OMG HARDOCP REVIEW OF UT2003 AND FILTERING

[Nazgul]

Anyway, you didn't answer - do you feel that the screenshots shown in this thread and our orginal one do not represent any kind of quality reduction over Trilinear filtering?

And let's not forget that this quality reduction appears to happen only when running UT2K3, arguably the most popular game right now for benchmarking.

 

[Oblivious]

Blackwind:

I would like to know if you still feel [H] did not damage Ati in the original review (which is what Ati was complaining about in the first place) regardless of the conclusion.

 

[Fred da Roza]

After 6 months of denial. In other words he practiced a double standard, which is exactly what I originally said.

I'm not following your double standard comment. How is that a double standard?.

So you are telling me that even though both ATI and nVidia refused to acknowledge and originally refused to correct their cheats, you don’t see a double standard in revealing and condemning ATI’s, but not nVidia’s. Even though the situation with nVidia went on for a longer time and encompassed a greater number of issues.

As Kyle stated when the 3DMark03 issues started, revealing nVidia’s cheats won’t stop them from doing them. Why is it that he is only willing to talk about this issue now that he can give nVidia a positive spin? Why does he condemn Extreme Tech and B3D for doing the exact same thing he did on Quack. Why does he post his reviews with no mention of the nVidia cheats while exposing ATI’s?

By the way Kyle Bennet stated (with respect to his 8500 review) that “We did not get the card till Tuesday morning of this weekâ€. Then he posted his review Friday, October 19th 2001 and stated:

We all know that Quake3 is one of the most utilized 3D benchmarks in the world, there is simply no arguing this. We came into possession of a program that you will see more of here soon. It is an .exe file that when placed in the Quake3 directory renames every single instance of the word "quake" to "quack" as well as builds a new quake.exe file named quack.exe. When you run quack.exe, you will find that Quake3 runs exactly as it should.

Here is the interesting part. The top three scores are "Quack" scores, while the bottom three are "Quake" scores. Both are taken with the Radeon 8500 using the drivers on their website. It is my guess that the Radeon 8500 drivers have Quake specific instructions embedded in them to give better Quake3 scores. I did specifically ask an ATi engineer about this, and he explained that ATi would not produce game specific drivers, but they would surely optimize for game engines.

It seems to me that if this particular set of Radeon 8500 drivers was optimized for the Q3 game engine, we would see identical sets of data above. Now whether or not this is seen as good or bad, you still get the elevated performance when running Quake 3. I am not going to push this issue any further, except to simply ask for logical explanations as to why this would occur.

He then followed up the original article with a more extensive editorial October 23, 2001. That doesn’t sound like he made much of an effort to correct the issues with ATI before publishing and is in fact it's a far shorter time frame than the over 1 month before posting that you stated.

 

[WaltC]

I would suggest you have implied exactly that. I actually did answer your question. You have elaborated further your question so I will respond again, with elaboration. There is quality reduction over Trilinear filtering in UT2003 with Nvidias present efforts. Does this boil down into the fiasco its been made into? No. With the events of the past few months would we be as consumers more inclined to trust Nvidia if we had the ability in a new Det set to enable full trilinear? Yup. Do we want it? YUP.

I don't understand your point about "fiasco".... What did [H]'s article attempting to rationalize what nVidia did here do apart from escalating the publicity surrounding the matter? Not to mention publicly "banning" Dave B. and accusing him of having an agenda and being employed as a B3d policeman? *chuckle*

Prior to all of this the matter was restricted to forum chit-chat, was it not? Just one more gaffe in a long string of gaffe's nVidia's tried to pull off in the last year....yawn. But [H] breathed a fiery life into the situation, right?

When the 3DMk stories first broke, and a couple of days later Kyle sought to overlay himself on the situation with his infamous "Just two days after the Doom 3 preview..." article which made all sorts of wild and unfounded noise about nothing, I began to suspect that Kyle simply didn't like being left out of an event on the Internet to which people were paying attention that didn't involve him, or his alter-ego, [H.] And so he found a way to inject himself into the situation through that article.

What I'm seeing taking place now certainly seems to follow that pattern. So if you want to consider this matter needlessly escalated, you might want to consider the [H] factor in it, as well.

I never stated it was impossible. I stated it was near impossible, very difficult, a hard task to accomplish. I have to ask, where on earth do you see an "unfair advantage to nVidia" with the conclusion of [H] continued recommendation of a 9800 over a 5900? I call that a very clouded opinion.

