Slashdot Mirror
Intel Caught Cheating In 3DMark Benchmark
EconolineCrush writes "3DMark Vantage developer Futuremark has clear guidelines for what sort of driver optimizations are permitted with its graphics benchmark. Intel's current Windows 7 drivers appear to be in direct violation, offloading the graphics workload onto the CPU to artificially inflate scores for the company's integrated graphics chipsets. The Tech Report lays out the evidence, along with Intel's response, and illustrates that 3DMark scores don't necessarily track with game performance, anyway."
Is 3DMark the benchmark that will give a higher score to a VIA graphics card if the Vendor ID is changed to Nvidia?
Intel fully admits that the integrated chipset graphics aren't that great. They freely admit that they offload rendering to the CPU in some cases. This isn't a secret.
Its funny that Intel simply creates an INF file and uses those to detect apps and optimize for performance. I mean, if you are detecting a file name and enabling performance optimizations, why not detect the app behaviour itself and make the optimizations generic ? Clearly you know the app behaviour and you know the performance optimizations work. This seem to me a case where people were asked to ship it out fast and instead of taking the time to plug the optimization into the tool, they just made it a hack. A really bad one too!!!
Sure, but how hard would it actually be for a graphics driver to scan an arbitrary executable and determine a) that it's a game and b) how it will behave when executed? I suppose they could model it after the heuristic and behavioristic features of some antivirus/antispyware applications, but nothing about this problem sounds trivial. There's also the question about how bloated of a graphics driver you are willing to accept.
My guess is that the above concerns explain why this was a poorly-executed hack.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Oh, ATI was one of the first to cheat on a graphics benchmark quack.exe anyone?
Oh this type of thing has been going on for a VERY long time. For example, there was the Chang Modification back in 1988 (It slowed down the system clock that was used as a timing base for the benchmark, resulting in higher benchmark scores).
Don't tell me to get a life. I had one once. It sucked.
Oh, ATI was one of the first to cheat on a graphics benchmark quack.exe anyone?
Oh this type of thing has been going on for a VERY long time.
I even remember teapot based hacks (although not the details unfortunately, probably something along the lines of having the teapot hardwired somewhere) back when displaying rotating GL teapots was all the rage to test graphics hardware (ancient history, obviously).
Of course something like Quake was still the stuff of science fiction at the time.
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
I think the point is to benchmark the performance of the gpu. If your fav-game-of-the-month looks fabulous on your friend's hopped up system with xyz graphics card, you expect to get the same graphics performance if you buy the same card, despite having a lower class processor. If the game is already taxing your friend's CPU to play smoothly, imagine the reduced gameplay AND graphics you'll get when you try it on your system, since it's trying to offload GPU work to your already burdened CPU?
There's simply no excuse for changing your behavior when you detect a benchmark app is running. Fraud, fraud, fraud. That's no better than the driver software screwing with the benchmark app as it runs or modifying its output before it's displayed, bugging it into displaying completely made-up numbers of their choosing.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.