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Carmack On ATI's Driver Modifications
CitizenC points out that John Carmack's .plan file has been updated to discuss ATI's driver optimizations. If you weren't paying attention, ATI put code in their drivers to optimize for Quake3, based on the name of the executable - so when running Quake3, you'd get a (good) set of optimizations for the game, but when running the same game after changing the name of the executable, you'd get a default set of optimizations with lesser performance. Some people called this cheating since Quake3 is a typical benchmark application these days.
What they did was not "Have Quake run in mode which is faster" but "Have Quake run in mode which has lower quality than it should so it will run faster"
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100% pure freak
Let me get this straight. ATI takes the time to create optimizations in their drivers that make Quake III run faster, and people are unhappy about it?
You're damn right I am. As someone who uses graphics hardware for scientific visualization, any time hardware manufactures spend on making games faster is a complete waste. With the latest cards and drivers from ATI, we've seen this problem en masse. Games run great, but code that we write (that's general OpenGL and works great on GeForce cards) runs slower than hell on the 8500.
So, if all ATI wants to do is sell cards to gamers (and that's certainly a good market), they can go right on ahead and do that. Nvidia takes more time with their drivers and makes them much more optimized for the general case...so they've got my buisness for now.
Just my thoughts. I'm going to skip the part where I tell everyone else that they're being knee-jerk.
If you missed the discussion in the first place.
:Our goal for the RADEON 8500 is and always has been to deliver the best possible gaming experience to our customers.
The Register : As we say, if you like the 8500's Quake III frame-rate but aren't willing to put up with the dip in image quality, buy a different card. Or wait for ATI to change its drivers, which, we understand, it's in the process of doing.
HardOCP was the first to publish about this: The Facts As We See Them: It certainly seems to us here at [H]ardOCP that ATi has in fact included application specific instructions in their version 5.13.01.3276 Win2K drivers that make Quake 3 arena benchmarks faster by up to over 15%. Either way, the driver optimisations for Quake III are just one of the (many) factors that differentiate different vendors' products. ®
firingsquad show show some details how the quack.exe is made and concludes:
To some of us, it seems like the evidence points towards intentionally deceptive code designed not only to inflate benchmark scores, but also to keep anyone from finding out. To others, this is nothing more than an overreation to a perfectly legitimate game optimization. In our eyes, anyone who vehemently peddles either of these explanations is either naive or pushing an agenda of their own.
there later in Q&A with ati explains in 2 pages that
yeah right.!