Nvidia Caught Cheating in 3dMark03

[Tom M]

Here's an interesting article, and something I've suspected for a while. Nvidia has gotten a little desperate lately it seems in the face of some actual competition with ATI (which they haven't had since 3dfx in the early days.)
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/news/news_6028894.html

 

[rjensen11]

Oh well, all I know is that my poor old ATI Radeon 8500 is well outdated, and so is my P4 1.7ghz, but they still work well for what I use them for.

 

[Solid Fro]

Nvidia has been pretty pissed off at Futuremark. Nvidia claims that 3DMark03 is to synthetic and does not represent actual games. Nvidia also goes on and said that hardware manufacturers waste time optimizing for a benchmark that doesn't represent real world games. Yet, Nvidia is caught cheating in 3DMark03, trying to optimize its drivers for better performance!

Nvidia does have one thing right. 3DMark03 really is to synthetic. Real benchmarkers will stick with 2001SE.

 

[Tom M]

Originally posted by Viper Zero
Nvidia has been pretty pissed off at Futuremark. Nvidia claims that 3DMark03 is to synthetic and does not represent actual games. Nvidia also goes on and said that hardware manufacturers waste time optimizing for a benchmark that doesn't represent real world games. Yet, Nvidia is caught cheating in 3DMark03, trying to optimize its drivers for better performance!

Nvidia does have one thing right. 3DMark03 really is to synthetic. Real benchmarkers will stick with 2001SE.

But 3dMark has name recognition, and when people read reviews on websites and see lower 3dmark scores they will probably lean toward the card with the higher specs (also basing it on price, etc etc...)
3dMark is more of a tech Demo than a benchmarking tool, but the harsh truth is that I've always noticed that Nvidia uses shortcuts compromising image quality for better performance.

 

[Solid Fro]

Originally posted by Tom M
But 3dMark has name recognition, and when people read reviews on websites and see lower 3dmark scores they will probably lean toward the card with the higher specs (also basing it on price, etc etc...)
3dMark is more of a tech Demo than a benchmarking tool, but the harsh truth is that I've always noticed that Nvidia uses shortcuts compromising image quality for better performance.

I agree. I always skip to the 3DMark and Quake III scores when I read a review. It's the only thing that matters to me.

I know Nvidia always cuts image quality for speed. I guess it is more of a personal choice. Want quality? Go with ATi. Want speed? Go with Nvidia.

 

[halfracedrift]

What if you want both?

 

[Solid Fro]

You can't have both.