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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."
well luckily for me I've renamed all my executables files 3DMark03.exe for some time now.
Mike
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.
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.
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.
Wearing pants should always be optional.
I tried various tricks too. Oddly, renaming it to Outlook.exe made it crash.
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.
Slashdotter are stupid and biased.
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.
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One is born into aristocracy, but mediocrity can only be achieved through hard work.
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.
the q3 physics when jumping works best with fps's where the rounding errors in calculating the path through discrete points are maximised.
p s. html
43 76 & 125 all produce similar results.
http://ucguides.savagehelp.com/Quake3/FAQFPSJum
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.