I just had the same problem on my Win 7 32-bit machine. Solved it by updating to ATI Catalyst 10.5 (not sure for nvidia) and re-installing DirectX 9.0c. Rebooted and the benchmark now runs fine.
i have an ASUS g73jh laptop with win7 premium 64bit ati radeon 5870. i can't seem to get the benchmark to run. i installed the direct x 9. ive updated my bios to ver 209. i am almost certain i have the latest version of my graphics card driver. last time i tryed to install 10.6 i ran into problems but when i did a scan to see if i could even upgrade my pc said i have the latest version. so i am completely stumped as to why i cannot run this benchmark.