I found this article this morning and was wondering why no one was talking about it.

http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inqu [...] 3dmark-177

Charlie Demerjian is there more that needs to be said. Theinquirer has less factual information than the Enquirer.

I normally don't believe the inquirer either. I just thought people would be jumping on this since there is a lot of nvidia hate due to the 4850 being released.

Actually, that particular article makes some very good points concerning Physx. The fact that it's used to boost 3dmark itself is biased. UT3 is the only game that actually use physx to any signficant degree. Mainstream games most often used for benchmarking, like Crysis, World in Conflict, and CoD 4 use generic physics engines that runs off cpu. That Physx boosted 3dmark score would not reflect in-game performance for 99% of games.

There isn't hate because of 4850, there is hate because of their constant greed, and refreshing of cards.

I don't care if they cheat (I think they cheated in the summer of 2007) as long as they don't cheat in real games.

Ati already has the flag for Picture quality, which is better than on Nvidia products.

its still not cheating

If it's against the futuremarks terms as outlined in the article, and it's recommended to reviewers for when comparing cards, then it's cheating.

It'll be called something else just like last time, so they'll have to refer to it as somethign like an error, err... floptimizations instead of cheating or else the Big Green Legal Team will be after Futuremark.

anywhoo, the moment that this became an option that influenced the final results was the moment that 3Dmark should be removed from any GPU review, because it's no longer a GPU test. Even the CPU test is now invalidated for board that might have different IGPs on them.

I never had much faith in bungholiomarks period, but to me this indalidates it even for those who thought it meant something, because now even comparing a GF9600GT to a GF8800GS will no longer give you an indication of the graphics cards themselves. Thus making the test no longer just invalid between IHVs but even between different models of the same IHV.

I actually stopped using 3dmark as a benchmark when I OCed my system and the 3dmark06 went from 10000 to 8000. All my games showed improvement, even the crysis benchmark showed improvement, but not 3dmark06. Now I do it to watch the pretty pictures.

You should really find out why that's the case...

I think that this should only be allowed when they have the kind of improvements in Futuremark that they have in games!

But anyway I don't even bother with all those benchmarks, only the simple stuff to test stability, my games are the real benchmarks!

TheGreatGrapeApe may i ask you a question, cant the physics driver be programmed to the same language as the generic physics engine so the driver will be able to communicate to the game's physics engine and perform better??

+2

I don't know enough about nV's physX implementation to answer that.
It would seem that while it's possible, it might require other tweaks more than just the driver, where you would need to tweak the actual application itself as well (otherwise it mighttreat the PPU the same as a GPU, and I doubt they are completely interchangeable just yet). As it uses what appears to be the stadard PhysX driver, it's likely somewhat emulated through the graphics driver, but to what extent I don't know.
Also rememebr there's no generic physics engine, there was the PhysX engine that was added to FutureMark's Vantage application, this isn't a generic API as if it were some Direct Physics test that was IHV agnostic.

However that's almost irrelevant to the question as it would relate to Futuremark setting out specific guidelines for their application and nVidia breaking those guidelines according to the article.
On the surface that means little as it's still a beta driver and nV could argue they were just testing things as Vantage being one of the few PhysX capable apps out there that allowed for fairly consistent testing, so this was more for educational/experimental purposes and not meant for the general public to use for official 3Dmark runs, as I'm sure their comments on this will state (along with mentioning not submitting the drivers for FM approval, etc).
However it's how nV promotes this driver that matters to the discussion, right now it's still considered a 'leaked beta' for the most part so the responsability/culpability isn't quite there yet since they can deny it ever being intended for public consumpition.

What would make it interesting to me would be if it allowed it to be installed alongside a card of another maker (like ATi or S3) where the primary display was the other company's, but the secondary card could be a GF8400 whose job is to do physics.

Anywhoo, I think futuremark will have to say something on this because as much as there is a large community of overclockers who will enjoy this just to get higher score in the HOF, it does pretty much once again cause FM the headache of the usefulness of its benchmark being called into question other than to simply get bungholiomarks. They'll either have to protect this strongly or else be further relegated to an irrlevant number like the Windows Experience Index. The wording of their Eula and partners' agreements were supposed to avoid any questionable floptimizations that FM didn't approve of and which they could quash. However I doubt there's anything they could ever do as long as nV doesn't make them part of the official WHQL driver set. They could release beta after beta after beta with them without ever having a legal issue IMO. And of course some review sites (like [H]) would use the betas as if they were WHQL since everyone knows that's what the enthusiasts are using anyways.

Hopefully it means the end of 3Dmarks in reviews, but I doubt that, as it's never seemed to stop people in the past.

i love the end where it said all the 3 company in the fight is trying to hide something!lol hope they are hiding something "good".

thanks for the reply TheGreatGrapeApe. i still own you an appology!SORRY!!!

Something tells me YouGamers forums are going to turn into a battlezone in the next couple of months.

Also, the Inquirer? I would sooner believe the local hobo than that crap-o-rama.