Of course, [H]'s involvement here is simply peripheral to the real story: which is "what nVidia did." I find it kind of strange that the whole "UT2K3 Trilinear Filtering" article discusses how "close" nVidia's performance trilinear is in the game to ATi's full trilinear in terms of IQ, but then at the end the article rightly concludes ATi's image quality is better.... I thought that was pretty funny....

 

[Dave Baumann]

I would suggest you have implied exactly that.

No, I'm saying to you that the your idea that "they are different ergo we'll never get the same" isn't really much of a case WRT Trilinear filtering. Regardless of of what chip is doing it, Trilinear always calls for a certain number of samples, and that is not happening with one board where it is with another in this case. Here we should be able to get a comparison, as both are capable to taking that number of samples.

You have elaborated further your question so I will respond again, with elaboration. There is quality reduction over Trilinear filtering in UT2003 with Nvidias present efforts.

And how did you are happy with the conclusions in the [H] article given the shots here? (just asking)

Does this boil down into the fiasco its been made into? No. With the events of the past few months would we be as consumers more inclined to trust Nvidia if we had the ability in a new Det set to enable full trilinear? Yup. Do we want it? YUP.

The 'fiasco' is there becuase we should need to ask for something we were told we were getting. And thats the point - when NVIDIA initially put the 5800 out with the texture slider to balanced we reviewed it like that, realised our mistake, mentioned it and moved on - we had a course for action to use the Application setting in future to get the IQ we expect. In this instance we were told that we were getting one level of IQ and then that was taken away behind our back - had we known about this in the first place, or had alternative options this 'fiasco' would not have occured.

We should not need to ask for something we've already been told we're getting.

 

[Randell]

If there are 2 area's of IQ/performance comparisons that should be, can be and have been apples to apples, it's bilinear and trilinear filtering.

For those of you saying look at the 8500 bilinear AF v Geforce3 Tri AF, was it raised then - YES it bloody well was.

For those saying - IQ is subjective, it doenst matter - yes it does matter in a side by side comparison between 2 different products on settings that can be/should be apples to apples.

 

[kemosabe]

Admission to having banned Dave and attempt at justification...

http://www.hardforum.com/showthread...0c2206dcada0&postid=1025081409#post1025081409

 

[volt]

Soon, we will be reviewing graphic cards' IQ just to see if the IHVs are cheating The hell with performance

 

[WaltC]

Admission to having banned Dave and attempt at justification...

http://www.hardforum.com/showthread...0c2206dcada0&postid=1025081409#post1025081409

I no longer post in B3D or Rage3D forums due to the vicious personal attacks that were allowed there time after time after time when the posts in no way had anything to do with the topic at hand. I asked admins of both forums to stop it, and they basically blew me off. If that is their idea of free speech, then that is great.

We rule with a much tighter grip here and I would say if you will follow the basic rules, you are a-OK. We can take criticism and we answer to it all the time.

.....
We do not tolerate flaming or name calling at all. ZERO TOLERANCE. I will not allow folks to come in here and post fully fabricated thoughts that are 100% not true veiled in the guise of an "opinion" either...

But I suppose that "rule" is suspended when Kyle wishes to call the Rev a bunch of names and impugn him. Or when he wishes to ban people he publicly identifies as having "agendas" and being "police", etc. Oh, yea, that's just fine and dandy. That fits perfectly within the "rules" outlined above. Good grief. How sad... How pathetic. How whiney.

I frankly have never seen a post on B3d as vicious and as personal as the one I read by Kyle about the Rev as quoted in this thread. You just can't get any more personal and vicious than that. Totally undeserved and uncalled for. The degree of hypocrisy here is only surpassed by the utter stupdity of it all.

I wouldn't be surprised to learn that Kyle is using the imperial "we" to refer to himself. It's certainly apparent that when he says hop he expects others to jump. Expect to get "blown off" a lot, ol' buddy, in the absence of a major attitude readjustment--on your part.

End of Twilight Zone, episode #49.

 

[Blackwind]

Forgive my candour, but that's pure malarkey. It is more than a bit presumptuous of you to be speaking for other readers. I am a new member myself and it was apparent to me for months before joining that B3D forums operate on the premise of a more intelligent understanding between participants and moderators, such that deleting posts and banning posters is very rarely required. I appreciate the atmosphere of civilized discussion where people are at liberty to calmly express opinions that can differ strongly without being concerned about being summarily axed from the site by a despot. Ironic that that you seem to consider Kyle's need for frequent forum intervention as a measure of his success, rather than as his failure to command the respect of his "community".

