Dungeon Siege's unique architecture allows testing of a broad range of resources on nearly any PC system available today. The benchmark is a non-interactive demo in which the character runs through various aspects of the world. Dungeon Siege's "continuous world" technology incorporates resources from CPU, memory, and graphics during gameplay, making it a superb all-around system test for benchmarking standards.

"When Chris Taylor described Dungeon Siege's unique architecture to me, I knew it would make an excellent stress test for PC systems and graphics card," noted ExtremeTech's Loyd Case. "We worked with the Dungeon Siege team, supplying them with the main spec. They did a great job of turning that spec into a great benchmark. We'll be using it as a key component of our 3D GameGauge 3.0 benchmark."

Gamers can also benchmark their own systems by downloading the utility at:

ftp://ftp.extremetech.com/pub/extremetech/3dGraphics/DSBenchmark.EXE

Dungeon Siege is an action fantasy role-playing game featuring an immersive fully 3-D environment. The game plunges players into a continuous 3-D fantasy world on a quest to stop a mysterious evil that has been unleashed. Beginning with a single character, players can travel through the world and gather a party of up to eight characters, or choose to face the challenge alone. The action role-playing in Dungeon Siege propels players into one over-the-top battle after another as the storyline unfolds.

Dungeon Siege is available in stores now, or it can be ordered by calling Microsoft at (888) 218-5617, or on the Internet at http://shop.microsoft.com/ for an estimated retail price of $54.95 (U.S.). Dungeon Siege has an ESRB rating of "T" for Teen. For more information, please visit the official site at: