How did Futuremark/Madonion begin?
 

I was just curious to know how it all started.

I joined when it was Madonion[thumbup]http://www.discussworldissues.com/fo...ilies/cry1.gif.


Who had the idea and how did it grow?

When papa mad met mama onion....

Also...

http://www.futuremark.com/companyinfo/aboutus/

Thanks for end of this thread you ****.[cursing]


Shortest bloody thread everhttp://www.discussworldissues.com/fo...ilies/sad1.gif

Doesn't really say anything about what got it all started. Who started it, what ideas, what made them want to do this, etc.
When did they know they had a good idea and how did they end up transforming it into a popular benchmark, games and web forum?

Things like that. Something you can make a 45 minute TV show about. Not a paragraph.

Google Maturefurk. :)

It came to be through various ideas that culminated in a benchmark the world have never seen before. Then they did it all over again in 2001 with the benchmark many hold in the highest of regard.

To date, FM/MO has struggled/continues to struggle to maintain its 2000, 2001 success.

This is not a slam against FM/MO. Its just it seems that something has been lost in the benchmarks as they grew. The creativity that seemed abundant in early 3dmark releases like 3dmark 99 MAX, and later 2000, and 2001 seems lost. There were alot of things in the demo's that didn't show up in the tests.

To be honest after 2001 I completely lost interest in the benchmarks. I really liked the XL-R8R demo with its Abyss references. FM needs to work more pop culture parodies and nods back into it. The early stuff was rife with it.

True, that would totally increase the appeal.

I think since then, technical benchmarks that show theoretical performance have lost their value to regular users. With so many videocards, both cheap and expensive, powerful enough to play the latest games at high resolutions, there's hardly any use for a benchmark to see if your system will cut it. Besides that, there are now plenty of benchmarks with all kinds of actually existing games, rendering a theoretical benchmark even more useless.

Only if you want to benchmark that game, and only if you trust that there are no specific optimization for that game engine in the drivers. This is where FM takes the lead with their optimized driver policy so you can ensure that you are getting an apples to apples comparison. Although to be honest, it depends what type of review you are looking for - if its for a specific game, then thats fine.