NVIDIA -- How to regain your trust [Archive]

Dave H

28-May-2003, 06:45

The best way for Nvidia to regain my trust is for them to produce hardware and software drivers that is on par or superior to that of their competitors at the same price bracket. ie: DX9 support, single-slot card, better looking AA, faster and better looking AF, no image quality artifacts.

Unfortunately, I don't expect Nvidia to approach this until the Fall/Winter season.

I'll 2nd that.

BRiT and K.I.L.E.R.-

No offense, but IMO opinions like yours are exactly the reason Nvidia cheats. The "winner take all" attitude held by so many people who follow 3d hardware distorts the industry. I mean, look at what you said: the only thing that will make you regain your trust in Nvidia's honesty is when they get back the technology lead? Huh??

This makes no sense whatsoever, but AFAICT the vast majority of forum posters (not necessarily the B3D forums, but in general) agree to conflate their views of a company's honesty and integrity with its engineering prowess and market success. All this does is make it impossible (as a business matter) for Nvidia to do anything but lead a quixotic campaign of disinformation to try to actively dispute the fact that their high-end cards have fallen behind ATI's in the last product cycle.

By claiming specs and features for their hardware that don't actually exist (not to mention claiming to have launched hardware which doesn't exist), demonizing 3dMark, cheating profligately, and ridiculously accusing FM of rigging the test against them, Nvidia has obviously lost the support of their more informed former-fanboys. But if they had done the ethical thing and told the truth about their specs and launch delays, had continued to support 3dMark even when by its measure that they lost to ATI on both absolute and price/performance bases, then they would have seen all their fanboys abandon them just as viciously. At least this way, they still keep the dumb and gullible. (And hey, the money of the dumb and gullible is worth just as much as the money of us smarties.)

That's the problem: 3d is always seen about who's #1 right now, even though it's surely has the fastest product generation turnover of any sector of the electronics hardware industry. Nvidia still has awesome engineers and scientists, and clearly holds the potential to regain the performance crown with NV40 and keep it for who knows how long. They just had a spate of bad luck, where several tough decisions ended up having gone the wrong way and proceeded to bite them in the ass.

[Namely:
1) devoting too much focus and R&D to XBox/nForce
2) choosing to design CineFX (particularly NV30-34's version) around the idea of having three data types in the fragment shader pipeline and offering a trade-off of performance for precision--which was not necessarily a bad idea in itself, but turned out disasterously when DX9 and ARB_fragment_program instead went with ATI's all-FP24 model
3) designing NV30 for low-k .13u before TSMC screwed the transition up royally]

But as they work through the down-period caused inevitably by the fallout from all that bad luck (plus ATI executing brilliantly on R300), Nvidia clearly sees their best strategy being to pretend none of this ever happened. Because otherwise they have no talking points to sell their fanboys on. When it was ATI who couldn't keep up at the high end, they could at least point to legitimate advantages which made their cards worthwhile for some: lower prices, better 2d image quality, or the option of AIW. As Nvidia's reputation has always been about performance, they have nothing else to stand on. The only talking points Nvidia can hand out now are "they're wrong"; "it's not true"; "they're out to get us"; "they did the same thing--hey, everybody does it!" (Not to mention "hey, remember when their drivers used to be buggy? Yeah...me too. I'm just sayin', ya' know...'hey remember'. Yeah.")

Unfortunately, this drivel works to string enough people along that they still managed to sell totally outclassed GF4 products for ages at high margins. Of course they lose more and more people all the time, but with an, um, interesting story to tell at the mainstream with the 5200, a decent upper-midrange product coming online in the 5600, and some benchmark victories from the vaporware 5900, they're already in an infinitely better position than they were a few months back.

Their lying and disinformation has meant that they've lost a lot fewer fans over the months of having a black hole at the top of their product lineup than if they'd come clean at every opportunity. Does this mean it's paid off for them? Not yet. After all, if the opinion-makers in the community (that's us in the forum, of course, but much more so the webmasters) refuse to forgive Nvidia for the shit they've pulled then it can end up hurting them much more in the long run.

But if the reaction instead is that once Nvidia gets another stellar product out there, and maybe improves the sample positions for their AA modes, all is forgiven, that will prove lying and cheating was the smart thing to do along.

K.I.L.E.R

28-May-2003, 08:36

Dave, I could go into a massive brawl with you about how pointy headed your post is, so I am just going to say it:

The end result counts.

I am not interested in who is number 1 in the industry. I am interested in who is number 1 for me. That doesn't mean I will take a video card that gives me 500fps than my current 1 which does 300fps or 490fps with better IQ.

You should NEVER trust a company.
How can you forgive a company for it doing what it sets out to do? NVIDIA are in it to make money, and so are Ati. Anyone who thinks different is a fool.

Cheating, bribery, blackmail and murder can also be part of making money. Do you remember the Enron scandal? I wasn't surprised for a second. I expect all business to be like that, even worse.

IMO Dave: You have found out that businesses all cheat a bit too late.

Did you really think Ati or NV give a rats ass about you? If the majority do dislike them for cheating, do you think they will stop?
Do you think peoples opinions matter to them about cheating? They will cheat any way they can, instead they will try and be more discrete about it. Ati and NV along with the many other corporations will never stop cheating wheather you like it or not.

Dave H

28-May-2003, 09:49

K.I.L.E.R.-

There's a difference between arguing on behalf of an IHV in forums and choosing to buy their product when you're in the market for a new video card. The question was not "when will Nvidia have the best product again" BRiT: "not until they have the best product again!" K.I.L.E.R.: "I agree!". It was when will Nvidia regain your trust. "When they have the best product again" is a nonsense answer.

The fact is, few of us are in the market for a new card at any given time, and none of us posts here simply out of a desire to figure out which card to get. We post here because we're interested in the 3d industry and feel we have a stake in how it develops.

All companies most assuredly do not cheat*, because most companies believe that, in their position, the benefits of cheating are likely outweighed by the product of the chance that they will get caught and the consequences if they do. Nvidia has gambled that that inequality works the other way in the 3d industry. Attitudes like the one BRiT expressed (and you seconded) demonstrate that they probably made the right bet. Which is sad.

Does this mean I won't buy an Nvidia card if, say, 6 months from now I were in the market and their product really was the best for me? Not necessarily. But I certainly won't trust that the card is what they say or performs like initial benchmarks suggest unless I am damn convinced by in-depth independent investigations and much better anti-cheating safeguards than exist now. Even if I did buy the card, I won't trust their PR for a long time.

*I've followed various parts of the computer industry pretty closely for a number of years, and I've certainly seen that most companies in the industry (which is a particularly grueling one) will stoop to distortion and severe spinning of the facts once they find their industry position in trouble. But Nvidia's actions of the past 6 months or so are truly breathtaking: certainly in terms of the brazenness with which they have gone about cheating, lying, and attacking FM; but perhaps even more so in terms of the number of people who defend them and continue to believe every word they say.

K.I.L.E.R

28-May-2003, 09:59

There's a difference between arguing on behalf of an IHV in forums and choosing to buy their product when you're in the market for a new video card. The question was not "when will Nvidia have the best product again" BRiT: "not until they have the best product again!" K.I.L.E.R.: "I agree!". It was when will Nvidia regain your trust. "When they have the best product again" is a nonsense answer.

Ahh yes, sorry. I read it all wrong.

Well, if a company (which are all businesses/comapnies/corporations) doesn't have my trust in the first place then they don't have any trust to earn back.

I never trusted Ati or nVIDIA in the first place, they never will have my trust. They are out to get my money, I know that. Why should I trust anyone who is out there to get my money?

Dave H

28-May-2003, 11:10

Ahh yes, sorry. I read it all wrong.

No problem; it happens. :)

Well, if a company (which are all businesses/comapnies/corporations) doesn't have my trust in the first place then they don't have any trust to earn back.

I never trusted Ati or nVIDIA in the first place, they never will have my trust. They are out to get my money, I know that. Why should I trust anyone who is out there to get my money?

:shock: You're a paranoid one, aren't you?

To answer the question, though: you should trust someone who is out to get your money if they would make more money in the long run by being trustworthy than not. If a company is caught cheating/lying, they may lose more customers than they gained through the cheat/lie in the first place.

As I said, recent events are making me question if this feedback mechanism really works in the consumer 3d industry, as so many seem so willing to be spinned. But in most industries it does work, to varying degrees.

K.I.L.E.R

28-May-2003, 11:54

You're a paranoid one, aren't you?

Nah, just carefull. :)
VERY carefull. :lol:

28-May-2003, 14:20

What can they do to win my trust?

1) Keep making good products. With some better AA. Not that OGx4 crap since GF3.

2) Shut up. Their PR is out of controll. They need to nip it in the bud. Dont ever talk about others products. Also stop the build of of upcoming products. Are you ready? 30 Tnl Titles by xmas?

3) Work on game optimizations only. It would have been better to loose at 3dmark scores and yet have strong game perfromance. Not saying the do/dont. But I am saying they put too much time in one.

RussSchultz

28-May-2003, 15:21

What can they do to win my trust?

I'm easy: money. Lots of money. Euro's please, since the dollar's in the dumper.

martrox

28-May-2003, 15:56

Russ....you whore! :wink:

He may be easy....dut it doesn't mean he's cheap!

BRiT

29-May-2003, 00:27

Alright, let me try to clearify my thoughts on this issue, as I feel my thoughts/viewpoint are nearly diametricly opposite to why Nvidia cheats.

What I should have said is I won't trust them regardless of what they say, as I don't feel Nvidia will be honest until they are truely/genuinely competative.

By competitive I mean: on actual gameplay or independent benchmarks from a trusted source, user experience and opinions on gameplay, screenshots for image quality of actual gameplay, user experience and opinions on image quality during actual gameplay*. It's been a long time since I believed that what timedemo benchmarks show actually reflect real gameplay experience.

*IE: situations where timedemo only optimizations are impossible to perform {static clipping-planes, z-buffer clears, manual detection shader replacement, etc...}.

I will not trust them until the following occurs:

A) Image Quality on par or better than competition
B) DX9 support
C) single-slot card
D) cost competative

Until they can offer A, B, C and D, I have no reason to even listen to what they say to determine if it's true or not, as they do not offer a product I'm interested in.

Nvidia is the one with the mentality of "Winner take all". So much so that they'll go to the point of cheating until they're the winner. I feel that until they're the clear winner without cheating, they'll keep cheating.

I hope that clarifies my view. If not let me know what points I'm not presenting well enough.

BenSkywalker

29-May-2003, 04:03

What did it take for people to regain their trust in ATi when they were nailed cheating in 3DWinBench? It never changed my level of trust in them, which is low to beging with as a company anyway. It irritated me that they spent time creating custom code to drop frames in a synthetic bench when they had so many games horribly broken at the time with their RagePro, but it didn't change my level of trust at all. I didn't trust them to deliver me solid drivers then and that issue didn't change. Right now, I don't have any big driver issues with the nV board I'm running so really I'm not all that interested in the entire 3DM2K3 debacle.

My level of trust in any company is based on what actually impacts me. Did I get what I was expecting to with my money? If the answer is yes, then as a company that lands my "trust". If I had a single bug that was giving me problems playing a game using nV's drivers and this happened I'd be pretty pissed off and my trust would accordingly drop.

Speaking of PR departments, it is their job to overhype anything and everything they can. Look at marketshare for simple evidence that not only is nV's PR department not likely to be in trouble, but more likely to get a bonus then anything. nV has been screwing up in the eyes of the tech enthusiast crowd for close to a year now, and their marketshare has increased. Product delays, shipping issues, failed to hit specs and they increase their marketshare. They also have the entire 'The Way It's Meant To Be Played' campaign which is very effective. Anyone who believes a PR department on anything they say at face value is quite frankly a moron. Their reason for existing is to overhype the products they handle. If a product was so incredible it sold itself, there would be no need for PR :)

RussSchultz

29-May-2003, 04:06

If a product was so incredible it sold itself, there would be no need for PR :)

Let it be known that I have no PR department. :)

Joe DeFuria

29-May-2003, 04:46

WhatRight now, I don't have any big driver issues with the nV board I'm running so really I'm not all that interested in the entire 3DM2K3 debacle.

On the other hand, I have MAJOR trust issues when it comes to Nvidia FX series shader performance.

My level of trust in any company is based on what actually impacts me. Did I get what I was expecting to with my money?

So, what happens if due to all the "lies, damn lies", you have no idea what you should expect to get with your money? That's what's at issue here.

I have a much better idea about shader performance on R-300. Based on what I've seen of NV3X, all I can say is "it's about half of R-300...unless nVidia decides the shader app is worth 'optimizing' for, and in that case, it's probably on par performance wise, but visual quality could be anywhere from comparable, to significantly worse."

How I define "trust" in a company is similar to your definition. However, it's not only getting what you expect that's important....it's having a high degree of confidence in what you expect to get before you get it.

We can't even really conclude what kind of effective architecture NV30/35 is, and nVidia isn't being forthcoming. Performance boosts of 100% based on app detection and shader swapping, clip planes, etc.

I have very little trust for nVidia at the moment.

What could they do to regain my trust? Simple. Be honest and forthcoming. (See ATI's statement to FM cheat). No one is saying you can't "market" your products. But nVidia's marketing causes me to have little confidence to be able to ascertain what I'd get for my money...so nVidia doesn't get my trust, or my money for that matter.

Solomon

29-May-2003, 05:36

Here's a thought, How about websites not ass kissing hardware companies. It's so far and few to have an honest review now-a-days. It wasn't that long ago when we had honest reviews. If the card or hardware was bad they said it. Now it seems it's all business and the truth gets clouded. I'm very subjective. I would like to see all Fan sites gone. Hehe.

What would get my trust back in nVidia? Nothing... I don't follow what they say much. I buy what will work best with my software. I can careless about the glitz and glamor and all the big words the PR people use. I would like to see some software to utilize the hardware. I don't know if this statement is true or not these days, but have we seen any game that tapped the power of the GeForce 3? I remember hearing about that a couple of times that no game has utilized every feature of a video card because the technology moves to fast.

