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

High or low level strategy?

[MattGrounds]

What I'm interested in is:

a) Is this indicative of a high level strategy by NVidia's management, who's marketing department is pressuring them to have higher 3DMark2003 scores than ATI?

OR

b) Has some low level device driver programmer (intern?) looked to get some easy brownie points by "optimising" the drivers for 3dMark2003 in a slightly clunky way?

Either is quite interesting :) I've been a victim/perpetrator of both in the past.

Re:High or low level strategy?

[BigFootApe]

a) Is this indicative of a high level strategy by NVidia's management, who's marketing department is pressuring them to have higher 3DMark2003 scores than ATI?

Of course it is. Fudging the drivers for a synthetic benchmark are a time honored way to make crappy hardware look good.

Make NVIDIA drivers Open Source!

[Lieutenant_Dan]

If we could have the Open Source developer community review and improve these drivers we would not encounter any problems with them. The experience and integrity of the Open Source developer community would be vital for the consumer to take Nvidia cards seriously in the market.

Benchmarks would reflect the actual performance of the card instead of skewing the results in order to garner favorable reviews.

Only when we allow Nvidia to see the benefits of Open Source can we free the graphic benchmark software from the clutches of Matrox.

Shades of 3DFX in nVidia

[saden1]

If nVidia continues to have these bulky video cards which take two PCI slots and make noise like a whale they just might go by the way side just like 3DFX.

nVidia is walking a tight rope and for the first time in six years I'm actually going to consider buying an ATI. Come September 30th there is 90% chance that I'll have an ATI card on my machine.