Futuremark releases 3DMark03 patch - alleges NVIDIA cheats

[DivotMaker]

Originally posted by Clockwork


Oh, that's right. Don't you work for EA? They are technology partners with nVidia if I remember correctly. Some big press a bit back with their whole "The way it's Meant to be Played" campaign. Nope, you have no bias whatsoever....

I own both nVidia and ATI products and NO, I am not an EA employee. I am a contractor to EA and I, like anyone else who plays EA's games can use whatever 3D hardware they choose. Get off the bias kick and stick to the discussion.

[A-KO]

As was stated in an earlier post, benchmarks are static. This gives companies the ability to tweak the drivers to the benchmarks. At least we know that with games, any tweaks that go on are going to tweak the game itself.

We have to trust reviewers to supply us with quality benchmarks. However, it doesn't matter. Reviews should not be compared amongst eachother anyway, the scores are meant to show the performance that particular testing has gotten. So this shouldn't be too much of a problem. Record a demo of 120 seconds(2 minutes) in each game, and run that demo for each set of cards. The cpu limiting won't matter, as either card will be in the same exact system.

And yes, in my eyes, they ALL are at fault. Nvidia is modifying drivers to perform better, 3DMark is now modifying their software so ATI cards perform better, and ATI has optimized their software for it. All 3 of them are at fault for ****ing with the numbers so I say to hell with them all and Futuremark can go bankrupt. We don't need them to show us how well our computers perform anyway. They're useless. A game is a game. You buy better hardware to perform better. You don't need 3dmark to tell you that you're going to see better performance in X game. 'Nuff said.

edit by StealthHawk: do not circumvent the swear filter.

[YacozA]

quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally posted by Clockwork


Oh, that's right. Don't you work for EA? They are technology partners with nVidia if I remember correctly. Some big press a bit back with their whole "The way it's Meant to be Played" campaign. Nope, you have no bias whatsoever....


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I own both nVidia and ATI products and NO, I am not an EA employee. I am a contractor to EA and I, like anyone else who plays EA's games can use whatever 3D hardware they choose. Get off the bias kick and stick to the discussion.

lol OWNED

[Clockwork]

Originally posted by YacozA
lol OWNED

[c4c]

Well, from what it sounds like Ati is doing something similar to what Nvidia did with regards to replacing shaders..Although this could all be b.s. so don't quote me..

For all the people saying this new invalidates 3DMark, I'd say it does quite the opposite. Game benchmarks can be just as easily hacked as 3DMark, and there's nobody there to police that kind of thing. Seems pretty unlikely the game developers are gonna do it.

Even though 3DMark isn't a real game, this newfound scrutiny will hopefully keep 3d card makes honest with respect to the benchmark. I don't think the same can be said for game benchies...It will be interesting to see how it all pans out

[Outkaster]

My question is are nvidias drivers 20+ megs because they have cheats for popular timedemos like Q3 and UT2k3? What other cheats are they using? Also with Doom3 they made the demo themselves so they could of put in clipping planes or their own shaders to get such high scores. I hope there are those with the card who spend a lot of time this weekend sorting this out.

[A-KO]

If anything, Futuremark ought to be god damn slapped for what they did with this patch. I can see an issue with Nvidia optimizing drivers, *for their hardware*. I can see an issue with ATI optimizing for THEIR HARDWARE.

But you know what the problem is? They are doing it FOR THEIR HARDWARE. Nvidia modifies ONLY their software for THEIR hardware.

Futuremark is deliberately taking sides here and destroying numbers that the companies get simply because another complains. This is bull****. I say everyone boycott the living hell out of these bastards for it.

Let Nvidia and ATI do what they want, but when the 3rd party is getting involved and deliberately biasing their software for the other hardware, then that is a serious fault.

This modification to the benchmark to deliberately bring down the scores of either hardware(regardless of what the companies are doing) is not to be tolerated nor allowed by the company who had bitched in the first place about 'optimizations'.

edit by StealthHawk: do not circumvent the swear filter.

[PreservedSwine]

Originally posted by digitalwanderer
Is this something that people should contact the Better Business Bureau about here in the states, aren't they the ones who should be hassling nVidia about this?