Do we need video cards to go in the way of consoles? 1 to 3 years for each card technology?

BenSkywalker

29-May-2003, 06:35

Joe-

On the other hand, I have MAJOR trust issues when it comes to Nvidia FX series shader performance.

What trust issue exactly? What they are outputting compared to what is called for?

So, what happens if due to all the "lies, damn lies", you have no idea what you should expect to get with your money? That's what's at issue here.

And how does this differ from the norm? ATi's claims that the R200 core boards supported AF I find a far greater use of misinformation then what nV is doing with their shaders. There the IQ gap was staggering, no need for close ups. I understand perfectly what you are saying, I simply find things like drivers that work with all games to be of much greater importance. Who is misleading consumers more? I guess calling driver issues with games misleading implies that you work under the assumption that the drivers for your board will work without issue, which is something that I do so perhaps I'm in error on that point but I find it far more important then PS 2.0 levels of precission.

How I define "trust" in a company is similar to your definition. However, it's not only getting what you expect that's important....it's having a high degree of confidence in what you expect to get before you get it.

I agree with that. Which company is supposedly truly forthcoming?

AlphaWolf

29-May-2003, 09:11

In an age where companies seek greater means to protect intellectual property and being litigious seems to be the norm, I seriously doubt you will find anyone 'truly forthcoming'. However I do not see a campaign of misinformation and conspiracy theories as a step in the right direction. Maybe a swift kick in the wallet will straighten Nvidia out and maybe if their drivers rendered the scenes properly we could see the 2nd shooter on the grassy knoll.

Dave H

29-May-2003, 10:03

I hope that clarifies my view. If not let me know what points I'm not presenting well enough.

It does, and in a lot of ways that attitude makes sense. It's not the one I choose to take, although maybe it would be if I were interested more as a potential consumer than as someone with an interest in the technology; that is, it might be the more accurate attitude to take when one's money is at stake.

To be honest I suspected I was somewhat caricaturing your argument in the first place, and now that you have clarified it, I can say that was definitely the case. But even if your views don't embody it, I was trying to make the point that the graphics world is full of fair weather fanboys, to the extent where Nvidia might actually be better off having navigated their recent off period with lies, cheats, bluster and vapor, than if they had taken a more ethical and dignified response to their probably-temporary less-competitive position.

Sorry if I implied that you were an immoral evil person along the way. :wink:

Joe DeFuria

29-May-2003, 20:11

I agree with that. Which company is supposedly truly forthcoming?

Before I address the rest of your post...please tell me you are being sarcastic?

Do you think there is no difference in which company is more forthcoming (ATI and nVidia):

1) Depiction of Hardware Capability (Why is everyone comfortble with R3x0 performance, and there are new threads every day with respect to pipelines and precision and different driver sets on nVidia hardware?)

2) Response to FutureMark's documentation of driver detection optimizations?

To be clear, I did not claim that ANY company is "truly, 100% forthcoming", if that's what you think I said. There is, however, a world of difference between ATI and the R300 core, and nVidia and the NV3x core.

YeuEmMaiMai

29-May-2003, 20:15

1. nVidia were to concentrate on making GREAT HARDWARE instead of GREAT DRIVER HACKS.

2. nVidia were to quit trying to make their competitors look bad by releasing things like the Kyro II PDF or the Quack.exe tool kit. They are definately making themselves look bad in the GFX business.

You see when i switched over from S3 cards to ATi cards, I did not care about the speed, I cared about what I saw on the screen and definately cared about how the 2D looked at higher resolutions. That ruled out any chance of getting an nVidia product.. Kinda sad that a savage 3D/4/2K has better IQ than any GForce 256 or GF2 card on the market....

Who cares if you can render quake III at 300 FPS if the IQ SUCKS?

Hellbinder

29-May-2003, 21:58

Benskywalker,

It would simply take to much time to really address all the Spin and Misinformation you just posted in your last few posts. Suffice it to say I am hard pressed to find one clear honest statement from anything you put in this thread.

I wont even Try to address the issues of Nvidias Trstworthyness. Becuase Frankly they have gotten away with murder for a long time now. It is very clear to me that they have a history of Hacking IQ for speed, just as guilty if not more so of Dropping frames, using underhanded tactics against competitors (Kyro doc, Quak) and outrigtht lying and paying people off to coverup their dirty work.

For someone to try to say that the R300 did not do AF in the face of Quincunx, Hacked mipmap levels and other issues simply demonstrates the nature of the problem we have today. These are not the kind of issues that are even being discussed here. Every single manufacturer has little differences in their approach to things and what they offer. None of them are an issue of Cheating, or what the topic of this thread is about. Yet there is a Ready army of people at the ready to muddy the water so much than anything resebleing the real issue is lost.

It is my personal Opinion that Nvidia is one of the most Preditory companies around. Preditory to a fault. This is at the core of some of the very Questionable things they have done throughout their history, including what they are currently trying to do to Futuremark. The only real Cure to this is a complete Gutting of their Senior leadership from the CEO down. They need new blood. Just like ATi needed a Good Shakeup recently and new infusion of leadership and technology.

BenSkywalker

30-May-2003, 01:32

Before I address the rest of your post...please tell me you are being sarcastic?

Why do you think that?

Do you think there is no difference in which company is more forthcoming (ATI and nVidia):

I think there are differences but more based on what level they have for which issues.

1) Depiction of Hardware Capability (Why is everyone comfortble with R3x0 performance, and there are new threads every day with respect to pipelines and precision and different driver sets on nVidia hardware?)

And this is an area that ATi is more honest about.

2) Response to FutureMark's documentation of driver detection optimizations?

Another area where ATi has an edge.

There is, however, a world of difference between ATI and the R300 core, and nVidia and the NV3x core.

What about ATi's issues? Do you think it is honest to say that the R200 core boards support AF?

Why can't ATi admit to the issues with improper filtering on their R300 based boards? Why is it that thousands of users suffer from rolling lines unless they use the DVI>VGA adaptor? This is for built by ATi boards btw.

Why is ATi optimizing to increase their scores in benches at all when they still have numerous issues with in game bugs?

Which issues effect end users more in terms of companies being truly forthcoming? Based on the information that people are looking for on this board for the most part that would be ATi, but what about to the typical end user?

Hellbinder-

It is very clear to me that they have a history of Hacking IQ for speed

Compared to who?

OpenGL guy

30-May-2003, 03:01

What about ATi's issues? Do you think it is honest to say that the R200 core boards support AF?
Doesn't enabling AF on the R200 improve image quality? Sure, it's different from nvidia's implementation, but it still works well most of the time.
Why can't ATi admit to the issues with improper filtering on their R300 based boards?
Improper filtering where? I don't see any such problems.
Why is it that thousands of users suffer from rolling lines unless they use the DVI>VGA adaptor? This is for built by ATi boards btw.
Thousands? Where'd you get that number?
Why is ATi optimizing to increase their scores in benches at all when they still have numerous issues with in game bugs?
What game bugs are you referring to? nvidia (and every other IHV) has bugs too, yet they continue to optimize their drivers. Why do you think that is?

FUDie

30-May-2003, 03:08

What about ATi's issues? Do you think it is honest to say that the R200 core boards support AF?
Do you think it's honest to say that the GeForce 3/4/FX support MSAA? 2x lacks gamma correction, 4x lacks gamma correction and is on an ordered grid. Both of these modes look far worse than comparable modes on the R300-based boards. NVIDIA has made no attempt to improve these MSAA modes in 3 or 4 generations of chips, yet ATI has improved the AF quality of their chips.

-FUDie

BenSkywalker

30-May-2003, 13:09

Doesn't enabling AF on the R200 improve image quality?

No. Degrades rather seriously I would say. Far too much aliasing introduced with the R200 core boards.

Improper filtering where? I don't see any such problems.

Didn't clarify on that engouh, although the context you are likely thinking of is another valid one(although the FX isn't up to par either, at least its fairly constant no matter what angle). Power/signal line noise filtering is what I was talking about.

Thousands? Where'd you get that number?

Unless every single one of the people who have the problem in the entire world post at AT or R3D then I would say it is easily within the thousands range.

What game bugs are you referring to?

With the optimizations being present in the Cat3.2s and the list of bug fixes in the Cat 3.4s, there appear to be a rather sizeable amount.

nvidia (and every other IHV) has bugs too, yet they continue to optimize their drivers. Why do you think that is?

I've seen a couple of those, all fixed either through the game cfg files or using RivaTuner. If they were something I saw I would certainly mention it(as I did when I ran in to the SS 'no clip' style artifacts).

Do you think it's honest to say that the GeForce 3/4/FX support MSAA? 2x lacks gamma correction, 4x lacks gamma correction and is on an ordered grid.

Fire up a flight sim with AF cranked on any R200 core board and do a roll. This is a completely different order of magnitude. For the particular examples you are bringing up, take some screenshots in CounterStrike Italy map and compare the R300 running 6x AA to a GF2 running 4x.

Joe DeFuria

30-May-2003, 14:38

Ben, I'm not sure where you are trying to deflect this argument to.

Different vendors have different implementations of AA and AF. Any debate about how effective any individual implementation is mostly irrlelevant.

It's how forthcoming and honest the companies are about their "implementations" that's relevant. I'd say both companies have been pretty similar with respect to being "forthcoming" about their implementations. Neither of them disclose the details of how they do things.

Quincunx, IMO, is a much more "deceptive" PR campaign (4X quality at 2X performance!), than ATI's aniso.

And ATI actually documenting their fixed and known remaining bugs with driver releases is a bad thing? This is another example of exactly how they are more forthcoming than nVidia.

martrox

30-May-2003, 14:44

Ben, like many "supporters of nVidia" <trying to be nice :wink: > interests are not in being objective...... he would rather complain about how "bad" ATI is than admit what nVidia is/has done.......

LeStoffer

30-May-2003, 20:31

1) Sack some of the 'middle' level manament guys that the company got in a hury during the rapid growth period. A company needs them during those times, but afterwards they tend to change things around in a way that mainly supports themselves staying in a now reduntant job.

2) Sack most if not all of their PR team - especially the responsably chaps (sorry Rev.!)

3) Make the new PR team issue a decent (it doesn't even have to be totally true, just professional) statement on the 3Dmark03 fiasco.

4) Get the driver team back on course.

5) Make a kick ass NV40/NV41

Dunno, maybe the management should just lay off the pot and arrogant stance and remember where they came from. Sometimes it's really simple, nVidia. :wink:

OpenGL guy

30-May-2003, 20:43

Doesn't enabling AF on the R200 improve image quality?

No. Degrades rather seriously I would say. Far too much aliasing introduced with the R200 core boards.
It never bothered me.
Improper filtering where? I don't see any such problems.

Didn't clarify on that engouh, although the context you are likely thinking of is another valid one(although the FX isn't up to par either, at least its fairly constant no matter what angle). Power/signal line noise filtering is what I was talking about.
I haven't experienced this so can't comment.
Thousands? Where'd you get that number?

Unless every single one of the people who have the problem in the entire world post at AT or R3D then I would say it is easily within the thousands range.
Or maybe there is a good percentage of the people posting on Rage3D; you don't know either way.
What game bugs are you referring to?
With the optimizations being present in the Cat3.2s and the list of bug fixes in the Cat 3.4s, there appear to be a rather sizeable amount.
So we shouldn't fix bugs? We shouldn't tell you what bugs we've fixed? What?
nvidia (and every other IHV) has bugs too, yet they continue to optimize their drivers. Why do you think that is?
I've seen a couple of those, all fixed either through the game cfg files or using RivaTuner. If they were something I saw I would certainly mention it(as I did when I ran in to the SS 'no clip' style artifacts).
I see. You found a workaround for the bug so that makes it less of a bug. Many of the bugs people have found with ATI products have workarounds too, so you better take those off your list as well.
Do you think it's honest to say that the GeForce 3/4/FX support MSAA? 2x lacks gamma correction, 4x lacks gamma correction and is on an ordered grid.
Fire up a flight sim with AF cranked on any R200 core board and do a roll. This is a completely different order of magnitude. For the particular examples you are bringing up, take some screenshots in CounterStrike Italy map and compare the R300 running 6x AA to a GF2 running 4x.
Did I even mention the GeForce 2? No (I even added bold to my quote above so you can see). Why? Because it lacks MSAA. The GeForce 2 lacks AF (except for the mostly worthless "2x aniso") too. Why bring it up? Is there some reason why you didn't answer my question?

YeuEmMaiMai

30-May-2003, 21:35

man of man,

anyone want to crank up their GF1 to GF3 cards to oh lets say 1600*1200?

can you even read the text without getting a headache.

ANSIO on R300 looks just as GOOD as nVidia's approach without the I am going to kill performance part

FSAA ATi's 6X rotated multisample LOOKS WAY BETTER than nVidia's 8X supersampled AA and performs alomost 300% faster.

BenSkywalker

31-May-2003, 01:14

Joe-

Ben, I'm not sure where you are trying to deflect this argument to.

I am not trying to deflect or argue, I'm pointing out that how you judge a particular IHV's 'honesty' depends greatly on perspective.

Different vendors have different implementations of AA and AF. Any debate about how effective any individual implementation is mostly irrlelevant.

Using adaptive AF is OK, but using adaptive shader code isn't is what you are saying?

Quincunx, IMO, is a much more "deceptive" PR campaign (4X quality at 2X performance!), than ATI's aniso.

If nV didn't have anything better then Quincunx I'd agree.

And ATI actually documenting their fixed and known remaining bugs with driver releases is a bad thing?

There was an attempt to imply that ATi didn't have many game bugs in their drivers that were optimized for 3DMark2K3, while they had a lengthy list of bugs that were present. I said nothing in any way to indicate that them listing bugs was a bad thing, that is something you would have to stretch hard to read.

