Happy Birthday 3Dmark. Over the last decade and a half you've had us cursing our monitors, burning out graphics cards and opening our bedroom windows in the dead of winter to try and get a handful of extra points in your benchmarks, just so we can impress people on the internet.

Back in 1998 when Windows 98 was first launched and DirectX6 was offering us the best gaming visuals out there, 3Dmark99 was launched by Futuremark – then called MadOnion.com – and since that day we've been using it to see just how capable our rig really is – even if often, the visuals found within that benchmark were better than anything we could expect in games for a couple of years.

This is what was the absolute cutting edge back in 1998: [yframe url='http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuK5UhnRLTU']

It was a few years though until ol' Jon boy got his first look at 3Dmark. I was introduced to it by a friend around the release of 3Dmark 2001. My god did that car chase blow me away and that Dragothic fly by? Oof.

Man this was 3D printed? The model industry is in so much trouble

To celebrate how far its come, Futuremark is now offering up a limited edition Firestrike monster statue as a prize for one randomly selected voter on its latest forum competition: which was your favourite 3Dmark?

KitGuru Says: I really should enter this. I could paint that Firestrike model up real nice. Don't believe me? Check this out. 

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