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3D Mark 2003 Sparks Controversy
cribb writes "3DMark 2003 is out, sparking an intense debate on how trustworthy its assessment of current graphics cards is, after some harsh words by nVidia and the reply from Futuremark. THG has an analysis of the current situation definately worth reading. The article exposes some problems with the new GeforceFX previously mentioned in a slashdot article on Doom3 and John Carmack. Alas, here seems to be no end to the troubles with the new nVidia flagship." If you've run the benchmark, post your scores here, and we'll all compare.
Now, it's the video card makers slagging the benchmark makers.
Anybody remember the early 90s (93?) when Hercules got itself into hot water by hard-coding a super-fast result for the PC Magazine video benchmark? Whoo hoo, that made for some good press. Got their awards pulled and everything.
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
"IF you've run the benchmark, post your scores here, and we'll all compare" If only my computer could get a score...
4
*sigh*. cli just wasn't made for 3D.
It stands to reason that a benchmark should fairly and accurately depict the widest range of common capabilities possible to determine a clear winner. Of course, this can be very hard to do. It does seem in this case though that 3DMark got caught up in the whiz-bang marketing side of things by supporting the latest and greatest(?) features and ignoring the very compatibility that would give it any real meaning.
Sorry guys, you goofed.
No, your graphics card is too slooow
There are lies, damn lies, and benchmarks.
792 3DMarks.
System:
Geforce3Ti200 GFX
AthlonXP1700 CPU
256MB SDRAM
ECS K7S5A Mainboard
I don't like it. I'm gonna rely on actual game benchmarks when I compare my system's performance. Some good games to use:
Quake3 (still scales nicely)
UT2003 (the game sucks, but it's a decent CPU benchmark)
C&C: Generals (don't know how it scales, but it cripples most computers)
Doom3 (Will hopefully scale as well as Q3 when it comes out in 2 months)
Synthetic benchies just aren't that reliable anymore...
------- "From bored to fanboy in 3.8 asian girls" ----------
NVidia missed a manufacturing cycle and now it's coming back to haunt them. They really need to drop the FX and concentrate on whatever new architecture is currently being tossed around in R&D.
Originally I was planning to buy the successor to the NV30 for a great experience in Quake III and better framerates in older games. But now it looks like I'll be laying out the dough on whatever ATI brings out early next year.
So long as my opponents are rendered as a red spot on the floor, I'm happy.
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
AMD Athlon1400C@1550
512MB Samsung DDR, CL2@147FSB
Geforce4ti4200, clocked@260core, 520memory
a whopping: 1080 points.
Did i mention that this benchmarks makes *heavy* utilization of the otherwis in *no* game used Pixelshader 1.4? Teh exact one, that Nvidia didnt implement in its GF4Ti cards - where only 1.3 and 1.1 is in?
Guess, who has 1.4 - ATI has...
You could also call this benchmark "ATIbench2003", but that was the same in 2000, when 3dmark2000 was favoring Nvidia cards over 3dfx simply because of the lack of 32bit colordepth.
Sheeeshh...
My Apple ][+ doesn't have enough disk space to download this program. Can someone help me out?
Trolling is a art,
Insert obligatory post of "Why bother with these high-end graphics cards when anything over 30 fps is a waste?" here.
Insert obligatory response of "Well you see in film, 30 fps is fine, because of motion-blur. But in games, there is no motion blur, etc etc" comment here.
voltron:/home/gannoc/incoming/temp# chmod +x 3dmark2003.exep # ./3dmark2003.exe ./3dmark2003.exe: cannot execute binary file
voltron:/home/gannoc/incoming/tem
bash:
With the level of complexity in current hardware, I can't imagine anyone will come up with a benchmark that -can't- be labelled as skewed, inaccurate, or 'not giving justice'.
If I spend a million dollars developing a cool board that does zillions of sprigmorphs a second (a made up metric), and someone does a benchmark that doesn't test sprigmorph rendering, does that mean my board sucks? No, it just means the benchmark doesn't check it.
However, if Competitor B makes a board that doens't have sprigmorph rendering, but scores higher on this benchmark, which is the 'better card'?
The days of simple benchmarks, alas, are past. It used to be "how many clock cycles a second". Nowadays, whether one piece of hardware is better than another simply comes down to "Can it do what I'm doig right now any faster or cheaper than another unit?"
Event Management Solutions : http://www.stonekeep.com/
Benchmarks are generally too isolated to be of much use. They might be okay for getting a rough picture, but a high scoring 3d benchmark might not directly translate into good 3d performance.
Even so-called 'real world' benchmarks that test stuff like file opening and scrolling documents don't really get into the meat of the everyday user experience.
Using benchmarks to decide what computer to buy is like macking on the girl with the big boobs. She might look nice, but she could be horrible in bed. Also she might have crabs.
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
The guys at Tech Report also has an article in which they dissect parts of the benchmark and provide what both FutureMark and nVidia's comments on the matter.
Athlon XP 1600+ (1400mhz)
512 DDR 266
MSI board, KT266 chipset
GeForce 4 Ti-4200 Pro Turbo 128Mb DDR AGP 4x
Benched under W2K Pro w/ DX9 and latest WHQL Detonator driver
i got 1612 with:
athlon 2400+ (2.06ghz)
geforce 4 ti4600
1.12 gigs of pc2100 cas 2 ram
IF you've run the benchmark, post your scores here, and we'll all compare.
Or you could just go directly to the futuremark forums instead.
I ran 3DMark03 on an Intel and AMD based platform. I only have the AMD score as of right now though.
Here are my specs for the AMD rig:
AMD Athlon XP 1900+ ( 1.66GHz)
1GB Crucial PC2700 DDR333
Radeon 9700 Pro 128MB
I was able to score 2942 marks. Discuss.
Along with most of my geek friends, I really depend on excellent the "excellent" 3dMark scores of the latest and greatest hardware to drive down the price of the previous generation of video cards. After all, software that truly supports all of the whiz-bang features of the top-tier cards doesn't arrive until about 6-9 months after the cards appear on Best Buy's shelves.
If 3DMark isn't producing high enough scores for the new nVidia cards, where will my price breaks be?
Sorry, but this has been on major hardware sites for two? three? weeks. Www.hardocp.com had an entire article on (and mostly started the hoopla over) this entire thing. Posting 3DMark scores to slashdot is a total waste of time anyway. There is no trusted system of comparison here. Most slashdot readers aren't hardcore performance nuts anyway. (Go ahead, be a troll or a classic weenie and take that statement out of context or whatever)
I just don't think this is the right forum for this type of story. Oh well.
It seems like the 3Dmark folks decided to deliberately test DX9 features, even though there are not many cards which support them in hardware yet. Nvidia is pissed because they have not implemented any DX9 features in hardware on the FX, where ATI has them on the 9x00 whatever.
This is a valid benchmark to use to test out how your current hardware will perform in a DX9 environment. I, for one, am glad to see such a tool available so that I can take DX9 performance into account when making my next video card purchase. So my next card may be an ATI - Who knew? The last ATI product I owned was a Number 9, not exactly a 3D monster....