Martrox-

Ben, like many "supporters of nVidia" <trying to be nice > interests are not in being objective...... he would rather complain about how "bad" ATI is than admit what nVidia is/has done.......

nVidia cheated in 3DMark2K3, they also degraded the AF quality moving from NV2X to NV3X. Their NV30 generates way too much heat and their early drivers for it had serious issues in regards to AF quality and performance. By placing too much faith in TSMC they screwed up the launch of all the NV3X boards that have shipped to date and they also underestimated the competition in the mid range market forcing them to revise one of their mainstream volume parts(the 5600). Then there was the whole TNT debacle, as fast as a V2 SLI setup while they weren't able to get their clock speed close to as fast as they aimed for and ended up falling well short of their boasts until the TNT2 shipped.

OGL-

Or maybe there is a good percentage of the people posting on Rage3D; you don't know either way.

Between AT and R3D there are hundreds of users who have the issue.

I see. You found a workaround for the bug so that makes it less of a bug.

In terms of how it impacts me, which is what I've been sayig all along, absolutely. I spent a month looking for workarounds to some of the bugs in ATi's drivers and couldn't for all of them. Those that I was able to find workarounds for I don't continue to list.

Did I even mention the GeForce 2?

That was a response to FUDie, not you.

YEMM-

anyone want to crank up their GF1 to GF3 cards to oh lets say 1600*1200?

can you even read the text without getting a headache.

My Gainward GF2Pro450 had easily superior 2D quality compared to my built by ATi Radeon 9500Pro, my Herc GF1 DDR edged it out even(though it was far from great, wasn't as bad as the R300 core). Without the DVI>VGA adapter, which was needed to get rid of the rolling lines, the R9500Pro was almost as crisp and clear as the Gainward in 2D, but not quite. Unfortunately due to the rolling lines the adapter was needed which reduced 2D quality down to the poorest I've had since my Diamond Viper V550(that includes a V3 and Herc Kyro2 also). Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of nVidia based boards that have horrendous 2D quality. The BFG GF4 Ti board I have now is easily inferior to the Gainward it replaces on that front, and also worse then the ATi board without adaptor(but not with it).

FSAA ATi's 6X rotated multisample LOOKS WAY BETTER than nVidia's 8X supersampled AA and performs alomost 300% faster.

The problem is no SuperSampling option for older games, which nVidia has. For current titles I'd agree with you, the difference is comparable to how much better the GF4 Ti's AF is then the R300s(although obviously the speed of the R300 is staggeringly faster).

SirPauly

31-May-2003, 01:19

It doesn't matter to me personally because I don't form my views on 3d hardware based on PR.

OpenGL guy

31-May-2003, 01:19

Did I even mention the GeForce 2?

That was a response to FUDie, not you.
No wonder it didn't make sense to me. Thanks for adding attributions to the quotes.

Joe DeFuria

31-May-2003, 02:03

I am not trying to deflect or argue, I'm pointing out that how you judge a particular IHV's 'honesty' depends greatly on perspective.

And I'm still trying to find out from what "perspective" you can see nVidia being more "truthful / forthcoming" than ATI. I've listed several cases in which ATI was more forthcoming (which you agreed with), and other cases seem about equal.

Using adaptive AF is OK, but using adaptive shader code isn't is what you are saying?

What is "adaptive shader code?" Creating output that differs from the one the developer intended, by changing the shader algotighm behind his back, is not "adaptive". Its deceptive, and not forthcoming.

Like AA, Aniso filtering has different implementations. To say or imply that one's aniso implementation is "wrong" because it is of lower quality, then you'd have to say that nVidia's AA is "wrong."

Or I could say that nVidia's aniso was wrong, because it was so "slow".

You can't have your cake and eat it too.

Quincunx, IMO, is a much more "deceptive" PR campaign (4X quality at 2X performance!), than ATI's aniso.

If nV didn't have anything better then Quincunx I'd agree.

Why does that matter?

There was an attempt to imply that ATi didn't have many game bugs in their drivers that were optimized for 3DMark2K3, while they had a lengthy list of bugs that were present. I said nothing in any way to indicate that them listing bugs was a bad thing, that is something you would have to stretch hard to read.

:?:

Where was such an implication made? Talk about reading into things. The only implication I see being made is from you: your implication that ATI has more bugs than nVidia. (Because ATI has a bug list, and "all the bugs that you know of in nVidia's drivers can be worked around.) Talk about a stretch...

FUDie

31-May-2003, 08:49

Do you think it's honest to say that the GeForce 3/4/FX support MSAA? 2x lacks gamma correction, 4x lacks gamma correction and is on an ordered grid.
Fire up a flight sim with AF cranked on any R200 core board and do a roll. This is a completely different order of magnitude. For the particular examples you are bringing up, take some screenshots in CounterStrike Italy map and compare the R300 running 6x AA to a GF2 running 4x.
As OpenGL guy mentioned, the GeForce 2 wasn't one of the boards listed. I said, "MSAA", which the GeForce 2 doesn't support, but the GeForce 3/4/FX allegedly do.

-FUDie

BenSkywalker

31-May-2003, 12:57

Joe-

And I'm still trying to find out from what "perspective" you can see nVidia being more "truthful / forthcoming" than ATI.

I already mentioned perhaps a large part of my problem is with my perspective. When I purchase a computer hardware item I expect it to have fully functioning drivers without any serious issues period. If I see a product on the shelf, then the drivers that match above criteria should be a given. There are some exceptions to this, I don't expect anyone's drivers except nV's to work with any real intensive 3D utilization(Viz, CAD etc), but outside of that I expect it to work as it should and as it is implied that it does when I purchase it. When I ran 3dfx this is how it worked, I had a Kyro2 and while it had some minor issues it still worked for the most part and it did so without any major problems, when I run nVidia this is how it works. In the last five years I have had two boards that failed to live up to fairly basic driver standards- an ATi All In Wonder Pro 8MB (RagePro) and a Radeon 9500Pro.

The basis of your issues with nVidia is in relation to trusting them and what it would take for you to do so. Every nV board I have purchased has performed within or exceeded my expectations, same with 3dfx and same with PowerVR.

What is "adaptive shader code?" Creating output that differs from the one the developer intended, by changing the shader algotighm behind his back, is not "adaptive". Its deceptive, and not forthcoming.

Like AA, Aniso filtering has different implementations. To say or imply that one's aniso implementation is "wrong" because it is of lower quality, then you'd have to say that nVidia's AA is "wrong."

The NV2X's AF is 'right', the NV3X isn't, although it's better then the ATi alternatives. "Adaptive shader code" is altering what the shader should be doing to output inferior results, much like ATi's AF. The big difference I see between them is I use AF in every single game I play and I have, let me count.... 0 games that support PS 2.0 ;)

Or I could say that nVidia's aniso was wrong, because it was so "slow".

You can't have your cake and eat it too.

Speed is irrelevant to doing something properly or hacking it. I've already stated in a previous post in this thread "they also degraded the AF quality moving from NV2X to NV3X".

Why does that matter?

I don't live in a theoretical vacum. What impacts me is what I care about. nVidia's and ATi's 16bit color looks like ass compared to 3dfx's, you think anyone should care in the least? If you are talking about trusting PR, I don't trust any as I have already stated anyone that does is moronic.

Where was such an implication made? Talk about reading into things. The only implication I see being made is from you: your implication that ATI has more bugs than nVidia. (Because ATI has a bug list, and "all the bugs that you know of in nVidia's drivers can be worked around.) Talk about a stretch...

List off nV's bugs that would impact me that can't be worked around easily. I've asked this of numerous people who try and state that ATi's drivers are competitive with nV's and haven't seen a good response yet. I tried to find workarounds to those issues that I had with ATi's drivers, I spent a month trying to work around them before I gave up.

FUDie-

As OpenGL guy mentioned, the GeForce 2 wasn't one of the boards listed. I said, "MSAA", which the GeForce 2 doesn't support, but the GeForce 3/4/FX allegedly do.

They support it and it works as advertised and as it has. They do not only filter the edges that they deem worthy of being filtered which is what would need to be taking place for it to be comparable to ATi's or nV's NV3X AF.

Joe DeFuria

31-May-2003, 14:28

When I purchase a computer hardware item I expect it to have fully functioning drivers without any serious issues period.

For me it's not "period". It's also living up to performance expectations bsaed on specs and reviews. And if the p/reviews and specs are so ambiguous so that I don't even know what I SHOULD expect, then there's no way in hell I'm going to buy it.

The basis of your issues with nVidia is in relation to trusting them and what it would take for you to do so.

Um, that's the basis of this discussion.

Every nV board I have purchased has performed within or exceeded my expectations, same with 3dfx and same with PowerVR.

I had a somewhat opposite experience. The only NV card that I owned that worked "as expected" was a Riva 128. And that's only becuase I also had a 3dfx Voodoo Graphics to run the GL Quake while nVidia got there GL driver implemented.

My TNT had to be returned because it had issues with my LX motherboard. Just wouldn't work at all.

My 3dfx and Radeon 8500 boards worked with no probs. (Though I almost returned the 8500 because Smoothvision wasn't in the initial drivers. It was implemented within a month and I was satisfied with it.)

The NV2X's AF is 'right', the NV3X isn't,

I disagree. We've had this "right or wrong Aniso" discussion on this board before though. NV2x's aniso is higher quality than R2/3xx. Not more "right".

"Adaptive shader code" is altering what the shader should be doing to output inferior results, much like ATi's AF.

No. The application developer doesn't "code" the algorithms for anisotropic filtering. He flips a bit and says "hardware, apply aniso". This is unlike what he does for shaders, where he programs the algorithms himself.

Speed is irrelevant to doing something properly or hacking it. I've already stated in a previous post in this thread "they also degraded the AF quality moving from NV2X to NV3X".

Speed is not irrelevant when choosing how to implement a feature which does not have a specific definition for implementation, like AA or Aniso.

I don't live in a theoretical vacum. What impacts me is what I care about. nVidia's and ATi's 16bit color looks like ass compared to 3dfx's, you think anyone should care in the least?

Of course they should. Especially if performance in 32 bit mode on nVidia's and ATI's cards is not up to par with 3dfx's 16 bit.

If you are talking about trusting PR, I don't trust any as I have already stated anyone that does is moronic.

There's a distinction between blindly trusting PR, and [i]PR being so elusive / dishonest, that you can't being able to verify their claims.[/quote]

See all the current nVidia discussions surrounding pipelines, shader precision, driver cheats, etc.

List off nV's bugs that would impact me that can't be worked around easily. I've asked this of numerous people who try and state that ATi's drivers are competitive with nV's and haven't seen a good response yet.

Geezus, Ben, head on over to NVNews and browse the forums for all sorts of problems. Ditto for Rage 3D.

You'll find 3 types of people on each forum:
1) I can't get this thing to work AT ALL!
2) I have issues X-Y and Z, but everything else is OK
3) I have no problems at all.

heck, Try to get Humus's mandelbot demo to run with 32 bit precision on an NV30/3/34. Good luck trying to "work around them."

martrox

31-May-2003, 15:29

I had far more problems with my GF3 than I've had with my 9500P/9700P/9800P.... Thats not to say that I haven't had problems.... But they were less than with the GF3, and just a few more than the GF4 at the time I originally got into the R300..... Right now, I would say that they GF4& R300/350 are about the same. - or at least very close, enough to efectively take drivers out of the loop - with regards to the GF4. GFFX is another can of worms ATM. I will admit that replacing drivers is a bit more involved with ATI.... but once you know how it's very painless.....

K.I.L.E.R

31-May-2003, 15:40

I haven't had problems with any Trident/S3/NV/3dfx or Ati cards (I have owned a lot). I just want IQ. Since that is the case I will stick with my R300 for a long time to come.

Game/rendering related problems on the other hand are different from driver related ones. IE: MSAA in Final Fantasy 7 creates background borders.
Even SSAA doesn't fix it. Disabling AA does. Though who disables AA? ;)

I'm sure that a driver team sometimes can walk around problems, though it can't be FIXED by the driver team.

BenSkywalker

31-May-2003, 17:22

Joe-

For me it's not "period".

So you do not care if you have drivers that work with all your games, that clears up that misunderstanding. I guess I'm in the minority with unwavering demands on that end.

It's also living up to performance expectations bsaed on specs and reviews. And if the p/reviews and specs are so ambiguous so that I don't even know what I SHOULD expect, then there's no way in hell I'm going to buy it.

You have seen and criticized nV's non Cg PS 2.0 shader performance quite a bit, what exactly would the surprise be?

My TNT had to be returned because it had issues with my LX motherboard. Just wouldn't work at all.

I have always blamed issues with vid cards and mobos on the motherboards. This included Intel's decission to drop support for the AGP 1.0 spec completely leaving V5 owners out in the cold.

I disagree. We've had this "right or wrong Aniso" discussion on this board before though. NV2x's aniso is higher quality than R2/3xx. Not more "right".

When you select 8x AF do you always get 8x AF on every texture that needs it with the R200/R300/NV30? No. Do you with the NV2X? Yes.

No. The application developer doesn't "code" the algorithms for anisotropic filtering. He flips a bit and says "hardware, apply aniso". This is unlike what he does for shaders, where he programs the algorithms himself.

And when he flips that bit that states to apply anisotropic he should assume that the board will apply a random level of filtering based on if it thinks it is an important angle or not? I understand the difference you are pointing out, the big difference for me is one matters to me right now in every game I play and the other is a big issue for synthetic demos.

Speed is not irrelevant when choosing how to implement a feature which does not have a specific definition for implementation, like AA or Aniso.

Then Quincunx is OK? I sure as hell never use it. ;)

Of course they should. Especially if performance in 32 bit mode on nVidia's and ATI's cards is not up to par with 3dfx's 16 bit.

I'm talking about the R3x0 and NV3x level parts and comparing them to 3dfx's 16bit. Their 16bit quality still blows, do you care? Should anyone?

There's a distinction between blindly trusting PR, and PR being so elusive / dishonest, that you can't being able to verify their claims.

