Here's 8 minutes in nostalgic benchmark heaven, with me running 3DMark2001 on an RTX 5090 to celebrate its 25th birthday

The 3DMark benchmark has been synonymous with PC gaming hardware for the longest time, almost ever since Remedy lent its MAX-FX engine to the very first iteration, 3DMark99, way back in 1998. But it was DirectX8 and the use of programmable shaders in its 2001 benchmark that enabled it to really showcase what PC graphics were properly capable of.

So, to celebrate 3DMark2001's release on March 13, 2001, I thought it worth seeing what the benchmark, which would have pushed the Nvidia GeForce 3 to its very limits back at the start of the century, would look like on the most powerful consumer GPU of 25 years later.

So here's the RTX 5090 running at 4K in the full 8 min, 17 test 3DMark 2001 benchmark.

Okay, the eagle-eyed among you might have spotted a rogue 'SE' in the video, which is because the only version of 3DMark2001 which is available at the moment (at least from a legitimate source) is the Second Edition version which launched the following year.

Aside from a couple of new pixel shader tests tacked on—which had no effect on the final score—and some extra CPU and GPU compatibility, the Second Edition is actually no different to the original. What I'm saying is that this still counts, okay?

Nick, who once worked for MadOnion, later Futuremark, has gone to town on testing the relative 3D graphics tests of the 2001 benchmark against today's 3D game worlds, so do check out his far more thorough breakdown of what the tests are doing.

But for me honestly, it was surprising just how easy it was to get running; not something I actually expected 25 years after launch. Especially not after the initial error pop up which complained about my Ryzen 9 7950X not having MMX compatibility. But it still ran, begrudgingly, though wouldn't initially allow me to change resolution.

Strangely, disabling HDR in Windows, however, changed that sticky situation, and so, 4K 3DMark2001 it is.

I would be very surprised if a PC from 2051 is able to run today's 3DMark Speedway test without some serious emulation. If indeed PCs are still around in any similar form 25 years from now. We may well just be back to bashing rocks together by then...

Best graphics card 2026

1. Best overall: AMD Radeon RX 9070

2. Best value: AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT 16 GB

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4. Best mid-range: Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 Ti

5. Best high-end: Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090

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