Ever since Intel laid to rest it's Netburst architecture, AMD has only been able to look back and reminisce about a time when the Sunnyvale chip maker held the performance crown the way a washed up athlete remembers his days as an all-star on the high school football team. We're not saying AMD is washed up by any means, it just hasn't been able to dominate the benchmarks chart. The company's upcoming Bulldozer could change all that, especially if leaked benchmarks turn out to be legit.

If you're wondering which is the faster videocard, Nvidia's GeForce GTX 580 or AMD's Radeon HD 6970, don't take this as the end-all-be-all. But for what it's worth, Nvidia's crown jewel came out ahead of AMD's upcoming Cayman part in the newly released 3DMark 11 benchmark during Fudzilla's limited round of tests.

Fudzilla said the HD 6970 scored lower than 8,000 at entry settings while the GTX 580 posted 8700 in the same test. The GTX 570 scored just above 8,000.

At the performance level, AMD's Cayman card posted a score around 5,300, while the GTX 580 scored a little below 6,000 and the GTX 570 managed 5,250. Things leveled out a little bit at the Extreme settings, with the HD 6970 posting 1,800, while the GTX 580 scored 1,950.

Futuremark, the Finland-based maker of several popular benchmarking tools, today announced that 3DMark 11 will be released on November 30, 2010, with pre-orders beginning today.

The free version includes the Performance PC benchmark preset, an audio/visual demo fixed at 720p, the ability to browser, search, and compare results online, and store one result online.

For $20, the Advanced Edition ups the ante with Entry-level and Extreme PC benchmark presets, custom benchmark settings, custom resolutions for the audio/visual demo, benchmark looping to test stability, unlimited online results storage, hide results from public view, advert-free online service, and offline result management.

3DMark is largely a graphics card benchmarking utility with the upcoming release putting a heavy focus on DirectX 11, including tessellation and volumetric lighting created with DX11.

Teaser preview below.

Futuremark, makers of the popular 3DMark and PCMark benchmarks (as well as others) is offering up a glimpse of its upcoming 3DMark 11 software by releasing a new trailer called "High Temple."

The High Temple tech demo shows advanced tessellation and lighting effects rendered in real-time by 3DMark 11's native DirectX 11 engine, Futuremark says. It's a 1080p trailer set deep inside a jungle and using volumetric lighting to illuminate the area.

"The High Temple tech demo showcases the amazing real-time graphics that are possible today using readily available DirectX 11 hardware," said Jukka Mäkinen, Futuremark CEO. "With 3DMark 11 releasing later this year and an ever increasing number of games using DirectX 11 there is a lot to look foward to for PC gamers."

Like previous 3DMark versions, Futuremark plans to release a free version allowing unlimited runs, while the full version will unlock advanced options.

View the demo below: