Oh, they did cheat

[vampireuk]

Oh god I've been waiting for this, so Hellbinder.....what do you think of the latest release by ATI then?:D :p

ATI Technologies’ Director of PR, Chris Evenden, responded to accusations in cheating with the CATALYST drivers in order to achieve higher results in 3DMark03. The scandal broke on Friday, the 23rd of May, when Futuremark, the developer of the 3DMark03 issued a document stating that NVIDIA and ATI Technologies implemented cheats in drivers in an attempt to score better in 3DMark03 benchmark.

Anyway, the company claims it will not cheat again with the 3DMark03 and that is definitely a positive piece of information.

[digitalwanderer]

Looks like they're admitting it and dealing with it pretty straight up, methinks it's a refreshing contrast to nVidia's "avoid & deny" strategy. :p

[Hellbinder]

There are Several public statements about this. Including ones from the Software Product manager Terry Makedon. Tim Sweeney of Epic shimed in as well.

The bottom line is that What ATi did was *Optomizing* What Nvidia Did was *Cheating*. There is a vaste difference. Which if the people that ran this site had even SLIGHT technical understanding would see.

But i have come to understand that this would be asking way to much from 99% of the people around here.

[vampireuk]

and here you go denying they did this when you would openly bash people who defend NVIDIA. I smell a delightful double standard.

[Hellbinder]

Again here is what Terry Makedon Said to everyone at Rage3d. He is the ATi Software Manager.

Man Rage3D sure is a popular site these days! Thought I would pop in for a couple of points CM style!

1) I have nothing to say about what our competition has done. You guys can decide and hopefully the truth which is in front of you wont be overlooked

2) Looks like Beyond3D has already done my work for me. I quote two items. First from our guy Chris Evenden " We render the scene exactly as intended by Futuremark, in full-precision floating point. Our shaders are mathematically and functionally identical to Futuremark's and there are no visual artifacts; we simply shuffle instructions to take advantage of our architecture."

That is a very important statement you need to understand. When every CATALYST comes out and you see performance boosts, what do you think you are getting? To put it bluntly it is optimizations which make the original code run more efficient.That is how we can continually improve performance. Usually it is applicable to all situations but this one in question was in particular to 3DM (as no other games use its engine).

The second comment I would like to relate that to is from Tim Sweeney, the lead developer for the UT games. (also found on Beyond3d)

".. any code optimization performed on a function that does not change the resulting value of the function for any argument, is uncontroversially considered a valid optimization. "

That guys is exactly what we did. We optimized the code without changing the end resutl.

3) I had a few meetings today and it was decided that we back out the 3DMark optimizations. I was not in favour of this as we are not cheating nor degrading image quality. We are giving ATI users the benefit of our research on the code. Anyways it was decided that we back out the optimizations but I promise you we will continue to work to find ways of getting the percentages back!

So there you have it. A little explanation goes a long way to understand this complex industry.

As anyone who knows me from the threads will tell you, I am a straight up guy, and if ATI was up to funny business I would not be associated with them any longer.

Now get back to some gaming on your RADEON's or "no drivers for you"

PS. Althought our guy Chris promised we would back out the optimizations from 3DMark in our next CATALYST, I will only permit that if it doesnt delay our postings. You have my word we will continue to post at the feverish rate we started last year, that left our competition in our dust!

Later everyone

CM

This Mimics something he shared with the Beta Driver team in private.

This whole thing and Nvnews approach to it is the Height of Immaturity and Denial. There is no new information about this everyone has known what ATi did for many days now. This is simply one of the PR guys statements.

To make a huge deal out of this when Nvidia is Wholesale Cheating their ASSES OFF and in more than 3dmark as the evidence is Building is just INFANTILE.

[vampireuk]

Where as the way you have been acting on these boards is almost saintlike right? Save your self righteous ramblings for a message board where the user base does not know you. We on the other hand know what you are like and have read enough of your posts to know we can merrily sing teapot to kettle for hours and hours when you bring the level of sombody elses maturity into the dicussion.

[volt]

Funny because most sites call it cheating :rolleyes:

By the way, you are accusing 99% of our members of being technically inclined (whenever you post). You don't agree with ANYONE. Don't do it again, or it will be a permanent. I'm tired of your gospels and bull**** proclaims.