You think emacs is evil?! You've never used VM's XEDIT have you?!! That's evil, baby!
Even if the days of simple benchmarking are gone, you can still form a reasonably balanced, overall idea of system performance and scaling from a well-coded test. Quake3 did it, and still does it, not only for graphics cards, but for memory, CPUs, and mainboards as well. 3DMark2001 did it as well.
------- "From bored to fanboy in 3.8 asian girls" ----------
Read about it here. http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=7920
"An Nvidia technical marketing manager confirmed to us that Geforce FX has 4 Pipelines and 2 Texture Memory Units that can results with 8 textures per clock but only in multitexturing.
However, Nvidia did say that there were some cases where its chip can turn out 8 pixels per clock. Here is a quote:
"GeForce FX 5800 and 5800 Ultra run at 8 pixels per clock for all of the following: a) z-rendering b) stencil operations c) texture operations d) shader operations"
and
"Only color+Z rendering is done at 4 pixels per clock"
We talked with many developers and they said me that all games these days use Color + Z rendering. So all this Nvidia talk about the possibility of rendering 8 pixels in special cases becomes irrelevant.
The bottom line is that when it comes to Color + Z rendering, the GeForce FX is only half as powerful as the older Radeon 9700."
This statement is false.
is "Will your card support Doom III"©
Ok slashies.
3DMark 2001 measures performance for directx 7 and 8 hardware platforms.
3DMark 2003 was built from the ground up to measure performance for directx9 platforms, it is not DESIGNED to be a broad range benchmark. it isn't meant to give good scores to your computer that does what you need it to.
It's a high end performance measurement tool, which UNLESS USED IN THE PROPER CONTEXT gives you useless measurements.
Sorry for the pissiness, but jeeze. for geeks who claim to love specialized tools and hate bloat, this is the perfect tool. it does one thing specifically and doesn't throw in the kitchen sink, or support for ancestral hardware.
They aren't microsoft, they're fully supporting 3DMark 2001 for the platforms that it was designed for.
I'll hush now.
"You worthless post!"
-Shakespeare, 2 Gentlemen of Verona, 1. 1. 147
Additional, and IMHO better coverage at Tech Report:
Dissecting the 3DMark03 controversy
Examining graphics card performance in 3DMark03
3d Mark 2003 Score: 1252
Geforce 4 Ti 4600 @ AGP 4x
800 MHz PIII
256 MB RDRAM
Intel VC 820 Motherboard
Windows XP
Games & 3d Mark ran off of 80GB WD 8MB cache Special edition hard drive, alone on a seperate IDE card on the PCI bus.
For Games:
Simcity 4- large maps and pleasing resolutions bring my comp to it's knees. Running SC4 at 1024 & higher resolution is absolutely beautiful, running it at 800 x 600- it looks like ass.
RtoCW runs fine at 1024, haven't tried it higher yet.
Delta Force: Black Hawk down runs fine at 1024, with full effects. Haven't tried it higher yet. The water effects are stunning.
UT2003 ran fine when i had a GF2 in here, haven't tried it since.
my 2 cents
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
Does it really make a difference if you get an extra 2 frames per second on your game? I understand if you're doing super high end visualization where it's necessary, but at that point you can afford to purchase 5 different $500 cards and compare for yourself, right?
Ummm, NASCAR Racing 2003 Season? This game is a video card punisher. There is not a system around that can run every graphical option and still be able to get at least 30 fps.
Here go all my plans for my upcoming website, getting laid etc. CHEERS!!
Just a shot in the dark, could be wrong...
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
Is it some kind of OpenGL clone?
or something for the Mac?
4700 3Dmarks ASUS A7N8X nForce2 AMD Athlon 2600+ (333Mhz) ATI 9700 Pro I would try it with the new ATI drivers but booting into XP is so depressing. Blah.
Am I the only one who saw "THG" in the post and thought, "The Humble Guys? They're still around? And they care about graphics??"
I had to mouseover to realize that they meant Tom's Hardware Guide and not "The Humble Guys" of 1980s BBS piracy. Hrm, I guess I'm showing my age.
Heh, for a trip down memory lane, check this out:
http://www.textfiles.com/piracy/HUMBLE/
Using your sig line to advertise for friends is lame.
I think it's interesting how little CPU and RAM influence 3DMark 03 score. By way of example, my Radeon 9500 Pro system with Athlon XP 2100+ and RAM at 266mhz gets a score of about 3560. If I overclock the Althon to 2250 mhz (an effective 2800+) and the RAM to 400mhz, my score increases *10 points*. :) The old 3DMark gives gain of a couple of thousand at least. The argument for this new way of scoring is that this is how DX9 works, and (presumably) CPU and RAM won't have the same influence in the new games coming out over the next couple of years. As a layperson I have trouble believing that. A fairly good back-and-forth discussion of these merits can be found in the Rage3D forums here.
I dislike benchmarks like these. It encourages video card manufacturers to design video cards that do well in benchmarks, rather than do well in actual applications.
There are tons of people who do comparisons with applications rather than benchmarking utility. Whether you're a fan Tom's Hardware (or not, I know he's had somewhat of a sorted past), there a lot of sites where people like him do testing with end user applications. Do research, find one of those sites you trust, and go with numbers based on software you use, rather than some number a benchmarking application you'll never actually run gives you.
Overrated Moderation: This posts sucks... because.
The under-issue here is that nVidia is no longer a "partner" of madonion (I know they changed their name, whoever they are now, futuremark or whatever) but ATI is (IIRC). This is helping fuel suspicion that the benchmark is designed to perform better on ATI hardware than on nVidias. You must pay a fee to be a "partnet" so there is the unspoken idea that what Futuremark is doing might be some kind of extortion.
Where the answer lies is up to you. Personally, I do think that the benchmark is unfair/not a good benchmark. For example, chaning the graphics card in your computer should have next to no effect on the CPU score, if any; yet it has a measureable effect. But all of this is mute, IMHO, since Doom III will be the new Uber benchmark trusted above all else when it comes out. Untill then, argue amongst yourselves.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
how high on the benchmark scale does my system have to rate to play the new nethack? i was worrying that the sysreqs might be too high for my system....
"Good night, good work, sleep well, I'll most likely kill you in the morning." - Dread Pirate Roberts
4156 3dmarks
Radeon 9700 Pro @ 4x (Stupid VIA 4 in Drivers)
AMD 1800XP+
MSI/VIA KT266 MB
512MB DDR400
80GB @ 7200RPM ATA 133 Drive
Win XP
Of more excitement is my Sony Vaio Laptop, which scored 12(!) 3dmarks (Radeon Mobility 7500). I was quite pleased.
Personally, I think that a good benchmark is just doing whatever you are going to be doing and timing that.
Are you going to be playing much of the 3D-Mark benchmark ? If the answer is yes, then you should use it, otherwise it's pure masterbation. Their site claims that the purpose of the benchmark is to give you an idea of what a typical DX7-DX9 game will give you in performance. However, the 'games' they use to test it are not games you can actually play. It's basically a graphics demo. Wow.
