We've seen 3Dmark Vantage and we can say it looks nice. Some of the games and characters look really cartoon-like and non-realistic, but yet again you get a nice fat score that is easy to compare with the other cards.

You need to get some beta, non-WHQL drivers for both Nvidia and ATI, and we couldn't help noticing that Sapphire actually got its banners on one of the speed boats in the Nash test.

The disappointing thing is the lack of a DirectX 10.1 test, and you can bet that Nvidia had a lot to do with it. The equation is simple: Nvidia would score zero on that test as all Geforce 8 and 9 cards support DirectX 10 and not 10.1.

DirectX 10.1 is ATI’s thing and unlike Nvidia, ATI doesn’t really like spending money to the get job done, or it just can't afford to do so; hence, we failed to see a DirectX 10.1 test in 3Dmark Vantage. Isn’t 3Dmark the next generation supposed to support the latest greatest marchitecture, including just released DirectX 10.1? We wonder...

If Nvidia had DirectX 10.1 hardware and ATI didn’t I could bet that it would be part of the new 3Dmark Vantage. It will be interesting to ask Futuremark, the guys behind this handsome benchmark, why they didn’t include the DirectX 10.1 support. Stay tuned; there will be more.