Support for 3DMark and PCMark Vantage ends next month

As Microsoft gears up to officially drop support for Windows Vista, today Futuremark also confirmed that it would be dropping support for 3DMark Vantage and PCMark Vantage on the same day. These decade old benchmarks were designed around Vista back in the day and with just 1.12 percent of users still on the OS, it is time to move on.

From the 11th of April, 3DMark Vantage and PCMark Vantage support will end. This means it will no longer be sold, no longer receive updates (outside of SystemInfo) and will no longer be guaranteed to work with Futuremark's online services. Finally, customer support will also end.

3DMark Vantage is a DirectX 10 benchmark, so it wasn't particularly relevant in today's benchmarking landscape, as everything has moved on to either DX11, DX12 or Vulkan. There are much more recent 3DMark benchmarks that can test these modern APIs.

For instance, 3DMark Time Spy is intended to test DirectX 12 performance, meanwhile Fire Strike is available for you to check how well your rig can run DirectX 11 titles. If you are a mid-range PC gamer or a laptop user, then 3DMark Sky Diver is there for you.

With PCMark Vantage now leaving, you have two alternatives for now, PCMark 7 (for Windows 7) and PCMark 8 (for Windows 8). If you have made the jump to Windows 10 already, then PCMark 10 will be coming out in the near future.

If for some reason you do ever need a legacy benchmark, like 3DMark Vantage, then you will be able to find them freely through Futuremark, though the results won't be all that relevant with today's technology.

KitGuru Says: With Microsoft dropping support for Windows Vista, it makes sense for these benchmarks to be shifted into the legacy category. Did any of you guys use 3DMark or PCMark Vantage back in the day?

 

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