The only benchmarks even worth considering are the Quake, Unreal, etc. benchmarks that test real games being played. And even those results should be taken with a grain of salt. They are 'real world' results, but you have to take into account many factors to actually derive useful information from them. Such as RAM, CPU, resolution that marks were run at, etc.
If you are smart, then you will buy your graphic card from a place like Fry's that will let you return it if the performance is unsatisfactory. In this day and age where the graphics card costs more then a computer, you had better get your money's worth.
Just test SimCity 4. It kicks the snot out of my P4-2.26/1GB DDR/4200.
This is not the greatest sig in the world, this is just a tribute.
Sometimes people scratch their heads about benchmarks and wonder "how did they come up with that number?" If the benchmark itself was Open Source you'd have at least a partial answer. Not to mention you'd have the eyes of many people looking over the code to make sure it was executing draws in the right and consistent manner.
So why aren't benchmarks open? What do the makers of benchmarks have to hide? Are they under NDAs from the card vendors?
NVIDIA not does yet have driver optimised for the paths which 3DMark 2003 uses. World+dog has gone benchmark crazy, particularly the mad-for-it overclocking vanguard which forms a large part of the early-adopter community, and who drive sales through sites like, err, slashdot.
Without them and good, king-of-the-hill benchmarks, NV30 is dead in the water.
Please remain calm, there is no reason to pani... wait, where are you all going?
He makes my head explode every time he talks video cards.
Tell him Corky here can't handle this.
...but I couldn't get 3DMark 2003 to run on my system.
Not much of a benchmark program if the thing won't even run properly.
Then again perhaps I just need to update my version of winex
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
I personally dont put too much trust into any benchmark. If I see an increase in performance compared to the actual software/hardware that I run, then thats all I care about...
Either synthetic or not, you can only put so much into a benchmark. Half of the graphs for bencharks have scales which are EXTREMELY misleading. It makes a .4 fps difference look like a 400 fps difference.
--
No it's not, it's a shoddily-written game (and pretty damn shitty, to boot).
now nvidia are introducing a new factor in the equation: now you have to write different code for each videocard. just as there used to be 3dfx-only games.
isn't this against the idea of directx? seems very counterproductive to me, and an attempt by nvidia to monopolize the gaming industry.
Hostes alienigieni me abduxerunt. Qui annus est?
Synthetic benchies just aren't that reliable anymore...
I agree. All I want to know is, is it going to improve the graphics enough to warrant the cost? I'd much rather read a collection of reviews that included a person's description of their system, and described how a specific game ran on it. for instance:
My System:
PowerMac g4 tower, 450 mhz
384 mb RAM
ATI Rage 128
When playing Warcraft III, the single player scenarios are playable with default options. A performance boost is noticable if you set all the video options to low and turn off ambient sound. You have to do this in many online games. All in all, the game is enjoyable with this video card, but you can tell that it would really shine - and probably was intended for - a faster one.
Return to Castle Wolfenstein however is uplayable (to me). Even with minimum options (video and sound), the framerate is noticably choppy. If you don't mind a little choppiness, you can deal with it, but I demand silky-smooth response from a fps. I won't be playing the game until I get a better video card.
This kind of review may be totally non-quantifiable, but if I found a reviewer with similar system specs, I would find it invaluable.
c-hack.com |
Could someone post an mpeg or something of the test somewhere?
Those of us with 750MHz Athlons and Matrox G200s are missing out on something here, and I need an incentive to upgrade...
You want to play video games, get a console. The price of upgrading your comp is too much just so you can look at a benchmark all day.
What I want even more than that last bit of graphics speed is a driver that doesnt crash every few minutes.
As everyone who plays 3d games knows, the driver that comes with the card is unusable. The only thing that will typically run under it is the benchmark. So the first thing you do when you get a new card OR a new game, is go to the board's manufacturer's site and get the latest driver (and pray).
My experience tells me that nVidia is ahead in this area. When a new game comes out, if there is a bug that stops it from running or causes random crashes, the fix will usually be released by the game's release date. ATI on the other hand tends to both have buggier drivers and lag weeks behind on bug fixes.
So the bottom line is, if you are planning on playing that hot new MMPORG on release day, you are probably better off going with nVidia since you are more likely to get a driver that works.
Read an intelligent book like "The New Thought Police" or "The War Against Boys", and learn the TRUTH.
The 'War against boys is an excellent book', I'll keep an eye out for 'The new thought police.'
In the same ballpark, I'd recommend Larry Elder's books, "the ten things you can't say in america" or "showdown."
-dfenstrate
Carmack says:
It seems that the NV30 architecture requires a good deal more optimization to run shader code optimally (read: fast), while R300 deals with standard code much better. This would explain why NVIDIA is so harsh and aggressive in its criticism of the new 3DMark 2003, since the GeForce FX (NV30) seems to have a problem with non-optimized shader code, a trait that its mainstream siblings NV31 and NV34 will obviously share. If word got around - and in this community, it does - this could seriously hurt NVIDIA's sales.
To be fair, in real games this "handicap" will most likely not be nearly as pronounced as in the 3DMark test. After all, NVIDIA is very good at convincing game developers to optimize and adapt their code for their hardware.
So NVidia only runs well with optimized code huh? That's going to be a problem for them I think. It means we won't know how well it works until we get some games to benchmark it with. Sure, we could benchmark it with UT2003 or something; but that doesn't mean much. I don't care about UT2003. My current card runs that fine. I (and other people who buy these cards) care about how they will run the next gen games. We could wait until those games come out, but a lot of people don't have that patience. For those people it might be safer to get the ATI. If you go with NVidia you have to really trust that the games you want are going to be well optimized for it, though as Carmack said, they probably will be. Personally I'm still on the fence about which card I will eventually get.
Aw crap, ninjas!
NVidia Fanboys HATE this list of games that use DirectX 8.1 (and 9.0 mandatory) Pixel shader 1.4
UT2003
Madden 2003
Tiger Woods 2003
Nascar 2003
NeverWinter Nights (actually OGL equivalent).
DOOM3 will have a path that will use the equivalent of PS1.4 as well
It makes them WRONG when they pretend that PS 1.4 is NOT FOUND in modern or upcomming games yet!
That list is factual and not even ehaustive.
Buy ATI and get real 1.4 speed in the games that ARE and WILL use it!
Or wait 9 months for NVidia to catch up.
System:
ASUS P4S8X, Intel P4@2.53GHz, 1024MB DDR333 RAM
Radeon 9700 Pro 128MB, SB Audigy
Windows XPSP1, DX9, 80GB Maxtor ATA133 HD.
3DMark 2001SE: 9900
3DMark 2003: 2883
I've got a 9700 pro, p2.53, sis648 and 512 DDR400. Hardly a lowend rig. My 9700 chokes on 3dmark 2k3. At several points in the demos the FPS drops below 10.
