More 'Application-Specific' Optimizations in NVidia Drivers

EconolineCrush writes "Futuremark and NVIDIA have been embroiled in a spat over various cheat/optimizations in 3DMark03 for several weeks now. Last week, the soap opera appeared to be over; Futuremark and NVIDIA released a joint statement in which Futuremark clarified that NVIDIA was optimizing its drivers for 3DMark03 rather than cheating. This story, however, appears to be far from over. Tech Report has uncovered a new series of optimizations in NVIDIA's Detonator FX drivers that affect image quality in even Futuremark's latest 3DMark03 build. What's more, if you rename the 3DMark03 executable, the optimizations disappear."

Comments

It's the reviewers' fault

[91degrees]

They always use the 3DMark results as though it's some sort of holy scripture, and as though a benchmark can indicate how well it will work in a real everyday situation. Every industry optimises for benchmarks. From a marketing point of view, it's insane not to.

The only reliable way to test is by testing it withthe applications it's used for. Get some actual games, and see what the frame rate is. If they optimise for those tests then it doesn't matter! It means they're oiptmised for real world situations.

Re:It's the reviewers' fault

[DrXym]

By all means, hardware vendors should use benchmarks and games to optimise performance. A well designed benchmark will exercise a driver in a controlled manner in a way it will be typically in real life and thus is a good way to improve real world performance.

But this is not optimising, it's deliberately cheating. That's what it's called when you ignore the settings you were told to use and substitute in your own faster ones, simply because you know you're running a benchmark programme used by consumers and reviewers to determine performance. Cheating may not a strong enough word - this almost amounts to fraud, claiming one thing and delivering another.

I will take a wait and see attitude.

[Prince_Ali]

You can't trust results for older games, and you can't trust benchmarks evidenlty. I think the best thing is just to wait for the new generation of games which will surely clear things up.
It doesn't make sense to buy a card to run Doom 3 when the game isn't out. Here is a clue, when Doom 3 does come out I will be able to buy something as powerful as the FX 5900 for $150.
I'm going to go into an offtopic rant now. It is sad that we have huge displays and crazy-go-nuts graphics processors on computers, but consoles will probably always beat PCs for game size. Game makers are too scared to release a DVD only game, so our games are limited to 700MB by disk, and don't even get me started on controllers.

Re:So What? Who Cares?

[confused one]

Uh, no. The mass market will buy the box with the prettier logo, The box with the lower price, or the box that magazine xyz (that they read) says is best.

Sad, but true.

Most people will shop around, to make sure the features they're looking for are simply there and work. Beyond that, they don't do the research to understand which version is better unless they're forced to.

Re:So What? Who Cares?

[Slack-Jawed Local]

Absolutely! I can't believe that some people are saying this isn't cheating!! Here's the deal, prior to any optimisation/cheating... App programmer tells card to render something -> Card renders it the way app programmer tells it to -> User sees what app programmer intended. After optimisation... App programmer tells card to render something -> Card renders it the way app programmer tells it to, but faster -> User sees what app programmer intended. After cheating... Programmer tells card to render something -> Driver programmer decides that, actually app programmer doesn't know what he/she is talking about and shouldn't have told it to render the thing that way and that they know a much better way to render it -> Card renders it the way the driver programmer tells it to, which (surprise!) is faster -> User sees what driver programmer intended. The point is that what the app programmer and driver programmer intended are different things. This, in itself is not a cheat. The cheat comes in when the driver programmer doesn't tell people about the change and instead let's people think that a difference in FPS between competitor cards is because of differences in power, rather than differences in what they are trying to render. It's a matter of trust that graphics cards render things the way the app tells them to. To do otherwise is cheating. Plain and simple.