There is nothing exaggerated about my point in the least. in the very thread that Rev posted, two people have already asked the very same thing. I happen to know at least 4 posters here personally and they feel the same way. I have not presumed to speak for you in the least. I do not consider Kyle's forum interventions a measure of his success. That would be you putting words in my mouth. The success of [H] speaks for itself and I can assure you, he and his crew have his communities respect.

 

[Blackwind]

No, I'm saying to you that the your idea that "they are different ergo we'll never get the same" isn't really much of a case WRT Trilinear filtering. Regardless of of what chip is doing it, Trilinear always calls for a certain number of samples, and that is not happening with one board where it is with another in this case. Here we should be able to get a comparison, as both are capable to taking that number of samples.

I would have to point out something you are missing. I'm not trying to establish a case, you are. My mission does not have to be yours, nor my methods of getting there.

And how did you are happy with the conclusions in the [H] article given the shots here? (just asking)

Sorry, I'm not following you here. Are you asking if i'm happy with the conclusions?

The 'fiasco' is there becuase we should need to ask for something we were told we were getting. And thats the point - when NVIDIA initially put the 5800 out with the texture slider to balanced we reviewed it like that, realised our mistake, mentioned it and moved on - we had a course for action to use the Application setting in future to get the IQ we expect. In this instance we were told that we were getting one level of IQ and then that was taken away behind our back - had we known about this in the first place, or had alternative options this 'fiasco' would not have occured.

We should not need to ask for something we've already been told we're getting.

I totally agree. We should not have to ask for something we were already told we were getting. One of the major reasons I have not bought another Nvidia card since my Ti500. We don't have to turn it into a conspiracy theory either. What I’m suggesting is called objective journalism.

 

[Dave Baumann]

I would have to point out something you are missing. I'm not trying to establish a case, you are. My mission does not have to be yours, nor my methods of getting there.

The case is already proven - its called Triliner filtering and its relatively well documented how its achieved.

And how did you are happy with the conclusions in the [H] article given the shots here? (just asking)

Sorry, I'm not following you here. Are you asking if i'm happy with the conclusions?

Yes, in light of the fact that you acknowledge there are IQ reductions.

We don't have to turn it into a conspiracy theory either. What I’m suggesting is called objective journalism.

Who's suggesting the conspiracy? It would be every easy to suggest motives on what was the cause for doing this, however we have not - we've laid out what we have discovered and discussed it, not drawn conclusions of the motives. That doesn't stop an objective hournalist from feeling aggrieved when they are told one thing only to be presented with another.

 

[AzBat]

We don't have to turn it into a conspiracy theory either. What I’m suggesting is called objective journalism.

Umm.. Are you saying you don't believe Dave is being objective? I worked in this industry awhile back, and saw a few conspiracy theories actually turn out to be true. So I know exactly what Dave is going through. Just because you don't believe there is a conspiracy going on doesn't mean he's not practicing objective journalism. One can say that the ones that have the balls to go against what others are saying are more objective as they are more concerned with people getting the truth.

Tommy McClain

 

[banksie]

So, the images displayed here do not represent any kind of IQ reductions?

Whilst I can clearly see the issue myself, having unbalanced vision it makes my eyes swim as it throws off the usual focus queues I use to aid depth perception, I haven't seen the game rendered correctly either. Not owning a copy of the game, is it possible to get some comparison shots?

Philip

 

[banksie]

Yes, we will probably cover it in the same fashion the custom demos were done i.e. in a product review. In this case, the ASUS V9950 Ultra. This is a single slot GeForce FX 5900U card that shipped with the 44.71 Detonator driver.

If it is necessary to amend previous articles, I will do that just as we did with 3DMark 03.

As a regular reader I would really prefer you to do a similar article to the one detailing the Quack hack. It would be both consistant and give this issue, of nVidia's silent driver tweaks, some much needed public airing. Something pretty much all the major sites have been largely skirting around doing.

Could you consider it, please?

 

[nelg]

Dave would not have been banned if John Reynolds had been doing his job. Letting people get away with this free speaky thing is an outrage.

 

[K.I.L.E.R]

I do share one opinion with Kyle, that is most of you are too vicious towards him.

I have sent an e-mail off to assure him that I am not out to get him nor am I out to hurt him.

I have stated that I am not happy with most of the articles but in no way does that mean I hate him or want him dead.

Banning Dave may not have been appropriate, but in no way should I go out on a man hunt because of that. I'm sure Dave doesn't need a lot of this crap attitude about Kyle on these forums either.