If this benchmark is supposedly so horribly biased in favor of ATI, you'd think they might at least get it to run smooth on my 9700.
I think 3dmark may be accurately pointing out that this new wiz-bang high-precision stuff may only start to be gameworthy on the NV35/R350 or even NV40/R400 generations.
You are WRONG! The updated benchtest merely uses PS 1.4 in some tests and ATI uses 24 bit floats and Nvidia can only choose between 16 bit or 32 and in 32 it suffers 33% slowdown over ATI cards.
NVidia Fanboys HATE this list of games that use DirectX 8.1 (and 9.0 mandatory) Pixel shader 1.4
UT2003
Madden 2003
Tiger Woods 2003
Nascar 2003
NeverWinter Nights (actually OGL equivalent).
DOOM3 will have a path that will use the equivalent of PS1.4 as well
It makes them WRONG when they pretend that PS 1.4 is NOT FOUND in modern or upcomming games yet!
That list is factual and not even ehaustive.
Buy ATI and get real 1.4 speed in the games that ARE and WILL use it!
Or wait 9 months for NVidia to catch up.
I like how nvidia is saying the benchmark is overly complex. Aren't they the ones touting the "Hollywood like effects" of their new card? I thought there was no such thing as 'overly complex'
This posturing in the graphics industry is becoming tiring.
--Coward #69
roughly what he's saying is:
If you just write an application then it will run twice as fast on the ati card as the geforce fx
But if you write two applications to to the same thing and optimize one for the ati card and the other for the nvidia card then the nvidia card does better
So performance wise nvidia appear to be relying on developers to optimise their applications specificaly for the geforce fx. And they probably will get it too given their current market share.
but don't forget to punch out the notch on the other side of the disk. Surely you have your notch puncher handy, don't you?
anything i tell you will cloud your opinion.
Looks like we'll have to wait and see.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
I ran the test on my system with 2 different cards. Machine is a dual amd 2000, 1 gig ram.
Score 1: 1577
Card - Geforce 4 Ti 4200
Score 2: 4998
Card - 9700 All in Wonder
I know the 9700 is a better card, but is it that much better? Running games on the different video cards has a SLIGHT difference in games, 9700 runs better of course but not leaps and bounds by any means. We are talking a handful of FPS. However when I run the futuremark test the fps is a MASSIVE difference.
I would think the benchmark test should emulate real games more than using an engine that favors my ati card. Benchmarking isn't be about consumerism, or waving around the size of my e-penis in a juvenile "my card is better than yours" fashion, its a tool for tuning my system to make sure it is running at it's highest potential for all the games I play.
WRONG!!!! 1.4 *IS* used in many games and many more. You are a fanboy for Nvidia and did not read the articles.
NVidia Fanboys HATE this list of games that use DirectX 8.1 (and 9.0 mandatory) Pixel shader 1.4:
UT2003
Madden 2003
Tiger Woods 2003
Nascar 2003
NeverWinter Nights (actually OGL equivalent).
DOOM3 will have a path that will use the equivalent of PS1.4 as well
It makes them WRONG when they pretend that PS 1.4 is NOT FOUND in modern or upcomming games yet!
That list is factual and not even ehaustive.
Buy ATI and get real 1.4 speed in the games that ARE and WILL use it!
Or wait 9 months for NVidia to catch up.
NVidia's poor performace have anything to do with the recently revealed fact that it does NOT have 8 rendering pipelines as it advertised,but only 4?
Read about it here. http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=7920
"An Nvidia technical marketing manager confirmed to us that Geforce FX has 4 Pipelines and 2 Texture Memory Units that can results with 8textures per clock but only in multitexturing.
However, Nvidia did say that there were some cases where its chip can turn out 8 pixels per clock. Here is a quote:
"GeForce FX 5800 and 5800 Ultra run at 8 pixels per clock for all of the following: a) z-rendering b) stencil operations c) texture operations d)shader operations" and "Only color+Z rendering is done at 4 pixels per clock"
Nearly ALL games use Color + Z rendering in 2002,2003 so except for CAD and Architectural walkthroughs, NVIDIA runs half as fast as ATI Radeon 9700
That is another reason why Apple promotes ATI
4500 AMD 2000xp asus a7v333 512 ddr333 radeon 9700 pro Don't forget to turn off AA lol! I was a neat person and blamed everyone else but me when I only scored 1500 ;) Yes I'm ignorant.
I use these benchmarks (3dMark2001/2003) not nessicarily (sp?) to see how much faster my rig is than another with a different card, but to benchmark against similar machines - ie: same processor, MB, vid card, etc. That way, if my numbers are the same (or close enough), I know my rig is running up to its potential. And, if its not, I can compare driver versions, etc, to get it to run as fast as it can.
For me, its all about peace of mind, and knowing something isn't messed up.
"The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground." - Thomas Jefferson
This is getting slightly off topic, but to all of those who say, "I have this great machine and Sim City 4 kicks the snot out of it"... that's not a good thing.
I have two good machines. Both have a gig of memory, decent cpu (one is a p4, I forget the other), one runs a gforce3 and the other ati rad 9000.
And Sim City 4 sucks on both in 1084x746 mode, with even low models/no lighting, sound turned off, fog off, etc.
It runs slow. Real slow.
I don't blame the computers though... I don't think any amount of hardware can compensate for a bloated, non-optimizing ui. The fact that it has major issues scrolling, even while using the cache on the graphics card, indicates a flaw in the design of the game.
Let's face it - if the game is running slowly, such that it is interfering with gameplay (which it does), then you refine your graphics. Use better mipmaps, use better scaling, reduce the size of your textures, decrease the polygon count, whatever. But it is better to be a slightly less "beautiful" game and run slower, than to be an unplayable, but gorgeous, game.
Tepp
Practically everyone I see gets a low score then goes on the net to complain about how crappy it is. It weights the fourth test most of all, which uses DX9, and if your card doesn't support that, you get a zero weighted several times. I couldn't run a test in 3dmark2k1, so I always had a zero, but I did just fine in games and didn't sweat it.
I think if people got something a *little* higher they wouldn't be whining so much, but everyone I see who does has an NV card and feels like its their God-given right to fight over a stupid, synthetic benchmark.
nVidia needs to learn that you can stay alive as a company with the #2 video card, as long as you can price it competitively - hell, that's what ATI did for years. But they do need to make sure they eventually get a winner. Since FX obviously ain't it, maybe they can win one next year. And making better decisions is part of it - don't skimp on pixel shaders like 1.4 when the competition will be able to kill you with it.
They definitely need to catch back up to ATI - competition on this front is good for all of us.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
1371 http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k3=87981 Athlon XP 1600 GF4 TI4200 512 MB DDR
As much as I am lothe to waste space with another score, I'll do it all the same, as a form of eulogy for the video card that helped earn it.
