3DMark05 concentrates on measuring the performance of the DirectX 9 generation of 3D hardware using the technology of next generation games. Earlier 3DMark versions have usually been launched with the introduction of a new Microsoft DirectX version and with the introduction of a new hardware generation. This has somewhat limited how much 3DMark has utilized the new hardware features. At the time of this writing, DirectX 9 was two years old and there is now DX9 generation hardware available all the way from the very high end to value and mobile parts. 3DMark05 can therefore utilize 100%, the features of DirectX 9. In fact, DirectX 9 hardware is required for every 3DMark05 game test, resulting in the ultimate tool for DirectX 9 hardware performance comparison.

The CPU score for the the P4 660 is much higher than that of the P4 530.

The differences here are not all that great, negligible in fact, which indicates that the specific tests do not really rely on the CPU.