NVIDIA's offical response to Futuremark

[jAkUp]

Originally posted by Nv40
heck.. i bought Ravenshield
and many other games ,when they kick ass they deserve my money

ahh ravenshield... a perfect example of the buggy state games are in. dont get me wrong, right now this is my favorite game, but the bugs in the shipped product are really really bad... here are some examples

trigger lag- play an online game... click the mouse hard so you can actually hear the *click* you will hear the click... then the shot... the trigger lag is horrible. this has been tested on dsl and cable. even with a ping of 20.

the ready up bug- ok how did this slip by QA??!!! it has been fixed in the latest patch... but it took them 3 months! a bug that should of never been there

the infinite loop bugs- and how did this slip by??? this game was unplayable for me out of the box for this... it required me to go to the official message board to figure out how to fix it... why was this not in the manual or readme??? ridiculous... at least the latest patch fixed this also

cheating- the cheating is really really bad... and ubi doesnt seem to give a **** about it.

there are plenty more bugs too.

[R.Carter]

Originally posted by vampireuk
so if NVIDIA brought the nv40 out and it smoked all the competition you would not buy that because of the bussiness ethics of the company?
ABSOLUTELTY! I know that I for one will never buy anything from Nvidia, ever! Nor will I recommend any Nvidia products to anyone ever again. Nothing!

I don't care that much about FPS to actually have any dealing with weasles if I can help it. I will never trust Nvidia and I'm not in the habit of dealing with people or companies that I can't trust.

Originally posted by vampireuk
True they may not be right at times but remember they are in this soley for money.

As you say, it's all about making money and I'm not giving Nvidia anymore of my money EVERY AGAIN!

:fu:

Futuremark backs off after apparent Nvidia scarification (http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=9810).

[digitalwanderer]

I was reading B3D and one of the smarter fellas recomended deleting all your 3dm2k3 scores from the orb. Not only will it make 3dm2k3 less effective, but it'll send a message to FM.

I just deleted all mine, I recomend this course of action to anyone who is displeased with the joint announcement yesterday.

[creedamd]

Originally posted by digitalwanderer
I was reading B3D and one of the smarter fellas recomended deleting all your 3dm2k3 scores from the orb. Not only will it make 3dm2k3 less effective, but it'll send a message to FM.

I just deleted all mine, I recomend this course of action to anyone who is displeased with the joint announcement yesterday.

NO! I can't do that! What if I forget how long my pen0s is? What will I use to reference?? Oh noes:(

[Rowen]

This, plus the fact that console games are much harder to pirate, due to proprietary mediums and the complex hardware modding required to play a pirated game that not only could be risky, but voids your warranty.

Are you sure? PSX, PS2 and Xbox... all of them have lots of pirated games... I think that only Game Cube owners can't have pirated games (i never saw it for GC)...

I don't backup ATI too, I'm not 100% sure they doesn' t cheat too (they tried to cheat too when they needed some time ago). I never liked the "what's new" of the drivers telling "XXX% increase in test X of 3DMark2K3", "XXX% more fps in game X of 3Dmark2K3", etc...

Cheating is about getting caught or not :)

But it's what I said before... HL2, DoomIII, etc... are games. 3DMark isn't a game... (well for those who fight for the best score, it can be... but it's not the same "game"), as long as a driver from any company goes ok with stability, bug fixes and performance (without taking on image quality to get performance), it's ok for me.

[digitalwanderer]

Originally posted by creedamd
NO! I can't do that! What if I forget how long my pen0s is? What will I use to reference?? Oh noes:(
Hey, I said delete your 3dm2k3 scores!

I worked me nuggers off on some of me 3dm2k1se scores, I watched Bubbles go from a 2800 to 10,440 on that damned benchmark and I ain't heard any complaints about IT yet....I'm leaving me pre-3dm2k3 stuff, I'm just pissed about 3dm2k3 right now. :mad:

[hithere]

Nvidia's laughing right now, knowing that some folks at Futuremark actually believe they are "hand in hand." Nvidia knows full well that Futuremark's days as a benchmark are numbered; the number of places that review cards with this benchmark is going to decline sharply in the next few days. Nvidia got what they wanted, all they had to do was destroy a few businesses and their own integrity to get it.