Score: 1493
Date: 2003-02-15
CPU: AMD Athlon(tm) XP/MP/4 1741 MHz (XP 2100+)
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti 4400
275 MHz / 554 MHz
Memory: 512MB 333Mhz DDR
Sadly the ASUS GeForce4 Ti4400 that earned this score passed away on Monday evening, due to a burned out cooling fan. It spent its last moments on this world doing what it loved best, running my druid through the Plane of Tranquility in EverQuest. Services are postponed until the ASUS Technical Support Dept. gets their computer system back up and can issue me an RMA.
In Memorium: Asus 'speedy' GeForce4 Ti4400 (December 25, 2002 - February 24, 2003)
Rest in peace, dear friend, we hardly knew ye.
StrategyTalk.com, PC Game Forums
It's what i use
1713 3dmarks
AthlonXP 1600+ @ 1800MHz with 200FSB
512M PC3200 DDR
Geforce4 Ti4200 128M at 320/600Mhz core/RAM
Most things ran at single-digit framerates and still looked like crap.
Yeah, I'll post my scores... at least when it's done in a few hours! ...mmmmmm...1 fps...
NV30's complain == Intel's complaint about Itanium2
ATI's rendering == AMD's K7 X86 rendering + X87 float
Nvidia needs optimized paths in rendering so that they can perform the best. This is like IA-64 where it needs optimizing to make it perform better.
ATI's rendering paths are equally optimized, and do not require special programming.
As for 3DMark03, in 2 years, we will all have 10,000 in score and whatever graphic paths that it is using, it will get optimized for. They guide the industry just as much as Teh CarMkAc.
Nvidia and ATI both need to optimize for generic paths since the future isn't in specialized rendering paths. Carmack has already said he doesn't plan on code level optimizations in the future.
I recommend adding 3DMark01's score and 3DMark03's score to come up with a number that is best representative of the current gaming industry. A lot of it is DirectX7 & 8, with nothing in 9. The mix of the benchmarks would do well at covering the mix of the market now.
-SenatorPerry
There's a substantial thread on Ars Technica's forums that contains a ton of benchmark results. What it boils down to is that if you have a decent processor (Athlon XP 1600+ or better) and an NVidia GF4 Ti4600, you'll end up with something like 1500-1700 3DMarks. If you pull the GF4 out and slap in a Radeon 9700 Pro (and get the appropriate drivers installed, of course), your score would shoot up to over 4000 3DMarks.
I've got a Ti4600, and 3DMark 2003 runs like ass. Fortunately, Splinter Cell plays just fine, so I'll ignore the benchmark and get on with actually using the computer.
NVIDIA is at least partially right, though both ATI's and NVIDIA's statements seem to be skewed by marketing and PR: ATI likes the benchmark because it shows their card is better while NVIDIA doesn't like it because it shows their card is behind.
I have spent some time developing both 3D hardware and software, as well as other hardware and software in my 20+ years in the industry. I've learned many things in that time and one of them is never to trust a single benchmark to give an overall view of performance. In this case, in my opinion, 3DMark 2003 does not cut the mustard though it may be a somewhat useful tool in the future.
Today's 3D accelerated video hardware is as diverse as comparing computer systems built by Dell and Sun. Both perform the same basic functions, but both employ (nearly) entirely different components in order to do it. You wouldn't run a Sun Solaris application on the Dell Windows machine in order to compare its performance to the Sun system any more than you'd run a Windows application on the Sun. In addition, even if both machines were running Solaris - x86 Solaris for the Dell - you still wouldn't pull an application off the Sun box and try to run it on the Dell. You would run a version your application optimized for each machine - one compiled for x86 Solaris and the other for Sun Solaris.
ATI, NVIDIA, Matrox, etc. all use different hardware in their systems (I call them systems because in reality they are complex systems scaled down to fit on a single peripheral card). This hardware perfroms different from one system to the next. The only thing that is really in common between them all is the final result: they all support OpenGL and DirectX of some version. To complicate things even more, just as the computers above, these systems all use different software - down to the machine code level - in order to perform the same tasks. So how does this relate to benchmarking?
When engineers design hardware and software, they may find many ways to optimize parts of both in order to tweak performance. The tweaks may involve speed, precision, reliability, new features, or a combination. Decisions are made as to which direction to go and which method to use in order to implement these optimizations. The result is the varying systems we see today in 3D hardware. They all implement different aspects of DirectX and OpenGL in differing ways in order to provide an overall final result that is both appealing and is rendered in the shortest amount of time.
Now because all these systems differ so much, it's impossible to use the same standardized software on each to test performance. In the real world, performance applications such as games and 3D modeling applications are tweaked in order to provide an extra bit of performance for the computer systems they are targeted at. 3D card drivers are tweaked in different ways to improve the performance in different ways for different computer systems and applications. Any given set of standard DirectX or OpenGL code or even x86 code may run at different speeds between different computer and 3D card systems. Even when the computer systems are the same except for the 3D card installed, that set of standard code will run differently on both systems with different results. A standard benchmark is just not sufficient to compare such 3D systems.
To take a specific example, and one that could be significant, compare the difference in floating-point precision. ATI has a max. precision of 24-bits whereas NVIDIA has a max. of 32-bits. This is a huge differene when it come to 3D graphics and can be the difference between a good quality picture and a poor quality picture. When performing bump mapping calculations, specular lighting (or any lighting for that matter), a difference of 8-bits of precision can be the difference between an accurate rendering and a totally screwed up rendering. Sure, calculating 32-bits is going to take longer, but then using only 24-bits is going to sacrifice accuracy.SO is using only 24-bits a bad thing? No, not if you don't need the extra precision, but neither is using 32-bits a bad thing just because it's slower. It all depends upon your requirements.
In the end, the only way to truely compare 3D systems is to decide what you need for your applications. Then you need to understand all the areas for comparison such as texels per second (or frame), pixels per second, rendering passes, precision - basically all the different measurements you'll see relating to a 3D system. You need to realize that none of these cards will perform to their advertised specifications without optimized software, and sometimes the computer system itself will be a factor. Finally, you need to know how your particular application(s) will work with a particular computer/3D card combination and whether or not the application is optimized for a particular card.
In the end, unless you're a developer and need any of the DX 9 cards now for development, your best bet is to wait until there are more applications out that support all the features that these cards support. A single generic, standardized benchmark is not going to tell the true story. And as time moves on, the drivers for these cards will mature and results will change.
PGA
How slow SimCity 4 is running on your computer isn't because of your video card. The game has the highest system requirements of any game ever released (the specs on the box are basically false): it will lag hard once your cities go beyond the smallest size with anything less than a Duel 2.8ghz Xeon with 3gb of ram and a Radeon 9700 Pro. I kidd you not with these specs, the game really needs that to run without lagging hard.
the review site with an introduction spread out several pages, laden with adverts!
where else can on go to derive such pleasure in clicking "introduction, continued..." over and over again?
3DMark is sadly falling into the depths of deceptive marketing and bias views. Over at RCAM, we work with nVidia and use thier hardware for development. I have watched the anticipation for the Geforce FX rise yet I know nVidia already has a much better card up thier sleve. The delays in the industry are only to give the PR boys and girls more time to market yesterday's technology to the users of tomorrow. In conclusion no matter what the consumer market has to offer thier will always be something better 3 months later. Though because of the immoral ratings in this version of 3DMark it will be more difficult to determine which cards are really on top.