PR = Ignore. It's really quite simple :)

Geezus, Ben, head on over to NVNews and browse the forums for all sorts of problems. Ditto for Rage 3D.

You'll find 3 types of people on each forum:
1) I can't get this thing to work AT ALL!
2) I have issues X-Y and Z, but everything else is OK
3) I have no problems at all.

Checked through the first five pages at nVNews nV forum and found one person who has an issue with a TNT2 under Linux not working properly, and another thread with someone who has a MSI K7N2 mobo and a Ti4200 who has issues under OpenGL, along with another poster with a like mobo who has the same problem with a R9700Pro. Wait, missed one. A guy running a couple of NFS games and SplinterCell has some flickering textures, he says the board isn't OCd but it sounds like OCing artifacts. I'd go to Rage3D for info on problems with nV hardware with the same level of trust I would going to Intel for problems with AMD hardware. I do read AT daily however, and I am still asking the same question. What problems are there supposed to be? I have a couple hundred games for my PC here, and I have been known to purchase games just to check on supposed issues before. Just tell me what the game is that is supposed to have problems so I can check it. Since their problems are supposed to be comparable to ATi's, just list the game/s.

heck, Try to get Humus's mandelbot demo to run with 32 bit precision on an NV30/3/34. Good luck trying to "work around them."

A demo? I guess if I was interested in the demo scene that would be a viable concern. Maybe that's my issue, focusing on games and not synthetics/demos?

Martrox-

I had far more problems with my GF3 than I've had with my 9500P/9700P/9800P

What problems? Which games with which drivers? I'm honestly asking here.

KILER-

Game/rendering related problems on the other hand are different from driver related ones. IE: MSAA in Final Fantasy 7 creates background borders.

I don't expect IHVs to fix game bugs, just have their drivers working. FF7 was a steaming POS in terms of the quality of its code if you weren't running a 3dfx board(despite being a D3D game upon release).

FUDie

31-May-2003, 18:33

As OpenGL guy mentioned, the GeForce 2 wasn't one of the boards listed. I said, "MSAA", which the GeForce 2 doesn't support, but the GeForce 3/4/FX allegedly do.
They support it and it works as advertised and as it has. They do not only filter the edges that they deem worthy of being filtered which is what would need to be taking place for it to be comparable to ATi's or nV's NV3X AF.
Except that MSAA on the GeForce 3/4/FX is far lower quality than ATI's implementation. First, the NVIDIA boards lack gamma correction. Second, the nvidia boards use an ordered grid for 4x AA. The edge quality produced by NVIDIA's MSAA technique is far inferior to ATI's. Thus, by your own logic, that casts doubt on whether the NVIDIA boards really support MSAA.

BTW, the "alternative" AF modes on the NV3X chips is of far worse quality than the R300-based chips.

-FUDie

Joe DeFuria

31-May-2003, 19:13

So you do not care if you have drivers that work with all your games, that clears up that misunderstanding. I guess I'm in the minority with unwavering demands on that end.

Um, no. I said that having drivers and hardware that work is not the ONLY thing I care about.

So, you do not care if the card meets your performance expectations? Do you even have any performance expectations?

You have seen and criticized nV's non Cg PS 2.0 shader performance quite a bit, what exactly would the surprise be?

I have NO IDEA at this point what the true performance is with 32 bit shaders on NV30/31/34 vs. NV35. Each driver revision seems to do things differently, and newer driver revisions show performance "boosts" on older PS tests, with quality degredations common, while newer *cough* unoptimized *cough* tests don't seem to show such boosts.

Everybody on this message board is running tests and re-tests with a variety of hardware and drivers and shading apps to try and figure out wtf is going on.

No, I have no idea wat to expect.

My best guess: If a shading game or test becomes "popular" enough, nvidia can create "optimized" drivers for NV3x hardwares that bring DX9 pixel shading performance not quite up to R300 performance, and likely with image quality degredation.

If the app or test is not popular, I'll likely be stuck with abysmal PS 2.0 performance.

I have always blamed issues with vid cards and mobos on the motherboards.

Doesn't matter. I owned that LX MOBO for a year or so, plugged in the TNT, and it didn't work. I expect new products to work with already existing ones.

When you select 8x AF do you always get 8x AF on every texture that needs it with the R200/R300/NV30? No. Do you with the NV2X? Yes.

Using that logic, I guess Parhelias Fragment AA is not real AA then? Of course it is, even though it doesn't apply AA to all "edges that it should."

Heck, is MSAA real AA? It doesn't AA textures, which any "full scene AA" should.

And when he flips that bit that states to apply anisotropic he should assume that the board will apply a random level of filtering based on if it thinks it is an important angle or not?

He should assume that "anisotropic filtering" is applied, by whatever mean the IHV has implemented it. Filtering is just a way to reduce artifacts. It's not something used to "create" the scene / art.

I understand the difference you are pointing out, the big difference for me is one matters to me right now in every game I play and the other is a big issue for synthetic demos.

I again don't understand the tangent you are going off on. We're talking about "truthfulness" and being forward correct?

Has ATI ever not been forward about it's Aniso implementation?

Then Quincunx is OK? I sure as hell never use it. ;)

The CHOICE to have Quincunx mode is certainly is OK. Advertising it as a big PR feature as "4X quality with 2X performance" is not OK.

I'm talking about the R3x0 and NV3x level parts and comparing them to 3dfx's 16bit. Their 16bit quality still blows, do you care? Should anyone?

What relevance does that have at all with our discussion?

PR = Ignore. It's really quite simple :)

Soory, Ben, but when the product doesn't speak for itself (like the current NV3x fiasco...we're all still trying to figure out WTF they are), your only choice is to also use PR statements, interviews, etc as a guide.

The overall point is: I couldn't trust the NV3x architecture further than I could throw it. If nVidia wants me to trust them (which is what this thread is about), nVidia has to come clean about its architecture / performance expectations.

Checked through the first five pages at nVNews nV forum and found one person who has an issue with a TNT2 under Linux not working properly, and another thread with someone who has a MSI K7N2 mobo and a Ti4200 who has issues under OpenGL, along with another poster with a like mobo who has the same problem with a R9700Pro. Wait, missed one....

??

http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=26

I didn't even read the threads, just read the headlines for god's sake. "Blue Screens", FSAA not working, Digital Vibrance issues....

I really don't get what you're trying to say, Ben. Are you really trying to imply that nVidia's drivers don't have as many issues as Catalyst drivers?

hA demo? I guess if I was interested in the demo scene that would be a viable concern. Maybe that's my issue, focusing on games and not synthetics/demos?

You issue is that these synthetic demos give us a clue as to what to expect with upcoming games.

It's all about expectations, Ben.

Presumably you buy a card only for how it plays the games in your current library? No thought whatsoever about how it will handle games you haven't bought yet?

Joe DeFuria

31-May-2003, 19:25

You know, perhaps I'm approaching this the wrong way with you, Ben.

There is one single key difference between ATI and nVidia and their level of "trust", that basically speaks volumes.

Beyond3D is a "tier 1" media/review site for ATI.
Beyond3D is not a "tier 1" media/review site for nVidia.

To me, that says, relatively speaking, ATI trusts B3D more than nVidia does.

That, in and of itself, makes ATI more trustworthy to me than nVidia.

So, to answer the subject heading question: Do you know what would go a long way toward me gaining my trust back with nVidia? nVidia putting Beyond3D on the tier 1 list.

Dave Baumann

31-May-2003, 21:31

Somehow I suspect we've dropped of the tier entirely now... :?

micron

31-May-2003, 23:03

Somehow I suspect we've dropped of the tier entirely now... :?
Well, if Nvidia doesnt like B3D, then Nvidiots across the web wont like B3D either. I'ts going to be one of those cases of "B3D is biased and doesnt even matter"....I've already seen it happen in the [H] forums, not that it matters what they think anyways.

LeStoffer

31-May-2003, 23:14

Somehow I suspect we've dropped of the tier entirely now... :?

:?:

Should we gather from this that your normal contacts within the company has been 'muted'?

OpenGL guy

01-Jun-2003, 00:02

I don't expect IHVs to fix game bugs, just have their drivers working.
This is too funny. Do you know how many bugs we've fixed in our drivers that were actually game bugs? Bugs that you'd never know about if you always used the same vendor's cards during development, but you'd notice immediately if you used another's. You may find it hard to believe, but some of the features of your favorite vendor's cards are bugged (i.e. don't follow specs).

Sometimes we can't fix game bugs in our driver, but end users expect us to anyway.

YeuEmMaiMai

01-Jun-2003, 00:59

ok guys nVidia PR != actual product performance

http://www.cpinternet.com/wnovak/ATi%20sattire.jpg

micron

01-Jun-2003, 02:01

????

BenSkywalker

01-Jun-2003, 03:25

Joe-

Um, no. I said that having drivers and hardware that work is not the ONLY thing I care about.

I didn't say that either. It is an expectation I have that is verty firm.

So, you do not care if the card meets your performance expectations? Do you even have any performance expectations?

Absolutely, in games that I play. Those are secondary to the games working without crashing or having any major image corruption.

I have NO IDEA at this point what the true performance is with 32 bit shaders on NV30/31/34 vs. NV35.

Why is everyone talking about how slow it is?

Doesn't matter. I owned that LX MOBO for a year or so, plugged in the TNT, and it didn't work. I expect new products to work with already existing ones.

So if a mobo manufacturer makes an out of spec part that doesn't provide the proper voltage and/or wattage to a slot it is the video card manufacturers fault?

Using that logic, I guess Parhelias Fragment AA is not real AA then? Of course it is, even though it doesn't apply AA to all "edges that it should."

Heck, is MSAA real AA? It doesn't AA textures, which any "full scene AA" should.

I don't consider MSAA FSAA, not Matrox's FAA. They are AA, but not FSAA.

I again don't understand the tangent you are going off on. We're talking about "truthfulness" and being forward correct?

Has ATI ever not been forward about it's Aniso implementation?

They claimed they supported AF.

The CHOICE to have Quincunx mode is certainly is OK. Advertising it as a big PR feature as "4X quality with 2X performance" is not OK.

PR = Ignore :)

What relevance does that have at all with our discussion?

It doesn't impact me, I don't see how it is relevant. Right now I have no games that support PS 2.0, so it doesn't impact me now. Of the games that I have seen that use PS 2.0 level shaders and their resultant benches, the NV3X boards perform quite wel, although I highly doubt they were shader limited anyway.

The overall point is: I couldn't trust the NV3x architecture further than I could throw it. If nVidia wants me to trust them (which is what this thread is about), nVidia has to come clean about its architecture / performance expectations.

And ATi has in your view. ATi has one level of precission to 'come clean' about, it is a lot simpler. Do you think nVidia should have simply followed along with what ATi was doing for simplicity's sake?

I didn't even read the threads, just read the headlines for god's sake. "Blue Screens", FSAA not working, Digital Vibrance issues....

One of the blue screen threads was a bug with The Matrix game and the sound card. The other was one that seemed to be fairly random. The FSAA problem- I've run all the drivers they listed that are supposed to be impacted and haven't run in to the issue.

I really don't get what you're trying to say, Ben. Are you really trying to imply that nVidia's drivers don't have as many issues as Catalyst drivers?

Without a doubt.

Presumably you buy a card only for how it plays the games in your current library? No thought whatsoever about how it will handle games you haven't bought yet?

Absolutely not. If a board can't even handle the games I have now properly however, then I have no faith in how it will handle upcoming games.

You issue is that these synthetic demos give us a clue as to what to expect with upcoming games.

Shaders that are optimized for one board, a sort order for back to front rendering and the like and you really think that is the case? Demos are OK for seeing certain features work before they will be used, but I don't think they are a good way to gauge how the features will function in upcoming games. This includes the IHVs own demos. The CubeMap blob that nV used to show off the technique for the original GeForce ran considerably worse then the games that followed using it as a general example.

There is one single key difference between ATI and nVidia and their level of "trust", that basically speaks volumes.

Beyond3D is a "tier 1" media/review site for ATI.
Beyond3D is not a "tier 1" media/review site for nVidia.

To me, that says, relatively speaking, ATI trusts B3D more than nVidia does.

If I was working at ATi I would 'trust' B3D a lot more then if I was working at nVidia. For that matter, if I was working at any other IHV I would 'trust' B3D a lot more then I would if I were working at nVidia. '16bit color is all you need' to '48bit and 64bit aren't enough' despite the former being at a time when there were games that fully supported 32bit and the latter there is none. The anti static T&L campaign where they tried to denounce the technology as it wouldn't be used by developers in a wide spread fashion because VS were so much better(here we are three years later and static acceleration is still the standard), features like Dot3 and CubeMaps being irrelevant because no games used them etc. and then a full switch to PS 2.0 performance is the standard that next gen cards should be measured by. After a long enough period of time, if you work at an IHV and a site is always building up your weakest attribute and claiming your strenghts aren't useful what would you think? If B3D was taking their old stance against features not used in games and saying that PS 2.0 performance was meaningless because no games used them right now I think you would find nVidia a lot more friendly. I'm not saying that it is intentional, and B3D doesn't do shootout reviews so their particular fondness for a given architecture doesn't impact their reviews in a significant fashion but how would you look at it working at an IHV? You want your board to get positive reviews, you send them to a site that is friendly to your style of architecture.

Dave Baumann

01-Jun-2003, 03:43

A lot of that was before my time, so I'm not going to bother commenting (its sounds incorrect though) however:

features like Dot3 and CubeMaps being irrelevant because no games used them etc. and then a full switch to PS 2.0 performance is the standard that next gen cards should be measured by. After a long enough period of time, if you work at an IHV and a site is always building up your weakest attribute and claiming your strenghts aren't useful what would you think?

