3DMark 11 Launches, Toting Free Edition

A little later than once planned, Futuremark's latest PC benchmarking tool 3DMark 11 launched today. You can grab the 282MB free 'Basic' edition from FileShack.

3DMark, if you weren't aware, lets you put your PC through its paces with a series of gorgeous scenes. Testing how well your 'rig' runs them, it reports back with a performance score for you to paste into your signature on Internet forums.

The Basic edition comes with several limitations, running only at medium detail in 720p and allowing only one one result to be stored online, so if you're really into performance testing, you might want to cough up $19.95 for the Advanced edition. Or $995 for the Pro edition, if you have professional needs or take benchmarks very seriously indeed.

Here's what the six tests look like. Yes, the video is supposed to be silent.