But at 171MB, I have a feeling somebody's in for a hefty bandwidth bill at the end of this month.
With the low scores everyone is posting, I'm concerned for my safety. If I run this benchmark on a system that's too slow for it, will it get a negative 3DMark score, or will it cause a total protonic reversal of the space-time continuium and destroy the entire universe? Or does my Radeon 8500 only possess enough processing power to cause destruction limited to my neighborhood? Oh well, I hope the answer wasn't in that clickwrap licence I just said OK to.
---
DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
Next well have manufacturers making us accept a EULA before installing the drivers that will forbid benchmarking their hardware. Sound familiar?
AMD XP TBred-B 2100+ OCed to 2700+ (166fsb x 13)
2x265MB DDR400 Clocked at 333Mhz, with 2-2-4-2 Timings (Dual Channel A7N8X Deluxe)
ATI Radeon 8500 Default Clocking
My Score was a wopping 1173 3DMARKS with
Program Version 3DMark03 Revision 1 Build 3
Resolution: 1024x768@32 bit
Texture Filtering: Optimal
Pixel Processing: None
Vertex Shaders: Optimal
Oh please, stop these threads. Now loads of idiots post:
"yay, how many more fps can I get in nethack with this card?"
I surmise as you do that to The Average Consumer nVidia feels a bit big for its britches. It is unfortunate as I feel that nVidia has done and is doing The Right Thing in so many other areas.
Cheers,
-- RLJ
Uh, PS1.1 and 1.4 are part of DX9; they just happen to be available on DX8 cards too. There's no reason why you _have_ to use PS2.0 on DX9 cards if earlier versions will work just as well... and it's likely that game developers will use the earlier versions where possible, for best backward compatibility with older cards.
Just imagine if every test had required DX9: people would be whining that their DX7 and DX8 cards couldn't run anything.
Direct X is not written to be the standard 3D engine, except in the sense that it is intended to be the *only* engine.
Let me ask you a question. How many OS's does Direct X run under?
No peeking.
That's right. One. Direct X is written to monopolize the gaming industry onto one OS, and, for the most part, it's working.
And *whose* OS is it written to work under?
Again, no peeking.
If MS wanted Direct X to be a standard gaming engine all they'd have to do is open the API, but that would destroy its very purpose.
You'd think they were *trying* to be a monopoly or something.
KFG
I had a dynamite series. Vesa Local bus
... pz all
used to be the top dog. Man faster the processor
faster the video game. Duke3D ran superb.
Graphics card companys are businesses. They
release new features here and there to keep
business. Top developers crack the whip more
these days expecting more potential out of them.
If you actaully believed what they wanted us to
believe about the potental right now, we'd be
simulating the earth. The crystal clear clarity
of the rivers running and the oceans churning.
That's bullshit. Code monkey's have known
for a long time there's only so much these
chunks of silicon will do. You basically have
to hack the rest of it together. Carmack was
mentioning something in his plan file once about comparing SGI quality 3D acceleration to PC quality. How the card does 3 jobs to one for the
processor etc. But in PC standards we're still doing all the work and etc. So I've forgotten what he was specifically said but I still dont' think we're anywhere near the quality of SGI machines.
I think we're just all getting tired of the lies by companies. Fucking tell the truth about what you can do or we want buy. I'm not attacking Nvidia, but I'm also tired of the fan noise from the huge fans on these cards. I've had the worst problems with my Nvidia card. The fan died. I had to visit radio shack and glue a 486 fan on mine, solder the splice i made for power. It over heats here and there and I really wish they would redisign the things.
whatever
But frankly, I'm sure that most people buy card primarily on the benchmark scores. Even if a review slags the quality of a driver, many people will buy the card anyway telling themselves that the drivers are gonna get fixed, a firmware upgrade will make it faster, and for the 20% of the time that the card works right, we've have 5 extra frames per second.
If benchmark scores didn't mean so much (both in sales and consumer opinion) then we might get back to meaningful metrics for measuring performance, but I suspect that we'll be looking at benchmark skullduggery for some time to come.
At present the ATI card is faster, but when you begin adding more shaders/textures the nvidia card is vastly superior and leaves ATIs' card severly underpowered. Look at multitexture (textures per pass) capabilities here of each card. In hindsight, I wish Nvidia did go for the 256 bit engine, much of this argument would not currently exist.
I am a Nvidia fan but not a fanatic, FutureMark by design does favour the newer Radeon cards over the newer Nvidia cards, whether or not it is by intent, I'm in no position to say. But, if I was allowed to speculate, I'd suggest a little industrial espionage (meaning indepth knowledge of the FX card) on ATI's behalf existed long before 3dmarks release, there's certain aspects of 3dmarks release that are questionable or at least circumstantial. Which does suggest "a spy amoung us" scenario.
I do believe ATI is pawning off a substandard card and is once again lying about it (Rage Maxx).
So the big fuss over 3dMark, isn't that it's proving the ATi to be better, it's just showing that they didn't think to write code that could actually compare the technologies effectively.
You "definately" don't know how to spell.
At present the ATI card is faster, but when you begin adding more shaders/textures the nvidia card is vastly superior and leaves ATIs card severly underpowered. Look at multitexture (textures per pass) capabilities here of each card. In hindsight, I wish Nvidia did go for the 256 bit engine, much of this argument would not currently exist.
I am a Nvidia fan but not a fanatic, FutureMark by design does favour the newer Radeon cards over the newer Nvidia cards, whether or not it is by intent, I'm in no position to say. But, if I was allowed to speculate, I'd suggest a little industrial espionage (meaning indepth knowledge of the FX card) on ATIs behalf existed long before 3dmarks release, there's certain aspects of 3dmarks release that are questionable or at least circumstantial. Which does suggest "a spy amoung us" scenario.
I do believe ATI is pawning off a substandard card and is once again lying about it (Rage Maxx).
Note:I accidently posted as AC (cookies), thus the repost.
Because if nVidia stuff is still faster on linux,
this entire story doesn't mean much to me. I'm
serious. Is anyone getting really great 3d on
Linux with an ATI products? I'm looking for faster
than geforce3 ti500 speed. If you are, how? XFree
DRI? Commercial ATI drivers? How good is the 3d
support for ATI cards on Linux at the moment, and
how stable are the drivers? If ATI is faster than
nVidia stuff on Linux right now, I'd seriously
consider switching camps. Thank In Advance!
The most important thing any republican needs to know.
Yeah, but at least I don't have to call Canada (ATI) for support.
When you think of games which demand the most of your video card, do you think of Crimson Skies, IL-2 Sturmovik, or Star Trek: Bridge Commander? I didn't think so, and that's because they are not amongst the most graphically demanding games. They're old titles (some of them anyway) and none of them were cutting-edge graphically when they were released.
Yet futuremark is pointing at them and saying that because they use single-pass texturing, it makes sense for their first demo to do so as well.