This seems like total bullshit to me - we continue to test a range of shaders from PS1.1 to PS2.0, and in fact we've not actually, as yet, use any of the 'pure' PS2.0 tests that have been floating around in the forums or shadermark and the like. In fact the conclusion of our last NVIDIA preview read:

DX8 Pixel Shader Performance - The clockspeed, and possibly the number of shader execution units, means that the pure DX8 class Pixel Shader execution rate is very good in comparison to the low end NV25, which should be a boon to titles that feature Pixel Shaders. The caveat here is that games are not going to exclusively utilise Pixel Shaders in a scene and will still need other elements such as texturing - the Nature test results showed that this pulls the 5600 Ultra back in line with the Ti4200. Also, one of the main selling points of the NV3x series is the DX9 capabilities heralded by the 'CineFX' architecture, however its still a little too early to truly gauge the performance of NV31 here.

I fail to see where this full switch to PS2.0 thing comes from?

g__day

01-Jun-2003, 10:07

On the trust issue - both companies should

1) mutually agree what are optimisations vs cheats
2) come fully clean as to what games have cheats vs optimisations applied
3) identify per game how much the cheats lift performance and / or impair image quality

4) On issuing any driver designed to highlight their performance and thereby boost sales - formally declare to institutional investors, shareholders and their external auditors there are no cheats in their software.

BenSkywalker

01-Jun-2003, 13:24

A lot of that was before my time, so I'm not going to bother commenting (its sounds incorrect though) however:

Weren't you here back then? I know you weren't working for the site, but I thought you were still around. I also knew that no matter how I stated that part, it would be taken poorly.

This seems like total bullshit to me - we continue to test a range of shaders from PS1.1 to PS2.0, and in fact we've not actually, as yet, use any of the 'pure' PS2.0 tests that have been floating around in the forums or shadermark and the like. In fact the conclusion of our last NVIDIA preview read:

Look at the forums and the comments from the people here(including those who pen for the site). PS 2.0 is an obsession on these boards at the moment. With the AF and noise issue resolved all effort seems to have moved to criticizing the weak point that the NV3X has left and of course, anything that could be considered positive is swept under the rug. You may like to think that the forums aren't going to impact an IHV's view on a site, but with the amount of other sites that quote discussions here where they see comments that the members proper of B3D make it will have an impact.

Edit- That last part came out sounding a bit hostile rereading it. I am trying to state that due to the caliber of these particular forums they are considered a part of the site by the general tech community at large, moreso then the other forums. Because of this, no matter how down the line you try to keep your reviews, your comments on the boards will be read and factored in. That is what I was trying to state in my last part.

Joe DeFuria

01-Jun-2003, 13:44

I didn't say that either. It is an expectation I have that is verty firm.

You said (parphrase) "work out of the box...PERIOD."

Absolutely, in games that I play. Those are secondary to the games working without crashing or having any major image corruption.

Good, then we agree on that.

Why is everyone talking about how slow it is?

Because in some cases, it is, with certain drivers, and with ceratian apps, and if the sky is blue on wednesday.

Why are ther polls on this site about if NV35 is "fixed" or has driver hacks?

So if a mobo manufacturer makes an out of spec part that doesn't provide the proper voltage and/or wattage to a slot it is the video card manufacturers fault?

Completely miss the point.

This is about "pulling it out of the box and it working" right?

I pulled the TNT out of the box, pluggedit in, and it didn't work. Every other AGP card I pulled out did work.

I don't consider MSAA FSAA, not Matrox's FAA. They are AA, but not FSAA.

So when a developer switches the AA bit on, they shouldn't expect polygon intersections to be AA'd?

[ATI] claimed they supported AF.

And they do.

The CHOICE to have Quincunx mode is certainly is OK. Advertising it as a big PR feature as "4X quality with 2X performance" is not OK.

PR = Ignore :)

So, why don't you ignore ATI PR when they say they support Aniso?

ATi has one level of precission to 'come clean' about, it is a lot simpler. Do you think nVidia should have simply followed along with what ATi was doing for simplicity's sake?

No, but they should be UPFRONT about the performance levels of each precision level, and they certainly shouldn't be changing precision on the fly in certain tests, not should they be writing new shaders which don't exactly reproduce intended output. Get it?

If nVidia was "forthcoming" about their performance, there wouldn't be any "shader" cheats or "clipping plane" cheats. They are designed to FOOL ME into thinking thier performance is something it's not.

One of the blue screen threads was a bug with The Matrix game and the sound card. The other was one that seemed to be fairly random. The FSAA problem- I've run all the drivers they listed that are supposed to be impacted and haven't run in to the issue.

It's just wonderful how you attribute all the bugs that others run into as "not nVidia problems", "random", etc.

I really don't get what you're trying to say, Ben. Are you really trying to imply that nVidia's drivers don't have as many issues as Catalyst drivers?

Without a doubt.

Then this is a lost cause.

Presumably you buy a card only for how it plays the games in your current library? No thought whatsoever about how it will handle games you haven't bought yet?

Absolutely not. If a board can't even handle the games I have now properly however, then I have no faith in how it will handle upcoming games.

Just stick with the "nVidia logo" games, and you'll be fine.

Demos are OK for seeing certain features work before they will be used, but I don't think they are a good way to gauge how the features will function in upcoming games.

They are an indication, Ben. And right now, the indication is, unless there are specialized paths / hacks for the NV3x, shader performance is poor compared to R3x0. And if the game gets those hacks, the quality won't be as good.

If I was working at ATi I would 'trust' B3D a lot more then if I was working at nVidia.

I would word that differently. If I was working at nVidia, I would trust they B3D would try its best to find the real truth, so I would trust that they might not come up with the "best light" kind of review.

So, Ben, which 3DGraphcis site do YOU PERSONALLY trust most for truthful analysis?

'16bit color is all you need' to '48bit and 64bit aren't enough' despite the former being at a time when there were games that fully supported 32bit and the latter there is none.

Link to the articles that claim that?

And I thought it was NVIDIA who claimed, despite supporting fp16, that fp24 "wasn't enough?"

The anti static T&L campaign where they tried to denounce the technology as it wouldn't be used by developers in a wide spread fashion because VS were so much better(here we are three years later and static acceleration is still the standard),

Static acceleration the standard? Where did that come from? Static T&L is used, but to what extent over CPU T&L? And given that nVidia was first out with both static T&L and vertex shading....how is this "against nVidia?"

features like Dot3 and CubeMaps being irrelevant because no games used them etc. and then a full switch to PS 2.0 performance is the standard that next gen cards should be measured by.

See Dave's response...bullshit. Do you read the same site that I do?

After a long enough period of time, if you work at an IHV and a site is always building up your weakest attribute and claiming your strenghts aren't useful what would you think?

That perhaps you believe in your own marketing, and not what an honest assesment of the technology might be.

If B3D was taking their old stance against features not used in games and saying that PS 2.0 performance was meaningless because no games used them...

What is this "old stance" you are talking about? Again, their stance on "static T&L"? As if that's an nVidia specific feature? Asif nVidia also wasn't the first part out that had DX8 vertex shaders?

..but how would you look at it working at an IHV?

Like I said above. I'd look at B3D as a site that isn't one to just regurgitte marketing PR, and may actually offer a level of analysis of the features than an IHV may or may not want to hear.

So if I'm an IHV that has aproduct that's more fluff that stuff, I'd be very worried indeed. Which is exactly why I'm less trustful of IHVs that do not "like" B3D.

You want your board to get positive reviews, you send them to a site that is friendly to your style of architecture.

BINGO. But if you want the TRUTH, you send them to a site that is as impartial to "architecture" and marketing spin as possible.

I come to B3D for the truth. Not "positive" reviews. And any IHV that is "afraid" to give support to B3D is doing so because they fear the truth might actually come out, rather than the "positive spin."

Again, I ask you, what 3D site do YOU trust most for an honest assesment of the hardware, vs. just spitting out marketing gcrap?

RussSchultz

01-Jun-2003, 14:23

Ill weigh in and state that I think Ben does have at least a few valid points.

The apparent flip flop between forward looking features that are indespensible, and ones that aren't useful because their too slow for now. He brings up a few examples, though poorly worded and densly formatted making them difficult to discern.
-Beyond3d was against T&L when it was V5 vs. GF256. The article was very slanted; I also remember some of the information being just plain wrong/misleading, but very vigorously defended. A bit of 'drinking the 3dfx coolaid', as it were. (downplaying advantage of NVIDIA.)
-But, on the other hand, here we are advocating PS/VS2.0 when it is ATI vs. NV. Definately not drinking the NVIDIA coolaid. (emphasising disadvantage of NVIDIA.)
-I don't remember this exactly, though he's suggesting that DOT3, etc were poo-poo'd or downplayed because the V5 didn't have them, not many games used it, and the rampage super duper texture computer was about to come out. Again, drinking the 3dfx coolaid (downplaying advantage of NVIDIA.)
-But PS1.4 (which enabled dependant texture lookups in 1 pass) was very important. (I'm not sure this was a typical Beyond3d stance, and I'm not sure I've got the dependant texture thing right)
-32 bits color was not important because it was too slow, etc. (Downplaying advantage)
-48 bit or 64 bit color isn't enough. We need, coincidentally, 96 bit color, but we don't need 128 bit color. (Emphasising disadvantage)

Not that I agree with everything he says, but there is a case for Beyond3d seems to adopt stances that are "against NVIDIA", either lambasting them for not having a feature or for being slower, or downplaying the feature advantage they have as unimportant for now. I can see how the history of such would be unhelpful to garnering the trust of a company.

There is an undeniable pattern. You can come up with reasonable arguments for each of the stances (except the T&L one, in my opinion), but you can't deny there is a pattern--and it seems to be on the surface inconsistant.

Of course, they also probably don't want to talk to you because you're in like flynn with Futuremark, who is their major pain in the behind right now.

I don't suggest you kiss ass to become a tier 1, but perhaps a bit of navel contemplation over the past might be useful and enlightening.

BenSkywalker

01-Jun-2003, 14:40

Joe-

Because in some cases, it is

Then assume it is.

This is about "pulling it out of the box and it working" right?

This is about having functioning drivers. If I was using, say, an Asus K7M mobo and it couldn't function properly in AGP 2X because the motherboard has known line noise issues, I would be pretty foolish to blame it on a vid board maker wouldn't I?

So, why don't you ignore ATI PR when they say they support Aniso?

There claim was backed by review sites and forum posters, but I'll expand on that in a bit.

If nVidia was "forthcoming" about their performance, there wouldn't be any "shader" cheats or "clipping plane" cheats. They are designed to FOOL ME into thinking thier performance is something it's not.

And that means nVidia doesn't earn your trust. I am saying that ATi doesn't earn mine.

It's just wonderful how you attribute all the bugs that others run into as "not nVidia problems", "random", etc.

List the game, list the driver. It is that simple. I see posts from people who have issues that others can't reproduce, to me that indicates it is something elsewhere. I'll give you an example- Install the Catalyst 3.2 drivers and start any HL powered game running OpenGL. Play for any amount of time and hit Esc. Alternatively, fire up Sacrifice and simply look around using any ATi Cat drivers from the launch of the R300 core boards up until the Cat 3.2s(at least, got rid of my board so haven't tested the latest drivers). Another example, the original No One Lives Forever, Catalyst version 3.1 or 3.2, extreme levels of input latency playing the game no matter what framerate or setting.

List something comparable for nVidia, name the game name the driver and I'll check it out. I'm not talking about random issues that only I have come across, I'm talking about issues that impact all the people using the boards/drivers.

Just stick with the "nVidia logo" games, and you'll be fine.

I paid my money for a R300 core board, have you purchased a FX? I'm not talking in a hypothetical BS sense here, I put my money out and then had numerous complaints with the board. I didn't need to listen to second and third hand information about supposed issues, I dealt with them first hand.

And right now, the indication is, unless there are specialized paths / hacks for the NV3x, shader performance is poor compared to R3x0. And if the game gets those hacks, the quality won't be as good.

And in doing as much it is assumed that the games that use shaders will be limited by their performance above all else.

I would word that differently. If I was working at nVidia, I would trust they B3D would try its best to find the real truth, so I would trust that they might not come up with the "best light" kind of review.

What 'real truth' exactly?

So, Ben, which 3DGraphcis site do YOU PERSONALLY trust most for truthful analysis?

None, and that includes B3D. To cover every single aspect of a graphics card you would need several thousand pages worth of review at the very least. Because this is not reasonable, sites are forced to cut things down to cover the things they think are most important. To me, those are drivers first and foremost, followed by IQ and performance.

Besides the driver issues, I don't trust their analysis on things such as IQ. The latter happens to be due to their emphasis on AA over AF(which has been a constant here, btw). To me, proper texture filtering is a lot more important to me then having perfect edge AA. I would take a full, proper, 64x AF implementation over 16x MSAA of any type. This does not agree with the preference that B3D has.

On the driver front, this site focuses on 3D tech and stays away from gaming related issues. As of right now, the only reason I look at 3D vid card reviews is to observe potential benefits to my gaming.

For performance, they look to the 'generic' performance of the board, testing its theoretical specs which is the right way for a tech based review. Take SplinterCell being used as a bench. They level off the playing field to utilize the bench without really getting in to nV's superior visuals in the game. In a tech based sense, the only reason nV has this edge is the developers exploited features not supported directly by DirectX due to the games XBox roots. If I was convinced that SC would be the last XBox port the PC would see, I wouldn't consider this too much, but it isn't. If I want to play SplinterCell "the way it's meant to be played" is actually viable for this particular game. Only running NV hardware can you see the game as it was intended. Focusing on the tech end of the spectrum, this is a non issue as it isn't a truly legit utilization of DX, and it isn't something that is rampant in the PC space. As a gamer, when one of the best titles released in the last six months looks best on a particular piece of hardware due to additional implementations, that is something I do care about. The same would be the case with ATi products. If there is a title that offered visual enhancements only available on ATi boards then I would want to know about it. Is B3D going to cover this? No.

For the non tech sites, most of them don't have a clue what they are doing and horribly screw up everything. I put more faith in to B3D's reviews then I do any other sites, but I do not trust what they find an excellent product will be so much as tollerable for myself.

Static acceleration the standard? Where did that come from? Static T&L is used, but to what extent over CPU T&L?