[Hanners]

Originally posted by vampireuk
and here you go denying they did this when you would openly bash people who defend NVIDIA. I smell a delightful double standard.

To be fair to Hellbinder, to directly compare what nVidia and ATi have done with 3DMark 2003 would be wholly inaccurate.

Personally, I count them both as cheats simply because it's a benchmark and you shouldn't mess with the code of that benchmark, however trivially. When you have people like Tim Sweeney at Epic calling it an optimisation on ATi's side though, you have to take some notice.

[Sazar]

Originally posted by Hanners
To be fair to Hellbinder, to directly compare what nVidia and ATi have done with 3DMark 2003 would be wholly inaccurate.

Personally, I count them both as cheats simply because it's a benchmark and you shouldn't mess with the code of that benchmark, however trivially. When you have people like Tim Sweeney at Epic calling it an optimisation on ATi's side though, you have to take some notice.

yes... thats the way a lot of people are viewing it..

besides... futuremark did not say either cheats but rather spelt out what was done...

in nvidia's case it was specific... in ati's case they said they would investigate further and ati itself came forth with information on what was done...

again... application specific recognition is what is in question henec it would be considered a cheat and that is why they are removing it.. :)

HB is a hot head... we all know that.. I reckon :)

I don't condone what he stated in his posts... but the quotes he posted are valid and do warrant some notice...

xbit's title is a little off IMO :)

but thats just me...

[Ratchet]

Say what you want about Hellbinder (most of which I've already said to him at R3D, in PM), but the thing about you guys doing this is you are mods and admins of this forum, you should know better than to post things like that in a forum where you know damn well it'll degenerate into nothing but a flamewar.

It's obvious to me that what you two have premeditated here was nothing more than a plan to bait Hellbinder into making some posts that would justify a banning (which failed imo, but still didn't stop you from banning him) . Really lame guys.

[vampireuk]

Ratchet care to look over his posts for the past few months? Until you do so you have no right to comment on this, we have been very tolerant with Hellbinder and he has abused the slack that we gave him.

[R.Carter]

Yeah well the mods can do whatever they want since it's their site after all.

[PreservedSwine]

Geez, what crappy way top act towards HELLBINDER- you guys really need to re-evaluate the situation. You make inflamitroy posts towards him, and when he soundly defeats your arguments, you treat him even worse? This is just sad on the part of nVnews...I sincerly hope this is not the way you act towards everyone who poses a different view.....:(

[vampireuk]

While that is kind of true that is not our attitude. We show respect to anyone who respects nvnews and the people who visit here, those who do not from me personally anyway recieve no respect as they deserve none.:cool:

care to look over his posts for the past few months?

Edit: I'm sorry what was wrong with my post? I'll quote it for you

Oh god I've been waiting for this, so Hellbinder.....what do you think of the latest release by ATI then?

Since he has spoken down to everyone on this site with his better than now attitude, I respond by digging him with a release by ATI and suddenly we are evil people trying to cause a reaction.

[creedamd]

why call him out then ban him when he speaks his opinion?? That's lame, he may not post with sugar on top, but he does give good information with source when he claims it as fact.

If you don't like someone's views why not use the IGNORE option?

I hardly thank a ban is a reasonable option for having a different view on things. You would be banning 90% of the users here. A lot of people feel the same as Hellbinder but aren't as verbal.

Lighten up..

[Sazar]

Originally posted by vampireuk
Ratchet care to look over his posts for the past few months? Until you do so you have no right to comment on this, we have been very tolerant with Hellbinder and he has abused the slack that we gave him.

true... you guys have been lenient... I know for a fact that you have been tempted to ban previously based on his posts and its contents but have not done so...

but this thread and calling hellbinder out m8.. might send the wrong signals wot ?

of course hellbinder states things he believes as being FACT on many occasions when it is no more than an opinion... but then so do a whole bunch of other people...

however... hopefully HB will tone down like he has been asked to on a few occasions in the past by the mods and the situation will be mutually defused...

[saturnotaku]

Originally posted by Ratchet
Say what you want about Hellbinder (most of which I've already said to him at R3D, in PM), but the thing about you guys doing this is you are mods and admins of this forum, you should know better than to post things like that in a forum where you know damn well it'll degenerate into nothing but a flamewar.