Secondly, NVidia claims that the shadowing is done wrong and makes poor use of vertex shaders. Futuremark this time says that the vertex shaders are not the bottleneck, that memory is, and thus this is a non-issue.
I call bullshit. While modern (superscalar) CPU designs can do more than one thing at a time, and AFAIK this tendency is extended to NVidia's GPUs (though in a different fashion, because different functional units are doing the processing at once in this scenario) there is still a tendency to only really be able to do one thing at a time. You can't process the next step until the vertex shader has done its job. For this reason, the time the vertex shaders require to complete will still slow down the overall benchmark. Just because there is another limiting factor doesn't mean that you're not losing crucial FPS because of a shitty implementation in the middle.
As for the pixel shaders, I have nothing to say about them. Futuremark's claims may indeed be accurate where it comes to pixel shaders but as you can see above, I Think they are full of shit on their other points.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
This is what is scaring me about Nvidia, Espicially since just about everything Nvidia makes is running my PC right now and it would be a cold day in hell before an ATI product touches my PC.
From what I've seen so far, Nvidia is doing the exact same thing that 3dfx Did when the voodoo3 came out, and whats more disturbing is that the're following the 3dfx downward spiral so close that you could praticially mirror the two, a sort of NVfx if you will.
Making Video cards, Pushing their Rendering Format harder than ever, Bashing Benchmarks, claiming that their hardware is limited for a reason, ETC. All of this failed miserably when 3dfx did it, and it's going to fail for Nvidia as well.
It wouldn't suprise me to see a dual GeforceFX board this year, or even a quad version. It's what 3dfx did before they went under.
In Soviet Russia, Trojan exploits YOU!
You can only benchmark what is common to all vendors cards, not what is unique to each one. That's just testing 101. Where did these people go to school?
+2 cents contributed.
system: p4 1.6@2.4, 512 meg DDR, Geforce 3 Ti500.
3dMark2001: 9510
3dMark2003: 1120
A benchmark can be used to stress a system, to determine if all components are running correctly, or to show off. So far, everybody who is complaining about 3DMark 2003 is using it to show off.... I have run this benchmark on my DirectX 9-compliant system and have determined that all my components are working correctly... my benchmark scores are comparable to other similar systems, some higher and some lower -- in the grand scheme of things, however, who cares?
ATI likes it and nVidia doesn't -- so what. Build your system, run the benchmark, jump in the mix and start bitching about your lousy score....
...we are from the government - we are here to help...
No, seriously though, I think this release shows that MadOnion is really spending its energies in the wrong places.
Rather than focus on exercising DX9 features, they seemed to have spent a great deal of effort in making 3DMark2003 *look* good. I mean, look at the artwork and sound. A benchmark is usually something that is ugly only because the developers energies are spent ensuring that:
1. Weaknesses of designs are exposed
2. Features are exercised
3. Benchmark optimization is minimized.
The obviously did not do that. They obviously spent their time attempting to graphically wow the gaming crowd instead of trying to create a truly useful tool for game developers.
Just kidding, maydja look. ha-ha
(On the other hand, if anyone actually wants to run this test, I'd be fascinated to see the result.)
ECS K7S5A
Athlon XP 2000+ (1.67GHz)
GeForce 4 Ti4200 64MB DDR (stock clock)
512MB PC2100 DDR-RAM
Windows XP Pro
1206 3DMarks.
I got 153 when I had a GeForce 2 MX400 and 256MB of DDR-RAM in there.
Quite an increase!
I remember when having a Geforce2 GTS 64MB equated to me having a huge cock on 3dmark 2000, and then it shrunk with 2001, and then i bought a Geforce4Ti 4200 then it got a little bigger again... and now its all small again with this latest 3d mark.....
maybe i should just get a classic car with poor gas milage and tons of HP, then everyone will know just how huge my member is!
BTW: A similar system (same card, same amount of ram) with an Athlon XP 16000 only scored 13,XXX.
I don't keep a lid on my coffee so when I walk around I look busy -me
Goddammit! When are these putz programmers going to learn to spell!?!
My box:
CPU: AMD Athlon(tm) XP/MP/4 1532 MHz
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti 4200
Score: 1294
Now, if I go to the Futuremark Project Search, enter my exact system, and change out my GF4 for a Radeon 9700, the top results are in the 4500 range. Which would suggest that I could get a 200% performance boost by buying an ATI card. However, game benchmarks suggest the 9700 would buy me a much smaller gain (5-50%, depending on the game/resolution/options). IMO, 3dmark places a bit too much emphasis on the newest DX9 features to be useful as a general performance benchmark.
amd athalon xp 2000+
784mb ddr 2100 or 2700 ram (I forget which speed)
gforce4 ti 4400
i can't get ut2k3 to skip unless at max everything and I zoom with the sniper rifle in face3 while flying high up in the air with 15 bots. anyone elses computer proclaim "holy shit" when you set everything to "Highest" and max?
sorry, don't know about the benchmark score, i'm downloading the program right now
Yes, you read that correctly. 62 3DMarks, where 3DMark 2001 gives me 3750. A bit skewed, eh? Well, here's my system:
- AMD Athlon @ 1070 MHz
- GeForce 2 GTS, core @ 206, mem @ 360
- 256 megs PC133 SDRAM
Of course, the fact that only one out of four tests actually worked explains my score. Fair? Sure, if you don't have an old card. I feel so left out...I'm just wondering if maybe Nvidia is trying to do to much to fast. Now that they have a hand in Xbox, motherboards, the creating of their own graphic language (Cg wasn't it?), are they loosing focus of what got them here? They used to be known for good products on a great 6 month cycle and now they seem to be slipping. Is this an example of a company that tried to branch out into to many things at once and not being able to maintain the high standards they were once known for?
benchmarks benchmarks...
didn't the parahelia beat nvidia at their own sharkmark?
yet... we all know what fate the parahelia is suffering
-judging another only defines yourself
ive got a northwood B / 2.4ghz
radeon 9700 pro
and 256 meg ddr
i get about 4500 3dmarks in '03, 1024x768x32
2189 3DMarks
Athlon XP 2200+
Sapphire Atlantis RADEON 9500 128Mb AGP4x
Catalyst 3.1
512Mb DDR333
Abit AT7 MAX
DX 9 + Win2k @ 1024x768
Mmmmm, looks like I'm stuck in the middle. As long as the guns keep blazing the same day I click, I should be content I guess. Or should I "Rivatune"-it to PRO?
Magnesius
p4 1.5 256k L2 512 megs RDRAM Radeon 8500 64 meg 1064 points.
When AMD's K6-2 processors were getting stomped by the Pentium II, it turned to 3DNow, leaning heavily on 3DNow-optimized Voodoo2 drivers and a 3DNow-optimized version of Quake 2. Anand's Monster 3D-2 review shows 3DNow improving a last-place 44 FPS to a competitive 76 FPS. Quake 2 played better because of the efforts of AMD and 3dfx. However, the results weren't representative, as the Turok and Forsaken benchmarks show.
