uhoh....return of the "cheating" drivers

[josiahsuarez]

http://en.expreview.com/2008/08/26/ati-officially-optimize-catalyst-for-furmark-making-it-run-slower/
AMD released Catalyst 8.8 a week ago, and according to our test result, some DirectX game title have a big improvement, but in Furmark test the driver shows up a negative result…FPS lower a lot, and GPU temperature also lowered. But things did not happen in OpenGL title Quake War.

After we posted HD 4870 PCS+ issue check, many of you give valuable comments, thank you. Our reader Kazarang hinted that if rename furmark.exe to other stuff, then Furmark will become normal again.

I wonder how they achieved the boost in those DX games....

[PeterJensen]

ehhh thats an old bug....

[Monolyth]

I wonder how they achieved the boost in those DX games....

If you don't "see" a change in the quality of your game who cares? Futuremark is not a game.

[DansFace]

Cheating drivers? give me a break...

So a race car driver would be cheating if he add some more boost to his motor but then popped all 4 of his tires?

It's a driver bug obviously

[v3rninater]

Seriously cheating drivers, and one source!??! Enough already, it's a dead donkey that is sooo beaten by now, it's a bloody pulp of amalgamated non-sense. Leave it alone, let it die by itself plzkthxbainowleave!!!!11oijs1one

[Ghola]

Clear! **jolt** 1 2 3 4 Clear **jolt** , It lives!!!! :argue:

[CaptNKILL]

If you don't "see" a change in the quality of your game who cares? Futuremark is not a game.

QFT

The only time I've seen something I'd call "cheating" was when drivers were cutting things out of scenes in 3dmark a few years ago. If you moved the camera from its normal position there were severe artifacts and missing objects outside the normal viewing area. It'd boost the score but it was a tweak that could only possibly work in a benchmark that was "on rails" so it was artificially making the card look faster than others.

I don't remember if this was nvidia or ati.

In games, anything that doesn't decrease image quality but DOES increase performance is called an optimization. Not a cheat.

[ViN86]

QFT

The only time I've seen something I'd call "cheating" was when drivers were cutting things out of scenes in 3dmark a few years ago. If you moved the camera from its normal position there were severe artifacts and missing objects outside the normal viewing area. It'd boost the score but it was a tweak that could only possibly work in a benchmark that was "on rails" so it was artificially making the card look faster than others.

I don't remember if this was nvidia or ati.

In games, anything that doesn't decrease image quality but DOES increase performance is called an optimization. Not a cheat.

+1

[CaptNKILL]

An example of a cheat in a game would be some sort of transparent video layer that went over games and ran at 999fps so that fraps would always report perfect framerates...

No one has done this yet as far as I know... :p

[mailman2]

Its not Futuremark, it's FURMARK. You guys need to slow down and READ :)

[CaptNKILL]

Its not Futuremark, it's FURMARK. You guys need to slow down and READ :)
Monolyth was the only one that mentioned futuremark.

Maybe "You guys" need to slow down and read. :lol:

[crainger]

Us guys who live in our parents basements and only play consoles games can't tell mailman2 what to do CaptN. We need to recognise his ahsomeness.

[nekrosoft13]

Cheating drivers? give me a break...

So a race car driver would be cheating if he add some more boost to his motor but then popped all 4 of his tires?

It's a driver bug obviously

actually to pretty much all race rules (nascar, f1, rally, etc...) yes he would be cheating ;)

in official racing is the skill of the driver that wins the race, not how many horses you have

[Monolyth]

Its not Futuremark, it's FURMARK. You guys need to slow down and READ :)

Benchmarks are not games. There happy?

[duffy_chucky]

http://en.expreview.com/2008/08/26/ati-officially-optimize-catalyst-for-furmark-making-it-run-slower/
I wonder how they achieved the boost in those DX games....



i seriously hope ATI isn't cheating with furmark, in having a lower score.

/youhavebug

[duffy_chucky]

i have the 8.56 beta drivers. and yes, there is a clock frequency failure so i need to set manually 630mhz in CCC for having my gpu working at fullspeed.
It stay @500mhz otherwise.

I don't know for official drivers, but if it's the same , i think guys didn't even verify the clock of their card. cause is very simply to explain ...

[nekrosoft13]

actually that is clever they made it run slower to report lower temps

[crainger]

Cheating at temps! A whole new low. ::(:

[Heinz68]

i have the 8.56 beta drivers. and yes, there is a clock frequency failure so i need to set manually 630mhz in CCC for having my gpu working at fullspeed.
It stay @500mhz otherwise.

I don't know for official drivers, but if it's the same , i think guys didn't even verify the clock of their card. cause is very simply to explain ...
I'm not sure what are you talking about.
What card do you have? On the 4870 the 500MHz is 2D speed I believe on 4850 it's the same.
On FurBench the card goes automatically to 3D GPU Core Clock. No need to set anything.
Expreview sure did not report such problem, look at the GPU-Z pictures (http://en.expreview.com/2008/08/26/ati-officially-optimize-catalyst-for-furmark-making-it-run-slower/).
Where did you get the "8.56 beta drivers"? I can't find them anywhere.

[duffy_chucky]

I'm not sure what are you talking about.
What card do you have? On the 4870 the 500MHz is 2D speed I believe on 4850 it's the same.
On FurBench the card goes automatically to 3D GPU Core Clock. No need to set anything.
Expreview sure did not report such problem, look at the GPU-Z pictures (http://en.expreview.com/2008/08/26/ati-officially-optimize-catalyst-for-furmark-making-it-run-slower/).
Where did you get the "8.56 beta drivers"? I can't find them anywhere.

its driver packaging version = 8.54-080805n. 05 august 2008
beta drivers referenced as 8.7. but i think it's more recent than official 8.8