3dmark03 On Nvidia Cards Redux
 

first a little background. as is well known, after 3dmark03 came out nvidia bashed it, citing that it was a bad representation of reality, and that it was easy to optimize for.

towards this purpose they released the 42.72 infamous cheat drivers which dramatically raised 3dmark03 scores for gfFX users, but also reduced the precision of the shaders and lowered IQ in GT4.

this was fixed in later drivers, but 3dmark03 scores decreased.

nvidia recently released the 43.45 drivers, which again raised scores, but apparently had the same lower precision of 42.72. you can see the differences between the "cheat" and what the scene should normally look like in a screenshot by Dark Crow here

with the newly leaked 43.51 drivers, people in our own forums have reported this when using a gfFX5800:and Dark Crow has posted a screenshot of GT4, Mother Nature, which shows that image quality is perfectly fine now: http://www.darkcrow.co.kr/image/news/0304/4351.jpg

so there you have it. it appears that nvidia was able to retain the same high 3dmark03 score, without any noticeable reduced precision :)

Nothing is free in 3D.... ;)

Unless you enjoy watching a blank screen being rendered. :lol:

I knew this was going to happen...

nVidia comes out of the gate with very subsandard drivers, across the board. In order to satisfy the reviewers/readers, they release a drivers that clearly cheated, if you will, to raise performance...UNTIL they had enough time to get their drivers up to scratch.

So, a bunch of time passes, and they eventually have a drivers that's capable of delivering higher performance without having to resort to cheating. The expectation is that (from their POV), people will consider this whole thing acceptable because nVidia eventually fixed/addressed the problem. I'm not one of them. Under no circumstances should ANY outfit be allowed to force special drivers to "cheat" until their driver team can get the software up to scratch. I mean, what kind of integrity is that?

I hope this is the end of the "special" driver...The next time I see either ATI/nVidia providing such a drivers to websites, I'm going to make sure the issue gets raised.

Who didn't John?

Re: 3dmark03 On Nvidia Cards Redux
 

that link provided continues to show 'discoloration' in the sky compared to other driver sets..

though it is less so than before...

nVidia is STILL cheating. But they're cheating in a way every end user should accept, IMO: they're cheating and doing their best not to reduce IQ too much.

This was pretty much to be expected: before, nVidia didn't have the time to cheat well. They were simply using INT12 pretty much everywhere.
Now, they're using FP16 where it increases IQ, too. But only where it increases IQ. And yes, it does look a little worse than older drivers - I'd guess that's because those used FP32. But still, it's a lot better, and I think reviewers should begin to think using those drivers is becoming quite fair indeed :)

Remember that in most cases where you need dynamic range, you couldn't see the difference between FP16, FP24 and FP32. 3DMark 2003 is an exagerated case - and that's a good thing, IMO, because that truly enables you to see the difference, which is a good thing for reviewers and people examining what's really going on at forums like Beyond3D.


Uttar

Regardless of the quality of the output, 'optimising' for a benchmark in that way still gives me a bad feeling inside. :(

I know, I know, all IHVs do it to some extent, but this is still much more blatant and 'major' than most.

Still, it's a step in the right direction I suppose.

Scott, not John.

:lol: :rolleyes:

You sound like you bought all the PR that's been thrown around lately.

Some of us don't even want "a little" bit of IQ downgraded even if it is for a massive performance increase.

I can't even begin to critique your statement.

Every end user WILL NOT accept this, every end user SHOULD NOT accept this. You do not talk for everyone, remember that.

You make it sound like cheating SHOULD be acceptable.

My apologies Scott.

Fair? No. Maybe tolerable.
And we can't be sure if this improvement(well exactly speaking...less retarded version) would work for all the other DX9 gamings and benchmarks or just for 3DMark03 alone.

Let's wait for Aquamark3? ;)

I just asked Gainward to send back their 5800 Ultra sample to me for some further testing of these drivers specifically. :)

Perhaps I dare to post some 3DMark03 scores this time around. ;)