 

[hmmm]

It really seems pretty clear that Blackwind is missing the boat. I finally managed to wade through this entire thread (along with many others). I've got to say I'm very grateful to Scott over at TechReport for pointing me in the right direction. I don't frequent the forums here (something I intend to rememdy ) and would never have realized what was going on with the filtering.

I used to read [H]ardOCP regularly. In fact, until today it was my portal to hardware news. I lost a ton of respect for Kyle, et. al. during the 3dmark fiasco. I've lost the rest today. At any rate, I think my perspective could be interesting regarding their recent IQ comparision.

I didn't know about the filtering issue. All I knew was what I learned from Kyle's article/post. Based on that information, ATI's claim really does seem baseless. My (IMO reasonable based on Kyle's words) assumption was the ATI's objection related purely to the IQ on NVIDIA hardware. There is nothing to hint at the implications for apples-to-apples comparisions in Kyle's article.

The point, of course, is that NVIDIA deliberately mislead the public, denied users the ability to choose how to run their own games, and special-cased today's most common benchmark in such a manner as to unfairly tilt the scales in thier own favor while assuring everyone the playing field was fair. But of course you don't see much of that over at [H], and the little you do see is contradicted by the overall thrust of the article. (Sure, he says it ought to be an option, but then says it will be, so everything is okay. There's also the whole 'oh the IQ is so close and you'll hardly ever notice it anyway, so it doesn't really matter' argument.)

I don't understand how anyone could, with a straight face, be an appologist for that. It truly boggles the mind. :? At any rate, I would really love to see an article here that lays out the case. I spent about six hours reading forum threads. Most people won't be willing to do that, but they still need to know the truth.

Honestly, I'm surprised Kyle hasn't posted here. (He presumably read it at one point since he quoted Dave H.) That's not to say I'm surprised he declined to engage in any substantive discourse. Based on the R3D forum after 3dmark, it seems he is all to willing to respond to every single flame with fire of his own, but cannot or willnot manage even a meek reply to tangible criticism.

I'm finally done with [H]. I'll have to find a new portal for news. (Any suggestions?) I wrote Kyle a little e-mail today. He never replied, but did ban me from the forums. I really wasn't even inflamatory. Honestly, I'm surprised it didn't happen after 3dmark, as I was one of the few people at the [H]forums that kept pressing him on the issue. My one regret is that I can't buy another Ratpad. That's actually a decent product. Too bad. I'll just buy a few Everglides. That ought to piss him off.

(His reply to Rev really was unbelievable...)

 

[nelg]

There is nothing to hint at the implications for apples-to-apples comparisions in Kyle's article.

That is the same concern I had with Kyle. I raised the issue with him and to his credit he responded....

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally posted by nleg
[H] should have included a statement like this in that review...“ Using the 44.03 drivers the 5900 does not use full trilinear filtering while playing Ut2003. It is our opinion that this does not have a detrimental effect on image quality. Though it remains to be seen if this effects performance and image quality of other games.â€￾ That’s why I have problem with [H].
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



Not a problem and I fully understand your point. We will make sure to point that out next time should it be the issue.

 

[Althornin]

ah, so because apples to apples is impossible, we should just give up and let things be as far away from apples to apples as nVidia wants?

As a reviewer, you are presenting (in the type of review we are discussing) TWO products up for comparison. You cannot run benchmarks on ALL games, so you run benchmarks on a few games, thinking that this shows relative card performance.

The problem with what [H] has done is to use a much farther from apples to apples comparison than need be - AND to not even mention this issue in said review.
You dont think that this shows an unfair advantage to nVidia?
Of COURSE things arent apples to apples, but we expect the differences to be MENTIONED and commented upon! Not ignored! And the very fact that the GFFX does its tri/bi mix trick in only UT2K3 makes it just about the WORST benchmark for a REVIEW - a review is supposed to give a general idea or impression of a cards abilities (in this case, relative to another card). However, it is doing nothing of the sort.

I never stated it was impossible. I stated it was near impossible, very difficult, a hard task to accomplish. I have to ask, where on earth do you see an "unfair advantage to nVidia" with the conclusion of [H] continued recommendation of a 9800 over a 5900? I call that a very clouded opinion.

Well, apples to apples is Impossible....not just difficult, but impossible. The difference in methods with current competing hardware makes it so. One still must strive to get as close as possible. Nice way to dodge the point though.

And the conclusion is not the point. When will you get it through your head that i am not some fanperson, intent on some ATI favoring review conclusion? My arguments dont exist because "my favorite company didnt win", they exist because what the [H] has done is intellectually dishonest!