Could you list the games that have come out in the last year that don't use static hard T&L?

And given that nVidia was first out with both static T&L and vertex shading....how is this "against nVidia?"

It was used as an equalizer for the Voodoo5.

What is this "old stance" you are talking about? Again, their stance on "static T&L"? As if that's an nVidia specific feature? Asif nVidia also wasn't the first part out that had DX8 vertex shaders?

Using it to prop up another part is where the issue comes in. They also mistakenly assumed that developers were going to skip static T&L completely and jump from software to pure VS. Nothing was ever given as to why they assumed this would happen except why they didn't like the technology. Is that what you are talking about in terms of 'honesty'?

In the years I've been reading here B3D has an excellent record of seeing where hardware is going and a fairly horrible record of seeing where games are going. As such in the past they have weighted the importance of each feature based on where they thought the gaming market was headed, even if they were far off the mark. At least now they are using DirectX as a guideline, even if that in itself fails to truly indicate where games are headed.

You can try and spin it in to a conspiracy theory if you want, the history stands that B3D has come out with support for features that have failed to be utilized by developers(T-Buffer, only real use for it was FSAA despite the nigh PR article that B3D posted) while denouncing those that are still in use(static T&L). nVidia takes one direction and this site stands staunchly behind the industry going in another direction where there is a rift at nearly every chance.

It isn't about honesty. Look at nV's pixel pipe configuration. Yes, I know there PR is full of shit but forget that for a moment. With Carmack's direction with Doom3 and the prediction that that is where the industry is headed, why so much focus on the PS side of things when the game utilizes hardly any advanced shaders while ignoring the stencil fill requirements such a direction would require? If B3D were to focus on the fact that nV has nigh 'free' stencil fill available to it, would it be dishonest? It would be a different focus, one that is friendly to nVidia. If they did do this, and I was working for ATi, I would be upset that they weren't focusing on PS performance more and relatively ignoring stencil fill issues. It isn't about them calling it as they see it, it is how they see it looking at where the market it headed.

Again, I ask you, what 3D site do YOU trust most for an honest assesment of the hardware, vs. just spitting out marketing gcrap?

None of them do I trust completely nor will I. If there was a site like B3D that focused more on gaming and attempted to paint all new features as equally important, then I would probably be the most inclined to trust it. Listening to sites like B3D is the reason why I have gripes with ATi right now. Do I think they were 'dishonest'? No. Doesn't change that the impression I got from reading their reviews was not what I needed to know about the product.

Dave Baumann

01-Jun-2003, 15:49

Weren't you here back then? I know you weren't working for the site, but I thought you were still around. I also knew that no matter how I stated that part, it would be taken poorly.

Not really. I was around, but not to any sort of degree I am now.

I don’t want to get involved in a point by point rebuttal, of things that occurred before my tenure, and having to search through the articles. The point I’m making is that article wise, which is what I consider to be the sites statement I don’t really remember some of the spin you are putting on it – yes, there were numerous articles explaining the 22bit filter, did they also state that 32bit wasn’t necessary? Not that I remember. I can’t think of once where we’ve stated in an article “48bit and 64bit aren't enough”, nor can I remember us stating that Cube maps and Dot3 weren’t useful.

T&L was a clear standpoint, right or wrong, however Kristof subsequent comments in the forum over the idea of VS probably should have been articulated and an article IMO. But the fact you mention this also kinda negates your assertion that the standpoint then was always for what games use now, doesn’t it?

In your later post you mention the T-Buffer – this was one of the few sites to actually explain it in depth, and this is a technology site and that was a viable piece of technology. The uptake of it may have been very different had 3dfx not been in the state they were then and now.

As for fairness, get this: In the run-up to NV30’s release we have dedicated no less than 4 articles (Zephyrs tech comparison, the launch details and features overview and two interviews) even before we came to the preview (as well as countless news posts and spoon fed PR “Sneaky Peeks”). So far, we’ve done none for ATI’s technology, other than the reviews themselves. On the face of it that sounds as though we owe a few more column inches to ATI’s technology doesn’t it? Especially given the disparity between expectations and actual deliverance between their respective parts over the past 9 months.

Look at the forums and the comments from the people here(including those who pen for the site). PS 2.0 is an obsession on these boards at the moment. With the AF and noise issue resolved all effort seems to have moved to criticizing the weak point that the NV3X has left and of course, anything that could be considered positive is swept under the rug. You may like to think that the forums aren't going to impact an IHV's view on a site, but with the amount of other sites that quote discussions here where they see comments that the members proper of B3D make it will have an impact.

Ben, you cannot paint the comments of the forums as the statement of Beyond3D. The Forums are still relatively insular, it’s the articles and reviews that the unwashed masses read and take note of, I have the stats to prove that.

So what if the people in the forum are talking about PS2.0 performance – why shouldn’t they? And quite a lot of that is coming from the fact that people are developing tests and applications that measure PS2.0 performance, much as they did with PS1.x, so clearly there is a development want to understand and test the performance and, well, why shouldn’t people want to talk about it?

My personal involvement in the forums have decreased over the past few months as well, basacally becuase I just can't keep up with the number of topics and posts these days.

Take SplinterCell being used as a bench. They level off the playing field to utilize the bench without really getting in to nV's superior visuals in the game...
...The same would be the case with ATi products. If there is a title that offered visual enhancements only available on ATi boards then I would want to know about it. Is B3D going to cover this? No.

The fact of the matter is that I’m currently running a 5200 review and comparing it against an MX. Clearly there are several elements of difference between an MX and the 5200 – the pixel shaders and the shadowing being two. I’ve run the tests in both as close to the MX quality as you can get with the 5200 and I’ve also run it in the full buffer shadowed made, and taken screenshots of all mode to highlight the difference in both rendering performances and relative qualities.

When there is a title that has different rendering elements for one board to the next we will talk about it and mention the lot. If we ever get round to the high end shootout comparison and use SC then we will clearly mark all different rendering elements and what they can do for all boards.

You can try and spin it in to a conspiracy theory if you want, the history stands that B3D has come out with support for features that have failed to be utilized by developers(T-Buffer, only real use for it was FSAA despite the nigh PR article that B3D posted) while denouncing those that are still in use(static T&L).

Beyond3D’s content covers lots of technology, as it should, and has really taken a stand on one thing. As a pointed out earlier, content wise, we’ve given a disproportionate amount of coverage to a product that sold in the few thousands, if that.

Yes, I know there PR is full of shit but forget that for a moment. With Carmack's direction with Doom3 and the prediction that that is where the industry is headed, why so much focus on the PS side of things when the game utilizes hardly any advanced shaders while ignoring the stencil fill requirements such a direction would require?

Actually, who is predicting that Doom3 is the direction that everything is heading? Personally I would say that the industry is heading down a much more shader oriented route, which Doom3 basically isn’t.

The apparent flip flop between forward looking features that are indespensible, and ones that aren't useful because their too slow for now. He brings up a few examples, though poorly worded and densly formatted making them difficult to discern.
-Beyond3d was against T&L when it was V5 vs. GF256. The article was very slanted; I also remember some of the information being just plain wrong/misleading, but very vigorously defended. A bit of 'drinking the 3dfx coolaid', as it were. (downplaying advantage of NVIDIA.)
-But, on the other hand, here we are advocating PS/VS2.0 when it is ATI vs. NV. Definately not drinking the NVIDIA coolaid. (emphasising disadvantage of NVIDIA.)
-I don't remember this exactly, though he's suggesting that DOT3, etc were poo-poo'd or downplayed because the V5 didn't have them, not many games used it, and the rampage super duper texture computer was about to come out. Again, drinking the 3dfx coolaid (downplaying advantage of NVIDIA.)
-But PS1.4 (which enabled dependant texture lookups in 1 pass) was very important. (I'm not sure this was a typical Beyond3d stance, and I'm not sure I've got the dependant texture thing right)
-32 bits color was not important because it was too slow, etc. (Downplaying advantage)
-48 bit or 64 bit color isn't enough. We need, coincidentally, 96 bit color, but we don't need 128 bit color. (Emphasising disadvantage)

Again, Russ, other the T&L article, I do not see where as a site we state many of the things mentioned here – where are they?

Joe DeFuria

01-Jun-2003, 16:11

Ill weigh in and state that I think Ben does have at least a few valid points.

Of course you do...because there is also an "undeniable pattern" to your own posts. I was wondering when you would enter the discussion on "Bens" side. ;) And yet, despite this undeniable pattern of posts, you continually assert your "non-biased" approach to ATI and nVidia, right?

There is only ONE way to reconcile those two facts.

That is, your honest assesment of the situation happens to fall in line which favors one IHVs point of view / architecture.

So whqat I'm trying to say is, are you accusing B3D of having unfairly biased articles, or articles where their honest take of the situation just doesn't particularly favor nVidia?

The apparent flip flop between forward looking features that are indespensible, and ones that aren't useful because their too slow for now.

I still don't see any flip-flop of issues here. IIRC, B3D got criticized for not having enough PS 2.0 investigation with the nVidia previews.
The only nVidia product that has been criticized for Ps 2.0 performance not being "good enough to be useful" (though not yet by B3D, because we haven't seen their review on it), is the FX 5200 products.

NV3x shader performance is being criticized from a different perspective: not being as fast as R300, and not being as fast as we were lead to believe from nVidia PR. This is WHOLLY differnt than the T&L situation.

-Beyond3d was against T&L when it was V5 vs. GF256. The article was very slanted;

The article was objective.

I also remember some of the information being just plain wrong/misleading, but very vigorously defended. A bit of 'drinking the 3dfx coolaid', as it were. (downplaying advantage of NVIDIA.)

I saw it as just the opposite. EVERYONE ELSE was "drinking the nVidia cool-aid", and repeating BS about T&L X-Mas '99 and such.

To this day, what has "static T&L" done for gaming? Almost 4 years later...

-But, on the other hand, here we are advocating PS/VS2.0 when it is ATI vs. NV. Definately not drinking the NVIDIA coolaid. (emphasising disadvantage of NVIDIA.)

Again....completely different. First of all, ATI and NV both have PS 2.0 support. The argument isn't over "will it be fast enough to be useful", it's simply "who is fastest, regardless." Are you saying that argument shouldn't exist?

-I don't remember this exactly, though he's suggesting that DOT3, etc were poo-poo'd or downplayed because the V5 didn't have them, not many games used it, and the rampage super duper texture computer was about to come out. Again, drinking the 3dfx coolaid (downplaying advantage of NVIDIA.)

I don't recall that at all. :roll:

-But PS1.4 (which enabled dependant texture lookups in 1 pass) was very important. (I'm not sure this was a typical Beyond3d stance, and I'm not sure I've got the dependant texture thing right)

Again, links would be nice. :roll:

-32 bits color was not important because it was too slow, etc. (Downplaying advantage)

Source? :roll:

-48 bit or 64 bit color isn't enough. We need, coincidentally, 96 bit color, but we don't need 128 bit color. (Emphasising disadvantage)

Source? :roll:

What I see here is a lot of inferring things that B3D did not say, or st the very least stating in a way that's not representative of the actual view.

What if I say "DirectX and OpenGL "needs" 96 bit color, not 32 bit. (Which is simply an observation of fact.) If the "facts" emphasize an nVidia disadvantage, what is B3D supposed to do about it?

Not that I agree with everything he says, but there is a case for Beyond3d seems to adopt stances that are "against NVIDIA", either lambasting them for not having a feature or for being slower, or downplaying the feature advantage they have as unimportant for now. I can see how the history of such would be unhelpful to garnering the trust of a company.

I can see it as being unhelpful to gaining the trust of a company's PR, sure. If I didn't think the site would parrot my PR, I would be reluctant to put them on the list, too.

There is an undeniable pattern. You can come up with reasonable arguments for each of the stances (except the T&L one, in my opinion),

IMO, they have more than a reasonable stance for everything.

but you can't deny there is a pattern--and it seems to be on the surface inconsistant.

Pattern? Perhaps. Inconsistent? No.

Of course, they also probably don't want to talk to you because you're in like flynn with Futuremark, who is their major pain in the behind right now.

Right, because Futuremark isn't trustworthy? Right, "major pain" defined as "not showing NV in the best light via removing cheat detection." Another reason to not trust nVidia.

I don't suggest you kiss ass to become a tier 1, but perhaps a bit of navel contemplation over the past might be useful and enlightening.

Enlightening indeed. Moral of the story: don't cave to PR. Do what you think is right, and let the chips fall where they may.

Joe DeFuria

01-Jun-2003, 16:37

This is about having functioning drivers. If I was using, say, an Asus K7M mobo and it couldn't function properly in AGP 2X because the motherboard has known line noise issues, I would be pretty foolish to blame it on a vid board maker wouldn't I?

Pick a side and stay with it. Are we talking experience out of the box, or not?

Would you buy a new motherboard in this case, or get a different video card?

And that means nVidia doesn't earn your trust. I am saying that ATi doesn't earn mine.

Fine.

List the game, list the driver. It is that simple.

Don't all the new dets fubar AA on DX7 and earlier titles?

I paid my money for a R300 core board, have you purchased a FX?

No, because my 8500 is still OK for my rig. No driver problems with it either.

I'm not talking in a hypothetical BS sense here, I put my money out and then had numerous complaints with the board. I didn't need to listen to second and third hand information about supposed issues, I dealt with them first hand.

Great, then, as you did, return the card. I would have returned my 8500 if they didn't get smoothvision working when they did.

And in doing as much it is assumed that the games that use shaders will be limited by their performance above all else.

No assumptions are made. I don't assume any type of absolute performance. My assumption is: if special coding isn't done for FX, it CAN make a big difference. No need to worry about "special coding" for R3xx.

So, Ben, which 3DGraphcis site do YOU PERSONALLY trust most for truthful analysis?

None, and that includes B3D. To cover every single aspect of a graphics card you would need several thousand pages worth of review at the very least. Because this is not reasonable, sites are forced to cut things down to cover the things they think are most important. To me, those are drivers first and foremost, followed by IQ and performance.