[creedamd]

Originally posted by digitalwanderer
Hey, I said delete your 3dm2k3 scores!

I worked me nuggers off on some of me 3dm2k1se scores, I watched Bubbles go from a 2800 to 10,440 on that damned benchmark and I ain't heard any complaints about IT yet....I'm leaving me pre-3dm2k3 stuff, I'm just pissed about 3dm2k3 right now. :mad:

I wouldn't be mad at 3dmark, they had to do what they had to do. I believe they have something else up their sleeve that will shine the true light on Nvidia. They just couldn't say it the way it was.

They still say that it was an "invalid optimization" that is cheating.

I don't blame FM for not wanting to face legal battles with NV. It would sink them.

[hithere]

Originally posted by Rowen
But it's what I said before... HL2, DoomIII, etc... are games. 3DMark isn't a game... (well for those who fight for the best score, it can be... but it's not the same "game"), as long as a driver from any company goes ok with stability, bug fixes and performance (without taking on image quality to get performance), it's ok for me.

I've got a pair of 12W3 subwoofer's in my car I'm planning on selling to a guy down the street. Actually, they're 12W0's, which aren't as good AFAIC...but the guy I'm selling them to won't know the difference, they aren't labelled. It's okay that I'm lying to him, because it's all about the music, really, and in some applications the 12W0's are a better match, like in low power situations.

[Solomon]

Strong arm tactics. You got to love it!

Nvidia's Money vs Futuremark's Money = Nvidia Wins every Time!

Regards,
D. Solomon Jr.
*********.com

[Quinn1981]

I don't think it would be really possible for nVidia to sue Futuremark and shut them down. If anything, Futuremark has more right to sue them by making their application useless with cheating and a big helping of slander to go along with it. That would make a good case. Unless they know about some dirty business Futuremark has been up to, they have nothing IMO. I think they just came to an agreement that they needed each other to keep the money coming in. I think Futuremark holds more power over nVidia than most people think. It looks like a symbiotic relationship to me.

[DivotMaker]

Originally posted by jAkUp
ea and ea sports are going down the drain...

I am not sure where you are getting your information, but EA Sports dominates the top 5 positions in PC Sports game sales. They also dominate the console sports sales charts as well. Now, I will grant you that PC sales are not nearly as good as console sales, but I think this is primarily true throughout the industry with a few exceptions.

EA nor EA Sports are going anywhere but up. The last fiscal quarter, EA had it's first ever $ Billion revenue quarter. Largely fueled by Madden 2003, The Sims, BF 1942, MOHAA, etc.

[Morrow]

Originally posted by digitalwanderer
I was reading B3D and one of the smarter fellas recomended deleting all your 3dm2k3 scores from the orb. Not only will it make 3dm2k3 less effective, but it'll send a message to FM.

I just deleted all mine, I recomend this course of action to anyone who is displeased with the joint announcement yesterday.

You are displeased of what exactly? Displeased that FM now recognizes optimizations as being the thing to do because optimizations have played a very important part in the CPU sector (SSE2 anyone?).

Or are you displeased that FM now enters the realm of real-world performance, leaving the synthetic world of pseudo game-benchmarking?

What do you prefer: A benchmark which indicates how your graphiccard will perform for example in Doom3 or HL2 or a benchmark which indicates how your graphiccard will never perform since the bench does makes use of an graphic engine which is not feasible enough to be used anytime in real game?

[Solomon]

Originally posted by Quinn1981
I don't think it would be really possible for nVidia to sue Futuremark and shut them down. If anything, Futuremark has more right to sue them by making their application useless with cheating and a big helping of slander to go along with it. That would make a good case. Unless they know about some dirty business Futuremark has been up to, they have nothing IMO. I think they just came to an agreement that they needed each other to keep the money coming in. I think Futuremark holds more power over nVidia than most people think. It looks like a symbiotic relationship to me.

