Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
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/
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.
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
Holy crap! Well, it looks like it's back to ye olde drawing board for me. To think that only a few weeks ago my MX-460 was the tenth fastest video card on the slate...
:)
Oh well. It runs all my 5 year old crappy abandonware like a demon, that's all I care about!
It's been a long time.
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.
Each version of 3DMark tests a new feature set than the last. nVidia are saying that most games are only using DirectX 8 (and they have a point), so the simple solution would be for people who care about this kind of thing to simply look at the scores from the previous version of the benchmark. End of story. Can we move on now?
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
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?
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
Next well have manufacturers making us accept a EULA before installing the drivers that will forbid benchmarking their hardware. Sound familiar?