The Better Business Bureau, in Florida anyway, is nothing more than a re-seller rating, so to speak. They have no authority to do anything to anyone. All they can do is tell you if the company hs any complaints against them......Usually for retail outlets, not manufactuers...They're just there to take compalnts, not action. Might be diffrent elsewhere

[Ady]

this little problem in the 3dmark pdf...

"In game test 4, the water pixel shader (M_Water.psh) is detected. The driver uses this
detection to artificially achieve a large performance boost - more than doubling the early
frame rate on some systems. In our inspection we noticed a difference in the rendering when
compared either to the DirectX reference rasterizer or to those of other hardware. It appears
the water shader is being totally discarded and replaced with an alternative more efficient
shader implemented in the drivers themselves. The drivers produce a similar looking
rendering, but not an identical one."

Reminded me of THIS THREAD this thread from awhile back when we noticed a difference, particularly in the water. Have a look at the helpful on that page.

[EDLIM]

Originally posted by A-KO
If anything, Futuremark ought to be god damn slapped for what they did with this patch. I can see an issue with Nvidia optimizing drivers, *for their hardware*. I can see an issue with ATI optimizing for THEIR HARDWARE.

But you know what the problem is? They are doing it FOR THEIR HARDWARE. Nvidia modifies ONLY their software for THEIR hardware.

Futuremark is deliberately taking sides here and destroying numbers that the companies get simply because another complains. This is bullsh*t. I say everyone boycott the living hell out of these bastards for it.

Let Nvidia and ATI do what they want, but when the 3rd party is getting involved and deliberately biasing their software for the other hardware, then that is a serious fault.

This modification to the benchmark to deliberately bring down the scores of either hardware(regardless of what the companies are doing) is not to be tolerated nor allowed by the company who had bitched in the first place about 'optimizations'.

Count me in..........

I totally agree

[A-KO]

Who the **** cares what review benchmarks say. We all know it goes on with reviewers. If you have that much of a problem with what's going on, then you know what?

Ask yourself these questions when you play your games?

1) Does the frame rate increase with these new drivers?

2) Does the image look similar or 'as good' with no visible problems?


IF SO, THEN WHO CARES WHAT THE COMPANIES DO TO 'OPTIMIZE' FOR THE HARDWARE?

If software can be used to modify the performance of the hardware, then the software is at fault, not the hardware.

edit by StealthHawk: do not circumvent the swear filter, and watch your tone. Treat other members with respect.

[anxdiety]

Hrmmm can someone please explain to me why this is such a terrible thing for them to optimise or cheat withing their driver code? Hell if i play a game and i want it to run as fast as it can then so be it. From the sounds of this entire arguement its almost like when Amd introduced the good ole 3d-now optimizations in their cpu's. Does anyone even remember when you had to patch quake 2 to use the added optimizations of the cpu?

So now we end up with Futurefart (formerly madbunion) saying that its not right to use specific hardware for running tests. But at the same time they allow for the inclusion of things like sse and 3dnow. Both Ati and Nvidia have differing hardware. 2 different methods of running the selected code. One runs it standard path A while the other can run it in Path A but not as fast as it can in its native path B. As Futurefart itself said, running the game in nvidia's own ps2 shader code proves to be a lot faster. So does it really make it that bad of a peice of hardware?

<conspiracy mode> Maybe nvidia's use of custom ps2.0 shaders was an overall optimization in general for ps2.0 shaders? Is there any other type of software available yet that can be used to test these features? Then would it really be cheating if the cheating/optimizations were concurrent through a different program that utilizes the same thing?</comspiracy>


a lil story that sums up my theory on the whole 3dmark scene.
A buddy of mine called me up one morning and got my ass out of bed. The reason he called was to procliam he finally broke 10k in 3dmark 2001. I honestly couldn't believe it. I thought it was one of the most lame things of all time. So i gave him his moment of glory and told him my new computer record which i had just set that day. 21 days uptime totally stable, playing games, music, movies over and over and not a single reboot.

Bascially the moral of the lil story is that i would prefer to have a working system that is stable and able to do what i want with it rather than spend countless hours to achieve some # of bunion points to say my computer is already this outdated. Since the moment you buy a computer its already out of date.

One last thing is a new metaphor for arguements over video cards. Its about the same as 2 guys standing around arguing who's pee pee is bigger than the others. Then i would prefer to walk up and say, not like it matters since i didle my girlfriend nightly, what do you do with yours other than stand around and compare????