Apparently you never been to court before. I can tell you straight out it's really not a "legal" thing but, "How much money can you bring to the table" They will drag it out as long as possible. It's an endurance thing.. It sucks... :(

Regards,
D. Solomon Jr.
*********.com

[Solomon]

Originally posted by Morrow
You are displeased of what exactly? Displeased that FM now recognizes optimizations as being the thing to do because optimizations have played a very important part in the CPU sector (SSE2 anyone?).

Or are you displeased that FM now enters the realm of real-world performance, leaving the synthetic world of pseudo game-benchmarking?

What do you prefer: A benchmark which indicates how your graphiccard will perform for example in Doom3 or HL2 or a benchmark which indicates how your graphiccard will never perform since the bench does makes use of an graphic engine which is not feasible enough to be used anytime in real game?

WoW! Apparently you haven't heard of the "Clip Plane" issue in 3DMark03 with the 44.03 drivers huh? Hehehe.

Regards,
D. Solomon Jr.
*********.com

[DivotMaker]

Originally posted by SurfMonkey
From Catalyst Maker over @ Rage3D...

I don't think that's a very good response, they're basically saying we endorse NVidia's method too and just to prove we are no better than they are we will devote time and money into ensuring the consumer and the industry both suffer.

:rolleyes:

I think if you put yourself in Terry's shoes, you would likely be as frustrated and angry as he is. I can understand how he feels and i think if you asked him today, he would temper his remarks somewhat and respond a tad less emotionally. I don't know him well, but he seems like a tremendous person and a great asset to ATI and the ATI community.

Keep your chin up Terry!

[R.Carter]

Originally posted by Morrow
What do you prefer: A benchmark which indicates how your graphiccard will perform for example in Doom3 or HL2 or a benchmark which indicates how your graphiccard will never perform since the bench does makes use of an graphic engine which is not feasible enough to be used anytime in real game?

Heh! If someone really cared about Doom III or HalfLife 2 or other "real world" applications then I would think it's best to test using those specific applications, right?

If you only care about how good the architecture itself is, then I'd use an application that hasn't been optimized. Of course, that isn't representative of "real world", but then who cares?

Not everything is going to be optimized and if the architecture is THAT sensitive (24%) to lack of optimizations then people might be interested in know that fact before they buy.

[UDawg]

Originally posted by Ady
If you don't understand it then go away.

It's his and many others choice to boycott a company due to bad ethics or any other reason. Ones choice is not yours to judge.

Go away? :rolleyes: Nice thing to say, compared to someone who wants a whole company do go belly up. This is why I do stay away because of flaming children like your self.

Ones choice is not yours to judge.

I just did judge it. ;)

BTW boycotts for the most part don't work. Good luck.

[Zenikase]

Originally posted by Neural
Forgot something, I agree with most of what you say about the CPU/GPU achitectures and drivers, but i dont know if microsoft develops the drivers for different CPUs, I could be wrong but I would have thought that their makers made the drivers, submit for WHQL, and are then implemented in the OS. Not all CPUs are natively supported by a standard driver, I had to get a driver update from windows update for my barton in order to take advantage of the extra L2 cache. Windows update also offers some older GPU drivers, but they dont try to keep up with the ever changing GPU drivers.

If there are such driver updates for Windows, then they are simply for cases like that where the features of newer CPUs are not recognized and enabled natively by the OS. I don't know who creates these drivers either, but there's no way a CPU manufacturer can cheat in the way video card companies do, since there's no compiler present in the driver. The CPU will do its work to the best of its ability based on the application's code, the compiler that was used to make that application, and the computational efficiency of the CPU.