What SINGLE SOURCE would you trust most. I understand your need to check several sources. If you had to choose ONE, which would it be?

Besides the driver issues, I don't trust their analysis on things such as IQ. The latter happens to be due to their emphasis on AA over AF(which has been a constant here, btw). To me, proper texture filtering is a lot more important to me then having perfect edge AA. I would take a full, proper, 64x AF implementation over 16x MSAA of any type. This does not agree with the preference that B3D has.

I just don't see where this "B3D preference" is dreamed up. Does or does B3D NOT give you all the information about AA and Aniso so that, no matter what your preference is, you can make a choice?

On the driver front, this site focuses on 3D tech and stays away from gaming related issues. As of right now, the only reason I look at 3D vid card reviews is to observe potential benefits to my gaming.

Like every other site, their definition of "driver goodness" is typically "did it run my specific set of benchmarks without errors?"

....The same would be the case with ATi products. If there is a title that offered visual enhancements only available on ATi boards then I would want to know about it. Is B3D going to cover this? No.

See Dave's response.

For the non tech sites, most of them don't have a clue what they are doing and horribly screw up everything. I put more faith in to B3D's reviews then I do any other sites, but I do not trust what they find an excellent product will be so much as tollerable for myself.

That's fine. The question is, if you put more fiath in B3D's reviews, why don't you demand the same from nVidia? That THEY put more faith in their reviews.

Could you list the games that have come out in the last year that don't use static hard T&L?

Could you list the games that use Static Hardware T&L, where software T&L doesn't provide nearly the same results?

It was used as an equalizer for the Voodoo5.

It was used as an equalizer to T&L x-mas '99, if anything.

Using it to prop up another part is where the issue comes in. They also mistakenly assumed that developers were going to skip static T&L completely and jump from software to pure VS. Nothing was ever given as to why they assumed this would happen except why they didn't like the technology. Is that what you are talking about in terms of 'honesty'?

Yup. And I still to this day don't see any talk about DX7 hardware T&L for nything other than "prfesstion 3D apps". It's all about vertex shaders for games.

Where does the Kyro fall behind GeForce, for example, in terms of rendering performance / quality?

You can try and spin it in to a conspiracy theory if you want, the history stands that B3D has come out with support for features...

See Dave's response. Where do you see B3D advocting "support" for features, rather than supplying technical explanations for them? Specific links please.

Dave Baumann

01-Jun-2003, 16:46

Yeah, missed that one - where is this FSAA imbalance? In the first look reviews we dedicate up to as much as 3 pages of performance and IQ analysis of both filtering and AA. We're one of the first to routinely adopt the aniso filter pattern app as well which clearly highlights some of the architectural difference between the main two vendors at the moment.

RussSchultz

01-Jun-2003, 16:49

Perhaps it was Dave Barron's posts that overly influence my recollection. He, as a voice for Beyond3d, was definately steeped in 3dfx coolaid.

So whqat I'm trying to say is, are you accusing B3D of having unfairly biased articles, or articles where their honest take of the situation just doesn't particularly favor nVidia?

No, I'm stating there is a pattern of statements from "beyond3d". It just so happens the pattern is generally minimizing one particular vendor and to me sometimes appears capricious for its reasoning.

But my opinion is wrong because I'm a die hard nvidiot. :roll:. Do we always have to tread that water Joe? Ignoring the fact that I've had a Rendition, matrox, S3, 3dfx, 3dfx, NVIDIA, NVIDIA, ATI card in my box, maybe you just think this because the only time you and I get in these stupid discussions when when we disagree--and since you're always on the anti-nvidia camp, every time we disagree I'm not(and therefor in the 'nvidia camp')? This completely ignores the times our opinions are concordant or non-intersecting.

Joe DeFuria

01-Jun-2003, 17:18

Perhaps it was Dave Barron's posts that overly influence my recollection. He, as a voice for Beyond3d, was definately steeped in 3dfx coolaid.

I think it was obvious that Ben's posts that overly influenced your recollection.

No, I'm stating there is a pattern of statements from "beyond3d". It just so happens the pattern is generally minimizing one particular vendor and to me sometimes appears capricious for its reasoning.

Cop-out response. Define "just-so-happens."

1) Pure luck
2) B3D bias against nVidia
3) The facts themselves generally minimize one particular vendor.

Again, this is assuming there is a history of "minimizing" nVidia on this site, which I disagree with in the first place.

But my opinion is wrong because I'm a die hard nvidiot. :roll:.

:roll:

I did not say that. Good to see you're still putting words in my mouth.

I said that what you are saying "happens" at B3D can certainly be applied to your own behaviour.

1) Your posts minimize nVidia "faults" and maximize ATI ones.
2) You claim to not be biased
3) You explanation for this, to be consistent with your explanation of B3D: it "just so happens" that "your statements" minimze ATI, and maximize nVidia.

In other words: if you accept that your own behavior is OK (I presume), but then, you get irritated with others at the whiff of being portrayed as being an nVidiot?

If this upsets you, "perhaps a bit of navel contemplation over the past might be useful and enlightening", eh?

Ignoring the fact that I've had a Rendition, matrox, S3, 3dfx, 3dfx, NVIDIA, NVIDIA, ATI card in my box....

Just like ignoring the fact that B3D reviews ATI, nVidia, and other vendor products and technologies?

maybe you just think this because the only time you and I get in these stupid discussions when when we disagree--and since you're always on the anti-nvidia camp, every time we disagree I'm not?

Apply this line of reasoning to B3D, Russ.

RussSchultz

01-Jun-2003, 17:41

Sigh. I'm not saying Beyond3d IS biased, or that I necessarily think that they are. I'm saying there is at least a somewhat reasonable case for somebody to come to that conclusion.

But, by definition, if that isn't the conclusion that you come to, it can not be reasonable. That is the one constant I've gotten from all of our discussions. There is no room for dissenting opinion in your mindset--everybody who disagrees with you is simply wrong and you're more than willing to tell them how they're wrong ad nauseum.

And this makes it very tedious to share opinions on this board for fear of being dragged into another multipage back and forth as you disect each statement as you invalidate an opinion, or drag in other discussions or poke at old disagreements.

Ever notice you always get the last word? It generally isn't because you've convinced anybody to accept your superior viewpoint.

Gah. I've gone completely OT now. Must be the temperature outside.

Joe DeFuria

01-Jun-2003, 18:07

Sigh. I'm not saying Beyond3d IS biased, or that I necessarily think that they are. I'm saying there is at least a somewhat reasonable case for somebody to come to that conclusion.

Sure, and to keep off topic ;), that's what many people say about you with repsect to nVidia. That was one of my points in the last post.

Now, I personally think that the case for B3D being biased against nVidia is a stretch. I still haven't seen the links to the articles / statements in question that show the evidence that is "said" to be there. I see nVidia biased against B3D, because B3D doesn't tote the company line, and nVidia is "afraid" of this.

But, by definition, if that isn't the conclusion that you come to, it can not be reasonable. That is the one constant I've gotten from all of our discussions. There is no room for dissenting opinion in your mindset--everybody who disagrees with you is simply wrong and you're more than willing to tell them how they're wrong ad nauseum.

No, you're wrong. :D

Seriously, you're telling me that if "that isn't the conclusion that I come to, then it can't be reasonable", and you're telling me I have no room for dissenting opionion?

And this makes it very tedious to share opinions on this board for fear of being dragged into another multipage back and forth as you disect each statement as you invalidate an opinion, or drag in other discussions or poke at old disagreements.

You can validate your opinion, if you would answer the questions that are thrown back at you...like providing the exact links to all those examples "where B3D is being minimal to nVidia".

Instead, we get "This is how I remember it", or worse, "This is how Ben remebered it, so I guess that's good enough."

Ever notice you always get the last word?

No, I don't. however, in the "back and forth" articles, I usuaally keep pressing to have the questions answered, and if my "opponenet" continues to dodge them, I will repeat them either until they are answered, or until "I get the last word in" and he just gives up. Making it obvious that he has no answer.

It generally isn't because you've convinced anybody to accept your superior viewpoint.

No, it's to reject an oppsing viewpoint that is based on lack of evidence.

Gah. I've gone completely OT now. Must be the temperature outside.

It's the rain over here...

Joe DeFuria

01-Jun-2003, 18:24

You know,

I find the way this thread went (disussion on B3D "trustworthiness", as opposed to nVidia "trustworthiness"), pretty worrisome.

Same tactics that nVidia used. "Don't question the trustworthiness of our drivers....question that of 3DMark instead!"

It seems I was under the false(?) assumption that most of the regulars here including Ben and Russ "trusted" B3D more than any other single source for getting the scoop on hardware.

But since I've linked nVidia trust to B3D (nvidia not giving B3D tier 1 status), the argument has shifted. And in the 3DMark case, nVidia seems to have succeeded for the most part on casting doubt in 3D Mark, and shifting attention away from themselves.

I'd rather not have this happen here.

So perhaps Ben and Russ can answer the original question?

How can nVidia gain your trust?

If nVidia already has it (they don't have to do anything), then just say so.

I summed up my answer with the following: it would help greatly if they would make B3D a tier 1 media / review outlet.

SirPauly

02-Jun-2003, 00:18

How can nVidia gain your trust?

If nVidia would offer more technology instead of marketing. Some may disagree and understandable but it is a view I have.

RussSchultz

02-Jun-2003, 00:31

How can they gain my trust?

By putting out quality hardware and not get caught with their hand in the cookie jar. Presumably by not eating cookies. They'd get more trustworthy over time--by continuing to put out quality hardware and by continuing to not put their hand in the cookie jar.

I also never took the tack of "dont' question NVIDA, question 3dmark". I don't know who did. I do, however, have misgivings that 3dmark is not catching all the cheating.

How would 3d mark gain my trust?
By continuing to ferret out cheaters, and move to a benchmark scheme that is (in my opinion) less easily targetted. Even then, with a benchmark so widely regarded, I'll always be suspicious that they're not catching all of the cheating.

And I certainly was not trying to divert attention from the question by impuning this websites integrity. I do, however, stand by my previous statements. A trip down memory lane (T-Buffer article, T&L article, as two examples) shows at least some reason for NVIDIA to not be complete pals with beyond3d. If the sites conclusions have tended to be against their technology decisions, and tended toward their competitors, it only stands to reason they'll look elsewhere for a primary outlet.

Althornin

02-Jun-2003, 00:46

apparently, from reading Ben's posts, nVidia already has his trust.

BenSkywalker

02-Jun-2003, 02:18

Dave-

First off, I am very impressed and very pleases to hear that you are going to include the differences in rendering options between the FX and MX boards, that is extremely good news to here IMO :)

For the rest of your issues, it mainly seems that you remove the forums and the posts by the people that write for the site from the main site. Take the AA v AF issue, which do you consider more important? I understand that the hits the forum gets are not comparable to the main site, which is always the case. I'm saying that the people @nV have certainly read the forums and the comments by the people who do write for the site. As far as 48 and 64bit not being enough, look to the comments by those that do write for the site talking about the shader demos that have been written to try and show as much. This took months for people to figure out a good way to display, yet now it is used and discussed extensively.

Actually, who is predicting that Doom3 is the direction that everything is heading? Personally I would say that the industry is heading down a much more shader oriented route, which Doom3 basically isn’t.

Your betting/thinking on shaders being the direction, which is what I was saying previously. This particular thought on your part is more friendly towards ATi's direction with their part then nV's.

Joe-

Pick a side and stay with it. Are we talking experience out of the box, or not?

Would you buy a new motherboard in this case, or get a different video card?

My side isn't changing, I'm not going to blame a mobo for a vid card problem. In that case(mobo/vid card don't get along) I already have purchased a new mobo in the past, multiple times actually. I'll build a rig around a video card without hesitation. Hell, right now I have a motherboard that evem matches the color of the PCB used for the R9500Pro which means I'm stuck buying Gainward when I buy a DX9 board now(I likely would anyway, there 2D is significantly better then the rest).

Don't all the new dets fubar AA on DX7 and earlier titles?

The only DX7 title I've been playing much of is Sacrifice lately, and it does work there but I will check other older titles and get back to you.

I just don't see where this "B3D preference" is dreamed up. Does or does B3D NOT give you all the information about AA and Aniso so that, no matter what your preference is, you can make a choice?

No. The R300 core board introduces a considerable amount of texture aliasing when utilizing AF.

Could you list the games that use Static Hardware T&L, where software T&L doesn't provide nearly the same results?

Sacrifice- geometric LOD flips out with soft T&L
Giants- Performance tanks when enabling shadows using soft T&L
Mafia- Sizeable performance hit
MDK2- Inferior lighting and sizeable performance hit or major performance hit

Anyone know how to force disable hard T&L? I'll gladly check more games out. Out of those that have the option that I own every one of them shows noticeable differences.

Where does the Kyro fall behind GeForce, for example, in terms of rendering performance / quality?

One good example was Giants enabling shadows. For the GF series of boards the performance hit was quite minor, a percentage point or so. For the Kyro2 there was a rather massive hit in framerate, in line with enabling 2x AA IIRC. I was running a Kyro2 for a decent amount of time and ran a couple thousand benches with it.

See Dave's response. Where do you see B3D advocting "support" for features, rather than supplying technical explanations for them? Specific links please.

What features they chose to focus on is what is at issue. Check out the TBuffer article, the 22bit post filter article, the various AA articles etc.

Again I will state, I trust B3D more then any other review site. What I don't trust, and has been proven numerous times, is that what they find to be an excellent product will be suitable for myself. I don't trust ATi or nVidia for that matter either. Out of all the IHVs, I have had the best luck in terms of product matching my expectations with nVidia over the years, so I do tend to trust them quite a bit more then ATi when it comes to making a purchase. That said, if BitBoys were to release a gfx board tomorrow that was on par with the others and showed the slightest edge in what matters to me I wouldn't have too much of an issue picking one up(driver issues would be my only hesitation only as they are not proven yet).

