Futuremark And Gainward Tangle Over Benchmarks

An anonymous reader writes "The optimization troubles in GPU land aren't over yet. Yesterday Futuremark released a new anti-optimization patch for 3DMark03. Gainward (who sell graphics cards using NVIDIA hardware) today made a comment that Futuremark had disabled certain features in their ForceWare 52.16 drivers, thus resulting in huge performance drops. A few hours ago Futuremark made an official statement about this : 'The accusation is totally wrong because what it suggests is not even feasible technically. 3DMark03 does not talk to graphics driver, it talks to the DirectX API, which then talks to the driver. Thus, it is impossible for the application to disable GPU compiler...'"

Comments

Oh..

[OutRigged]

Oh the drama..

Personally I think benchmarking programs of this kind are outdated. I could really care less when the ATI Radeon 12500XTS gets 100 more 3DMarks then the GeForce TXP xi5000 Extreme. What does that matter?

What matters to me is real world performance. And by all means, let the companies 'cheat' in that area. If it takes away little/no quality, and makes the games I play faster, more power to 'em.

omg

[Apreche]

I wish people would stop fighting over which stupid video card is better than which other stupid video card. All these people who care about benchmarks and all this other shit are the same people who think that audio cable made of gold and platinum will make their music sound better. All that matters is

a) is your video card good enough to do the things you do.

b) the price/performance ratio, unless you have tons of money.

That's all that matters. If your video card can run with vertical sync on and not lose frames in your favorite games, then you're all good. I've noticed Ati does a little better with the DirectX and Nvidia does a little better with the OpenGL. What it comes down to is they are both good cards that both work. Choose the one that suits your needs. Things like VIVO or DVI out are much more important features than 5fps more than the other guy.

I've got a GeForce FX5900, from gainward in fact. And you know what, it's not the fastest thing there is. It's fast enough for me though. I can play all my games. I will be able to play Doom3 and Half-Life 2. The card will last me 5 years. My TNT2 last me 5 years, there's no reason this one wont. It has VIVO, it has DVI, and I can plug two monitors into it. That's all that matters. If I lose some fps here or get some more over there, it wouldn't bother me a bit. I run vsync anyway so my fps is usually locked at 85.

So, what does your video card do different than mine? Well there's this one program that makes numbers show up on the screen. Your video card makes bigger numbers show up in this program and mine makes smaller numbers show up. Lucky you!

Re:omg

[SuuSt]

a) is your video card good enough to do the things you do.

b) the price/performance ratio, unless you have tons of money.

And how, preciselly, are we supposed to determine those price/performance ratios if our benchmarking suites are lying to us?

Re:omg

[slittle]

Reviews featuring benchmarks taken from real games, preferably the specific games you intend to play.

Who gives a fig if drivers are 'creatively optimised' for real games, so long as the quality doesn't suffer?

Benchmark apps are for e-wang waving.

Things like these...

[Zelet]

... make me realize how stupid I've been for so long. I used to buy thousands of dollars of computer equipment to be able to play the latest games until a friend of mine asked me, "Why don't you spend $200 and get a console?" You know what, there is no good reason not to. I'm a moron.

Re:Things like these...

[Babbster]

I understand. First-person shooters are the light of the PC gamer's life, and if they can't run their FPS at 1600x1200 with full detail then the game sucks. I don't think people who enjoy their PS2s are crying rivers over the fact that Doom 3 isn't going to be on their console. More likely, they're looking forward to playing one of the 20+ potentially good games coming out for their system just in the rest of this month (Battlestar Galactica, Final Fantasy X-2, Fatal Frame 2, Monster Rancher 4, Metal Arms, Secret Weapons Over Normandy to name a few - only ONE of which will be coming out for the PC anytime soon). Then again, maybe at the realization that they can't play any of them on a $500 256MB graphics card they'll just jump off a bridge.

I think I'll knock this comment down to 1. It has the smell of flamebait but I still feel the need to post it. :)