[Quinn1981]

Originally posted by Solomon
Apparently you never been to court before. I can tell you straight out it's really not a "legal" thing but, "How much money can you bring to the table" They will drag it out as long as possible. It's an endurance thing.. It sucks... :(

Regards,
D. Solomon Jr.
*********.com
I think it's more about how far your pricey lawyers are willing to go. I know about throwing money around and dragging crap out, but Futuremark also has friends that might help them out and could have valid points that could speed up a trial and shut nVidia's people up. It's not just a money game in court from my view. There are a lot of companies that would like to keep Futuremark around. There's a lot of interest that equals money with Futuremark. I think that's why we are seeing a little settlement like this. They know they are better off making themselves look bad for now so they can do better in the future. It would be silly for Futuremark to say all those things in the PDF if they didn't know it could lead to nVidia coming to the offering table. Or at least I think so.

[Morrow]

Originally posted by Solomon
WoW! Apparently you haven't heard of the "Clip Plane" issue in 3DMark03 with the 44.03 drivers huh? Hehehe.

nope, I didn't miss both the extremetech and the FM audit report but unfortunately most people here seem to miss the big picture about this joint statement and what it means for the future:

When 3dmark03 was released, nvidia had quit the beta member team because they did not agree with FM's philosophy about benchmarking "standard performance". Nvidia knows that (IQ loss-less) optimizations are an important factor for demonstrating the full power of GeForce cards. All important games (especially ID games) make full use out of those optimizations but now comes FM and released a "gaming benchmark" as they call it but only relies on standard DX code which is never used that way in games... of course nvidia quit

Then came FM's statement a few days after the release of 3dmark03 that ANY change in the driver code to increase performance in 3dmark03 is not legitimate. Nvidia again couldn't understand how FM wants 3dmark03 to be the benchmark for future game performance when they code their engine exactly the way future real game engines will never be coded. So nvidia decided to boycott FM by saying that 3dmark03 is not reliable because of easy to make driver optimizations to synthetically increase the 3dmark03 score and they even went as far as demonstrating it in their 44.03 drivers.

But this whole optimization/cheat disbute now got finally a postive turn in a way that allows nvidia and all other graphiccard manufactures to include driver optimization (like done in real games) in future versions of the popular 3dmark benchmark (not yet including 3dmark03) making this bench or more real-life indicator that it currently is.

This means that nvidia doesn't need to hide anymore optimizations in their drivers, no longer needs to replace shaders effecting IQ but can go straight to FM and help them on how to accomplish much faster code with the same IQ. It will be all more easy and transparent for everyone. It's a clearly win/win situation.

[Solomon]

Originally posted by Morrow
nope, I didn't miss both the extremetech and the FM audit report but unfortunately most people here seem to miss the big picture about this joint statement and what it means for the future:

When 3dmark03 was released, nvidia had quit the beta member team because they did not agree with FM's philosophy about benchmarking "standard performance". Nvidia knows that (IQ loss-less) optimizations are an important factor for demonstrating the full power of GeForce cards. All important games (especially ID games) make full use out of those optimizations but now comes FM and released a "gaming benchmark" as they call it but only relies on standard DX code which is never used that way in games... of course nvidia quit

Then came FM's statement a few days after the release of 3dmark03 that ANY change in the driver code to increase performance in 3dmark03 is not legitimate. Nvidia again couldn't understand how FM wants 3dmark03 to be the benchmark for future game performance when they code their engine exactly the way future real game engines will never be coded. So nvidia decided to boycott FM by saying that 3dmark03 is not reliable because of easy to make driver optimizations to synthetically increase the 3dmark03 score and they even went as far as demonstrating it in their 44.03 drivers.

But this whole optimization/cheat disbute now got finally a postive turn in a way that allows nvidia and all other graphiccard manufactures to include driver optimization (like done in real games) in future versions of the popular 3dmark benchmark (not yet including 3dmark03) making this bench or more real-life indicator that it currently is.

This means that nvidia doesn't need to hide anymore optimizations in their drivers, no longer needs to replace shaders effecting IQ but can go straight to FM and help them on how to accomplish much faster code with the same IQ. It will be all more easy and transparent for everyone. It's a clearly win/win situation.

Um... The clip plane is not an optimization! As soon as you can see that the sooner you will realize that nVidia cheated and is buying it's way out of the paper bag.