I played System Shock 2 on a Voodoo3. At the time, 3dfx had Quake 3 on the brain, struggling to tweak its drivers to keep up with the GeForce. Those efforts were small consolation to me, as each new driver release would break something in System Shock, like making the weapon model sporadically disappear.
The problem with a marquis game like Quake is that it encourages short cuts. The testing is done when Quake runs (a little faster). I, for one, am glad that Quake 3 put an end to the miniGL nonsense. Give me a card with decent, reliable performance in standard APIs like OpenGL and Direct3D. Put it this way: would you buy a TV that was optimized for Friends?
The Geforce4 440 mobile on my Toshiba Satellite 5100 can't even run the benchmark...I just bought this thing, and I'm already outdated?!
What gives? Shouldn't they provide at least a couple benchmarks for older cards? Furthermore, the demos in 3dmarken are usually quite impressive, and I'd like to see it.
-- Bandit450...If-Else-Do-*TWITCH*!
But what matters is the FX market share. They've gone for something "revolutionary", rather than the incremental Geforce 1, 2, 3.. n. If it's too late, or overpriced, or badly marketed... we all know what happened to 3dfx.
Free Java games for your phone: Tontie, Sokoban
Here's a pointer: the company is NVIDIA Corporation, not nVidia, nVIDIA, Nvidia or anything but NVIDIA.
There I said what was due.
For all this talk about the accuracy of benchmarking, there's no mention of what's really important with 3DMark, and for me, has always been the only reason I hit the "download" button.
:)
It looks pretty. It makes me drool over the games I might be playing next year. And it makes me realise just how crappy my computer system really is
in indianapolis, and i had two old women drop a 286 on my desk and ask what they needed to make it run windows '95
;)
i told them to talk to the sales people
I think that the newest version of 3dMark delivers totally inaccurate scores.
My system:
Pentium 4 2.26 GHz (533 MHz bus)
512MB DDR400 Cosair Memory
GeForce 4 Ti 4400
Score: 711
My Friend's System:
AMD Athlon 2200+
512MB DDR300 Generic Memory
GeForce 4 Ti 4400
Score: 3,100
I think that this is totally inaccurate. FutureMark is gearing their product towards AMD and specific hardware vendors so they people think that their product is better. Don't use it -- the scores it delivers are totally inaccurate.
- - - - - - -
Orppf urp mf y.ppcxn. yflcbi otcnnov C am yflcbi yr n.apb Ekrpatv (Dvorak -> Qwerty)
Yeah, i can run @ 1260x980 with everything set to max - and then the game goes Holy Shit ... thats the funiest thing ever.
Oh, 1.9Ghz P4 1GB Memeory and a GF4 ti4600 128MB so screw benchmarks
Titania
-- Do not bite the bait of pleasure till you know there is no hook beneath it.
3dfx started losing around the time the tnt2 came out. Or maybe a little before that. Why? Quake.
Quake3 used full on 24bit color and big (256x256) textures. The 3dfx cards, including the voodoo3 and banshee, couldn't handle these larger textures OR the higher bit depth rendering. Nvidia beat them on features, and later framerates.
I traded my Banshee card for a TNT card back in the days when Quake3 first came out. After my friend saw Quake3 on the TNT card he wanted to trade back. Yes, it WAS that much of a difference.
These days, it's more about drivers and price/performance. Visual quality is pretty much the same to the human eye on all the high end cards, and framerates like 90fps+ are about all you can see. Anything more than that is just extra horsepower for higher details or the latest and greatest game.
Nvidia won't end up like 3dfx at this point in the game. It's just the two headed monster of ATI and NVIDIA, each with their own fans and pluses/minuses.
1608 3DMark 2003 Score
2100XP Athlon
512 PC2700 DDR
40GB 7200 RPM Maxtor HD
MSI KT3 Ultra-2 Mobo
41.09 nVidia drivers
4.45 VIA Drivers
It can run with 8 rendering pipelines or do the 4/2 thing that it does. nVidia is enforcing this through software because they say that it is faster in today's games.
That sounds like marketing speak for "the 8/1 mode isn't working right now, but we're trying to fix it in drivers."
People do seem to be making a big stink over the 4/2 thing. How they get the performance matters less than how well it performs in the real world, how easy it is for programers to program for (without making a mistake and introducing a bug) and how much it costs. The good news is that ATi caught up so we have competition. BTW, we've got both nvidia and ati our household.
Just as a additional point, although standard 35mm cinema film actually runs at 24fps, it actually projects 48 fps - Each physical frame is shown twice . This is because you get an unbearable flicker if you only show 24 images a second.
" To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism; to steal from many is research. "
A benchmark tests what it is designed to test. It gives almost no information about how *your* application is going to run. I've seen many examples where a particular graphics system had impressive benchmark scores, but ran actual applications at less than half the speed of graphic systems with much lower benchmark scores.
Then there is the price/performance trade off, also known as bang for the buck. Sure, some new card may run Quake at 7,000 frames per second, but your monitor only updates 80 times per second so why pay for a graphics card that gives you more than that many frames per second? It's like buying a car with a top seed of 300 MPH and driving it on city streets with a speed limit of 30. I guess it is fun to brag about owning it, but it is still a complete waste of money.
A long time ago a friend of mine and I came up with what we thought would be the perfect graphic benchmark: Teapot Revolutions per Second (TPS). (Hi Smitty!) The idea is to draw the Utah Teapot at various sizes and animate it by rotating it one degree per frame. How fast it spins with various rendering options turned on and off is your benchmark value. We figured it was at least as valid as any other benchmark we had seen and it was close enough to the canonical demo that people who don't understand graphics could brag about their hot new box with the super high TPS rating.
The moral of the story is that only idiots buy hardware based on benchmarks. You buy hardware based on testing your application on the hardware and seeing which hardware gives you the most bang for the buck.
Stonewolf
You didn't mention that "when a certain combination of options were chosen" meant "maximum visual quality". People are pissed that setting the card to 'best quality' looks ugly and you're talking like the bug only showed up when people fiddled with random settings.
Vague PR DuckSpeak phrases like that are intended to be immune to complaints of inaccuracy without conveying the specifics of what they're describing. Getting snotty that what you said was misunderstood is essentially complaining that your words had their intended effect.
OS Software is like love: The best way to make it grow is to give it away.
What are you smoking? The TNT came out a while before Quake3. In fact, the only thing I was playing when I got my TNT2 Ultra was just Quake2! The Quake3 test demo didn't come out until sometime after that. Get your facts straight.
Errr, I mean the Quake3 test demo came out after the TNT. Sorry for the confusion. The TNT2 series did come out after Q3Test,etc
Get Laid and Beat Up, Then Maybe you can get back to coding linux for use and end you petty bitch'n
We can use symlinks of course... syslogd would be a symlink to syslogp and
ftpd and ircd would be linked to ftpp and ircp... and of course the
point-to-point protocal paenguin.
-- Kevin M. Bealer, commenting on the penguin Linux logo
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