It's obvious to me that what you two have premeditated here was nothing more than a plan to bait Hellbinder into making some posts that would justify a banning (which failed imo, but still didn't stop you from banning him) . Really lame guys.

If this is "bait" as you ball it, who's the one who was stupid enough to take it? Perhaps had Hellbinder kept his mouth shut and said something like, "I know this is flamebait and I'm gonna stay out of it," this would have been avoided.

But nope, Mr. Holier than Thou himself needed to keep on this and continue to prove his superiority over the rest of us mortals. But to that, I shall quote some wonderful words to a tune quite appropriate for this occasion:

Nah, nah, nah, nah...nah, nah, nah, nah...hey, hey, hey...goodbye

[vampireuk]

Again I was not calling him out as a flame, I was waiting to see if he would respond after ATI released this information. If he is so insistant on flaming people for their defence of NVIDIA I think we are entitled to see his stance after this;)

Also again for anyone who wishes to complain, read his past posts before you post.

[Ratchet]

Originally posted by vampireuk
Ratchet care to look over his posts for the past few months? Until you do so you have no right to comment on this, we have been very tolerant with Hellbinder and he has abused the slack that we gave him.
I'm sure he probably deserved a banning for all the crap he's spewed over the last few months (hell, we banned him for a bit at Rage3D iirc), but my main point is this ultra-lame bait flamewar thread that you posted. You knew damn well what kind of response it would get from him, even going so far as to direct it straight at him even, and then you ban him for doing exactly what you baited him into. Again, as a mod, you should know better.

[Ratchet]

Originally posted by saturnotaku
If this is "bait" as you ball it, who's the one who was stupid enough to take it? Perhaps had Hellbinder kept his mouth shut and said something like, "I know this is flamebait and I'm gonna stay out of it," this would have been avoided.

But nope, Mr. Holier than Thou himself needed to keep on this and continue to prove his superiority over the rest of us mortals. But to that, I shall quote some wonderful words to a tune quite appropriate for this occasion:

[b]
Well, vamp directly asked for Hellbinders comments in his post, who else was going to reply?!

[McTurok]

Originally posted by Ratchet
Say what you want about Hellbinder (most of which I've already said to him at R3D, in PM), but the thing about you guys doing this is you are mods and admins of this forum, you should know better than to post things like that in a forum where you know damn well it'll degenerate into nothing but a flamewar.

It's obvious to me that what you two have premeditated here was nothing more than a plan to bait Hellbinder into making some posts that would justify a banning (which failed imo, but still didn't stop you from banning him) . Really lame guys. Honestly, I can never tell the Mod's from the regular posters over here. And I don't think that is a good thing.

Sure HB goes overboard sometimes, but from what I've read his post seems to fit the bill.

I don't see it as cheating, but I also don't see it as a good thing to do either.

[vampireuk]

Despite what you may think I did no post this as a flame bait, like I said he has been so vocal about this that I wanted to hear his side of this. Could I have phrased my post better at the start? Yes Would it have made a damn blind bit of difference? No

[saturnotaku]

Originally posted by Ratchet
Well, vamp directly asked for Hellbinders comments in his post, who else was going to reply?!

That's not the point. If I were him, I would have thought this could have been flamebait and simply said no comment. Or perhaps he could have said, "Sure, they were cheating there's no excuse for it." But no, he is so blind to his allegance that apparently no amount of evidence contrary to his own ideas will convince him otherwise. I truly fear for his offspring and anyone who has had to deal with him outside of the Internet.

[PreservedSwine]

Originally posted by vampireuk
Despite what you may think I did no post this as a flame bait, like I said he has been so vocal about this that I wanted to hear his side of this. Could I have phrased my post better at the start? Yes Would it have made a damn blind bit of difference? No

If it was for HB, why not send it in a PM? And give HB some credit, he's the first guy to admit when he's wrong....

[McTurok]

Originally posted by vampireuk
Despite what you may think I did no post this as a flame bait, like I said he has been so vocal about this that I wanted to hear his side of this. Could I have phrased my post better at the start? Yes Would it have made a damn blind bit of difference? No I'll bet you $25.00 you were all giddy inside and just couldn't wait to hit that submit button though. I know I'm right on this one.;)