test that's being displayed so that you don't first need to go back to the overview page.

As someone who does a fair share of benchmarking, I'd have to say that these result pages are one of the things I'm looking forward to most with Futuremark's latest 3DMark offering. The level of detail can really help us understand which part of the test is the most demanding - especially useful if you want to loop a particular test in order to stress-test a GPU or CPU for temperature and stability reasons.

Despite the fact that the launch is right around the corner, Futuremark is keeping mum on pricing at the moment. We'd assume it would share the $20 price tag of the previous versions, but it's hard to settle on that given the cross-platform nature of the benchmark. Only a few more days to find out for sure.