Reverend

02-Jun-2003, 03:06

On the driver front, this site focuses on 3D tech and stays away from gaming related issues. As of right now, the only reason I look at 3D vid card reviews is to observe potential benefits to my gaming.
That may appear to be the direction of B3D to you at the moment but I'd have to say that I haven't been doing a lot of reviews since Dave took over and Dave's interest and priority is slightly different than mine. That should now change, so I hope that my reviews will provide a nice balance to the site's entire review content.

As for the Beyond3D is anti-NVIDIA -- B3D is not anti-NVIDIA ... that assumes that we are against NVIDIA as a company as a whole, which is miost definitely not true... it's just that B3D is anti-NVIDIA-PR . We are very leery of PR statements from any IHV (and that should be understandable)... and it so happens that during those days (and even now) we have received far more NVIDIA PR announcements/statements than from other IHVs. I don't believe any of our NVIDIA product reviews thus far have had any undeserved criticisms.

K.I.L.E.R

02-Jun-2003, 03:42

As for the Beyond3D is anti-NVIDIA -- B3D is not anti-NVIDIA ... that assumes that we are against NVIDIA as a company as a whole, which is miost definitely not true... it's just that B3D is anti-NVIDIA-PR . We are very leery of PR statements from any IHV (and that should be understandable)... and it so happens that during those days (and even now) we have received far more NVIDIA PR announcements/statements than from other IHVs. I don't believe any of our NVIDIA product reviews thus far have had any undeserved criticisms.

EXACTLY!
My opinion as well.

demalion

02-Jun-2003, 04:10

The amount of convers logical fallacy is getting a bit much, don't you think?

Actually, who is predicting that Doom3 is the direction that everything is heading? Personally I would say that the industry is heading down a much more shader oriented route, which Doom3 basically isn’t.
Your betting/thinking on shaders being the direction, which is what I was saying previously. This particular thought on your part is more friendly towards ATi's direction with their part then nV's.

Ben,
Thinking that shaders are the way the industry is heading isn't equivalent to being more friendly to one IHV's hardware, it is an observation based on many other factors demonstrated by the industry itself, and has a justification completely aside from "friendliness" to ATI. :shock:

What you are doing is taking the objectively determinable observation that "one IHV's approach is more successful with shaders" and constructing a relationship of "IHV friendliness" for Beyond3D, ignoring completely the relevance of any of the indications in the rest of the 3D industry's focus on shaders.

What does nVidia's CineFX push? What new features did the NV3x add to the NV25?
What are a large proportion of 3D technology papers and talks discussing and analyzing?
What is Direct 3D and OpenGL evolution focused upon?
What did nVidia leverage as a selling point, even before used to express unique functionality in games?

Do you recognize that shaders are the emphasis for all of these? If so, why is Wavey's comment wrong at all, or even "IHV friendly"? You're doing the equivalent of stating that the "industry is more friendly towards ATi's direction with their part than nV's" by the way you're criticizing Wavey and Beyond3D.

That's 100% pure blame re-assignation, and you are consistently doing it like you're hardwired in your inability to simply to assign blame to nVidia for being "less friendly towards shaders and the direction of the 3d industry", as all of your expectations you've expressed for B3D are based on the fallacy of nVidia's viewpoint being the frame of reference, when it should be what the 3D industry is actually indicating. They are not synonymous, nor is B3D a nVidia website: it is a 3D industry website.

Objectivity is impossible when trying to satisfy your dictate for not being "more friendly towards ATI", simply because ATI can objectively be established as more successful with shaders. :-? Your statements insist that Beyond3D can't recognize this without being "friendly" with them. Since you don't trust any company, could you explain the objective criteria for ATI friendliness you are using, and how they aren't based on ATI simply being successful with shaders?

AFAICS, shaders being important is not an ATI "friendly" stance. The "friendliness" in the exisiting situation is from ATI: to the 3D industry and, hopefully, their bottom line, by excelling at that at a time when widespread adoptation and utilization of it is emerging.

It seems likely that the NV40 will, in the near future, excel at the possibilities of VS/PS 3.0 over VS/PS 2.0, whatever those are, and will possibly be more "friendly" to the industry than the competition until ATI supports it as well. At some time in the past, the GF 3 was the first chip to have an exposed pixel shader model, and they were definitely more "friendly" towards this until the 8500 was released.

But that is past and future, and there are factors independent of IHV friendliness and desires pertinent to the evaluation of those situations that your labelling wouldn't consider. There are also independent factors right now, between those two times, that are pertinent to the evaluation of graphics cards, and the only remotely objective approach available is to focus on fairly representing them, regardless of how it makes IHVs look...something you seem to be complaining about. There is no objective solution that can satisfy your expectations until nVidia more successfully competes with their products, there is only ignoring factors that might be inconvenient.

Speaking again of my distrust for nVidia: in demonstrated practice, they consider misrepresentation of facts as being equally valid as achieving something in actuality. I consider the approach to 3dmark 03 330 as the clearest illustration of this in recent memory.
I don't trust that this will suddenly change given their behavior in the past, and I won't trust them any more when and if objective observations are more in line with their desire to be perceived as "number one" in some way. What I'll be trusting, when and if that occurs, is those objective evaluations that fairly and thoroughly determine that the objectivity and nVidia's statements are actually convergent. What I view as B3D's focus is achieving that, and what you seem to be proposing is removing that significance for the sake of not being labelled by you as "friendly" to an IHV you dislike more than another.

K.I.L.E.R

02-Jun-2003, 05:39

No. The R300 core board introduces a considerable amount of texture aliasing when utilizing AF.

It does?
Maybe it's just me but I found the R300 to have a lack of TA with AF than my NV20 when both cards at 8xAF + tri. 16x AF just tends to make the image cleaner.

Dave H

02-Jun-2003, 06:38

As far as 48 and 64bit not being enough, look to the comments by those that do write for the site talking about the shader demos that have been written to try and show as much. This took months for people to figure out a good way to display, yet now it is used and discussed extensively.

The ongoing hoopla on the forums over Nvidia's drivers and shader precision has nothing to do with whether FX12 or FP16 "are enough". There aren't any games yet which utilize the extra precision of PS 2.0 (or OpenGL equivalent), so it would be premature to argue this question in depth. Luckily, no one is doing that in much volume, at least not on the B3D forums.

Rather, the discussion is about compliance. Whatever amount of precision "is enough" (and of course it's a meaningless question, since the answer is completely different depending on the shader in question), the fact is that PS 2.0 and ARB_fragment_program both specify FP24 as the minimum default precision. Several of Nvidia's recent drivers have been established to default to FP16 when running PS 2.0 programs (without the partial precision hint). This is in violation of the spec. Period. The issue isn't whether those shaders, or any other shaders, look "good enough" in FP16, FX12, or whatever; the issue is compliance. The issue isn't whether it takes a specially designed shader to even tell which datatype the drivers are using (and of course, the reason to use a synthetic shader to determine the datatype isn't because the datatype has no bearing on image quality in a more typical shader, but because with a shader designed to test datatype precision the cause of any anomalies is unambiguous.) The issue is compliance.

Some Nvidia drivers (including the WHQL'd 44.03s) are not DX9 compliant as a default. That's an issue worth discussing on a tech oriented forum like B3D's technology and hardware forum. No, it doesn't impact you much if your chief interest is how suitable various cards are for playing DX7/DX8 games. But neither does it indicate an anti-Nvidia bias to be discussing it. (Which isn't to say that many posters don't arguably display an anti-Nvidia bias while discussing it.)

BenSkywalker

02-Jun-2003, 12:54

That may appear to be the direction of B3D to you at the moment but I'd have to say that I haven't been doing a lot of reviews since Dave took over and Dave's interest and priority is slightly different than mine.

I would agree with that based on your history in terms of reviews. You have always focused more on gaming related aspects then the rest of the B3D crew(at any point) and because of that I tend to read your reviews with more interest then the rest. For the record, I recall your liking of the V5's FSAA however you took issue with their far too conservative LOD bias which the rest of the B3D crew at first attempted to deny(your article leading to the LOD bias adjustment tool in 3dfx's drivers). On the other side, you went fairly in depth in looking at MDK2 and how it benefited from hard T&L in terms of performance and visuals and displayed this to the end user. Unfortunately on the basis of this particular topic, that stuff happened at The Pulpit and not here ;)

I remember when Barron and K had been bashing static hard T&L for quite some time and you posted the Giants screenshots and talking about framerates showing the edge it offered running that title(both in IQ and FPS) on the forums when you started participating here also. I've seen you play up the strong points on both ends of the spectrum Rev(in terms of the different strengths of each competitive IHV), but that hasn't been the norm here.

That should now change, so I hope that my reviews will provide a nice balance to the site's entire review content.

If you still use the same focus you have in the past then it will. Perhaps Dave does a good job of covering it up, but he does not come across as a gamer at all(neither does Marco). Keeping with the focus of the technology end of 3D it isn't that big of a deal, but it makes it hard to truly equal out how something comes across in one of their reviews with how something will end up playing games.

As for the Beyond3D is anti-NVIDIA -- B3D is not anti-NVIDIA ... that assumes that we are against NVIDIA as a company as a whole, which is miost definitely not true... it's just that B3D is anti-NVIDIA-PR .

Instead of simply being anti PR in general? :)

I don't believe any of our NVIDIA product reviews thus far have had any undeserved criticisms.

Are you saying that the nVidia reviews have only had valid criticism leveled at them....?

LeStoffer

02-Jun-2003, 22:00

I kinda understand what your getting at Ben back in those FSAA vs T&L days (I hardly dared admitting that my GeForce DDR was good for hardware T&L in 3ds Max :wink: ), but after 3dfx were gone, I don't think nVidia was getting that much resitance from here regarding the GF2, GF3 and GF4 lineup. CineFX is another matter though...

Anyway, I really think that nVidia is doing themselves a disservice by not letting their folks post in the forum regarding facts (or myths) on their products. I really miss that since we have a couple from ATI and PowerVR. Whatever happen to gking and such?

02-Jun-2003, 22:14

Are you saying that the nVidia reviews have only had valid criticism leveled at them....?

Yes. Absolutly. They are the ones pusihng DX9 for $79.99. They are the ones pushing the Dawn of Cinimatic Computing. They are the ones asking us if we are ready. They are the ones lying to us about the number of pipelines and saying they dont optimize for benchmarks. Even though PR is crap it still is what your products have to live up to. And the FX is not living up to any of that just yet.

WaltC

08-Jun-2003, 03:43

This post is supposed to be light-hearted in manner, so don't get too serious :)

I have said a few times that the trust is lost since the NVIDIA-3DMark03 cheating issue.

If NVIDIA were to issue a statement like :

"What we did is not right wrt 3DMark03. We are sorry if this means that all benchmarks -- game or synthetic -- conducted on NVIDIA boards/drivers are never to be trusted due to the implications involved as a result of this issue. In our effort to provide the best software running on our hardware, sometimes decisions are made that ultimately proves to be the incorrect ones. We like to believe our hardware and its supporting drivers are among the best available. We hope this 3DMark03 incidence do not lead the public to believe otherwise."

... would it be acceptable to you guys, and for you guys to "forgive and forget"?

Completely hypothetical NVIDIA statement by me, of course. Jenson had admitted NV30 was a "mistake" -- admitting another mistake is not impossible :)

I'd say admitting nv35 is basically the revised ghost of nv30 with crap drivers, though, is highly unlikely...;)

I could forgive--and quite possibly forget, eventually--if nVidia would come out and say:

"We regret the recent unfortunate incidents surrounding our drivers and 3D Mark. We didn't think we were doing anything wrong by optimizing our drivers to present a best-case performance picture which differs from what our drivers will routinely deliver in real 3D games. We apologize to any of our customers who might have inferred a level of perfomance for our products because of the exaggerated performance they produce running 3D Mark 03 320. It was not our intention to imply that all 3D games run on our hardware like 3D Mark 03 320, which is a highly optimized, best-case scenario not intended to represent the mean level of performance you can expect from our products.

"We recognize the inconvenience this may have caused some of our customers, specifically those who may have purchased any of our nv3x-based products. To that end we would recommend they run version 330 of the benchmark which neutralizes the majority of our best-case optimization and will provide a much more accurate picture of the way our products can be expected to perform when running most D3d games. Also, we would like to assure our customers with an "optimization-free pledge" that from henceforth all of our drivers will no longer recognize any benchmark of any type, or timedemo, etc. We have learned that honesty is important to our customers, and we would like to begin providing it to them. Additionally, as some of our driver optimizations remain even after the 330 patch, our next Detonator release will expunge the last of them so that we may honor our committment to our customers, whom we have of late come to see as very important to us.

"However, we at nVidia are very excited about ID Software's upcoming Doom 3 game. Our driver guys are knocking their dicks in the dirt to bring you the highest frame rates possible in Doom 3--we want you to know that, "Damn the image quality--full speed ahead!" is a reverberating shriek often heard from our little cadre of Doom 3 driver optimizers! Candidly, and in advance, we want you to know exciting facts like these ahead of time (this time.)

"It is true that as time permits we are able to highly optimize our drivers for that handful of 3D games we feel will be most popular. Does our lavish attention on that scant 1% of 3D games that ship mean that we neglect the rest? On the contrary, for the other 99% of 3D games that ship we make every effort to abide by API conventions. In truth, we really don't have the time or inclination to heavily optimize for all those other games because the web sites which review our products never use those games to demonstrate our hardware. Nope, it's Quake, Quake, Quake, and Doom, Doom, Doom, all of the time--so that's really all we have time for, if you want to know the truth. In other words, we don't "optimize" for those games apart from the usual routine bug fix from time to time. That's why in our re-commitment to honesty here at nVidia we encourage you to run version 330 of 3DMark 03--so you'll have a much clearer picture of what you can expect of our performance in most games.

"Thank you for listening. That is all. Truly."

..... :D

(Actually, I copied this verbatim from the latest Mad magazine's "Apologies we'd love to hear" section....)