Regards,
D. Solomon Jr.
*********.com

[Solomon]

Originally posted by Morrow
When 3dmark03 was released, nvidia had quit the beta member team because they did not agree with FM's philosophy about benchmarking "standard performance".

So from this you are saying you rather have an nVidia optimized benchmark then a standard benchmark? There is a reason why it's a standard benchmark. nVidia can optimize for the benchmark. Hell no one is saying they can't. They can't cheat is what it's all about. The "Cheating Drivers Hidden Dragon" picture says it all. The clip plane says it all.

From what I'm getting from you is that it's o.k. to have all that not show and still be legit? You got to be kidding me.

Regards,
D. Solomon Jr.
*********.com

[jAkUp]

Originally posted by BigBerthaEA
I am not sure where you are getting your information, but EA Sports dominates the top 5 positions in PC Sports game sales. They also dominate the console sports sales charts as well. Now, I will grant you that PC sales are not nearly as good as console sales, but I think this is primarily true throughout the industry with a few exceptions.

EA nor EA Sports are going anywhere but up. The last fiscal quarter, EA had it's first ever $ Billion revenue quarter. Largely fueled by Madden 2003, The Sims, BF 1942, MOHAA, etc.

im not saying their revenue is going down... ive been an ea sports fan ever since 98, and madden, live, nhl, triple play 98... 99 was great was great too... 2001 was a big turning point for the company imo... all their sport titles turned upside down... left alot of sports fans upset. madden, nba, nhl, and triple play 2001 we're pretty dissappointing for the strides the earlier games made... the years after that we're only mild steps up. older years the difference between say 98>99 was night and day... the triple play series took a year off cuz it mad sucked... and needed an overhaul... (not sure about their new game)

ea used to be my favorite company... very nice games imo... and need for speed... my favorite racing game, was recently ruined on the ps2 and pc flamming barrels??!!! gimme a ****in break!!! lmao

[Zenikase]

Originally posted by Morrow
nope, I didn't miss both the extremetech and the FM audit report but unfortunately most people here seem to miss the big picture about this joint statement and what it means for the future:

When 3dmark03 was released, nvidia had quit the beta member team because they did not agree with FM's philosophy about benchmarking "standard performance". Nvidia knows that (IQ loss-less) optimizations are an important factor for demonstrating the full power of GeForce cards. All important games (especially ID games) make full use out of those optimizations but now comes FM and released a "gaming benchmark" as they call it but only relies on standard DX code which is never used that way in games... of course nvidia quit

Then came FM's statement a few days after the release of 3dmark03 that ANY change in the driver code to increase performance in 3dmark03 is not legitimate. Nvidia again couldn't understand how FM wants 3dmark03 to be the benchmark for future game performance when they code their engine exactly the way future real game engines will never be coded. So nvidia decided to boycott FM by saying that 3dmark03 is not reliable because of easy to make driver optimizations to synthetically increase the 3dmark03 score and they even went as far as demonstrating it in their 44.03 drivers.

But this whole optimization/cheat disbute now got finally a postive turn in a way that allows nvidia and all other graphiccard manufactures to include driver optimization (like done in real games) in future versions of the popular 3dmark benchmark (not yet including 3dmark03) making this bench or more real-life indicator that it currently is.

This means that nvidia doesn't need to hide anymore optimizations in their drivers, no longer needs to replace shaders effecting IQ but can go straight to FM and help them on how to accomplish much faster code with the same IQ. It will be all more easy and transparent for everyone. It's a clearly win/win situation.

The problem is that it's not the same IQ. Take a look at some of the infamous screenshots of the scenery that's hidden in the regular benchmark. There are multiple major inaccuracies and errors in how the tests are rendered, due to nVidia's drivers intentionally replacing Futuremark's shaders with their own proprietary shaders, and inserting arbitrary clip planes in areas that are outside the regular viewspace. This is not an optimization; this is a fast and cheap method of getting higher scores by ruining the original intended result of the 3DMark03 team. It also destroys the possibility of creating comparable results.

When a driver detects an application and/or certain parts within the application and modifies code to its own liking, it is outright cheating.