I think 3DMark2003 is a real revolution from 2001 version as is synthetic from every point of view . Using game-like test engines in benchmarks makes that testing application be something hybrid .
Synthetic benchmarks , especially for graphics cards are very useful but only in FutureMark's last generation of software . Why ? Because it shows how much the additional HARDWARE optimization can technologies can boost the performance .
There you have it : you multiply the frequency of the memory with the bandwidth ... etc. and get the REAL bandwidth of the card . But hey , there comes the "greatest blablaest" video card manufacturer that says it's cards can show a bandwidth of 48 Gb/s or even 100 Gb/s because they've implemented "who knows what" technology that compresses the data and by multiplying with the compression factor we get that huge claimed bandwidth .
REAL synthetic benchmarking applications could help us see whose compression/optimization technology is better .
What I mean by "REAL" ? Well ... when 3DMark2001 was released I often wondered if that MAX Pain like engine isn't optimized for speed rather than quality . Every game maker want it's game to be available to a wider range of users with more or less powerful graphics solutions so they make some ways of optimizing/simplifying the rendered graphics so that the less powerful GPUs could get some speed .
Now that's software optimization , not hardware soooo ... how could we get an clear idea of ATi's HyperZ or nVIDIA's LDA if even a synthetic benchmark that is supposed to be able to do that is twisted around by software optimizations ?
When 03 was released I thought it was the perfect benchmark to test such technologies : you have 1Gb of textures to pass through your VPU and your card gets 1.2 Gb because it compresses some more data from the next step . Now that HARDWARE optimization .
There is another situation : from that 1Gb , your card renders only 400 Mb and so it's faster . That's software optimization .
We must not mix that .
REAL synthetic benchmarks are very important for graphic cards because , in most if not all the cases , the graphics cards don't reach even the theoretical peak performance .
Real applications represent a whole other chapter of testing graphic cards and we shouldn't say that synthetic benchmarking doesn't matter .
Now here's my pool . I have a question , why did FutureMark did all this sharade ? The way of putting this question is very important and I haven’t noticed any thread to put the problem in this way .
Cheater have always existed and there are more types of cheaters :
-ATi : trying the wares with the Quak thing which wasn't such a big deal but nVIDIA fans really inflated the whole situation ;
-SiS , Trident : they do this for a living , if not , their cards would be much too slow to make an impression on the customer ;
-nVIDIA : rising the cheating galore to unimaginable levels .
Why are nVIDIA's cheats so much more disturbing that the others ... ?
Well ... ATi's R200 was roughly twice as powerful as the R100 . SIS's Xabre was a whole revolution from the SIS 315 line .
nVIDIA's 5900 is ... well it only has some more bandwidth and less features .. clock speed etc.
But hey , the benchmarks show almost twice the performance is some situations .
That's why this whole thing is disturbing , because companies can get money from launching a "new" line of cards which's performance boost is based on cheating drivers .
That's dangerous .
So cheater were here for a long time but FutureMark only started to bite from nVIDIA's NV35 which ... is a lot better than NV30 from the architectural point of view and deserves it's money ( up to a point ) unlike the NV30 implementation .
There are two possibilities :
1) FutureMark decided to end , once and for all , cheating , and defend user's interests .
2) FutureMark decided that is they make enough scandal , nVIDIA will get back in the "Beta Program" officially or unofficially with a lot more contribution than before .
It is probably clear that if you design apps for the video card market and the biggest player in this market renegates you , you are put in a ... lets say "less credible position" .
Please give an objective answer and don't give in to subjectivity . Don't imagine that this thread insinuates FutureMark guys are the negative side of the story . Maybe they really are on to doing something better as they've started with the 03 generation .
I've written all of this because I'm horrofied by the cheating going of in he IT industry these days . After reading that ASUS sends much batter mainboards to reiewers than it sells in it's retail chanel and that MSI overclocks it's systems without letting us see it I think nVIDIA's "biggest lie " as JC called Geforce 4MX is getting small considering that it started a trend with ATi calling the RV250 9000 and the RV350 9600 .
Also , notice how ASUS calls it's line of NV3x cards "9800" in the 9700 Pro days and now "9900" just to make it sound bigger than ATi's 9800 Pro .
This is getting too dangerously close to efectively fooling the customer and stealing it's money .
And , also , please say if you agree with my wannabe definition of synthetic banchmarking in video card industry .
Synthetic benchmarks , especially for graphics cards are very useful but only in FutureMark's last generation of software . Why ? Because it shows how much the additional HARDWARE optimization can technologies can boost the performance .
There you have it : you multiply the frequency of the memory with the bandwidth ... etc. and get the REAL bandwidth of the card . But hey , there comes the "greatest blablaest" video card manufacturer that says it's cards can show a bandwidth of 48 Gb/s or even 100 Gb/s because they've implemented "who knows what" technology that compresses the data and by multiplying with the compression factor we get that huge claimed bandwidth .
REAL synthetic benchmarking applications could help us see whose compression/optimization technology is better .
What I mean by "REAL" ? Well ... when 3DMark2001 was released I often wondered if that MAX Pain like engine isn't optimized for speed rather than quality . Every game maker want it's game to be available to a wider range of users with more or less powerful graphics solutions so they make some ways of optimizing/simplifying the rendered graphics so that the less powerful GPUs could get some speed .
Now that's software optimization , not hardware soooo ... how could we get an clear idea of ATi's HyperZ or nVIDIA's LDA if even a synthetic benchmark that is supposed to be able to do that is twisted around by software optimizations ?
When 03 was released I thought it was the perfect benchmark to test such technologies : you have 1Gb of textures to pass through your VPU and your card gets 1.2 Gb because it compresses some more data from the next step . Now that HARDWARE optimization .
There is another situation : from that 1Gb , your card renders only 400 Mb and so it's faster . That's software optimization .
We must not mix that .
REAL synthetic benchmarks are very important for graphic cards because , in most if not all the cases , the graphics cards don't reach even the theoretical peak performance .
Real applications represent a whole other chapter of testing graphic cards and we shouldn't say that synthetic benchmarking doesn't matter .
Now here's my pool . I have a question , why did FutureMark did all this sharade ? The way of putting this question is very important and I haven’t noticed any thread to put the problem in this way .
Cheater have always existed and there are more types of cheaters :
-ATi : trying the wares with the Quak thing which wasn't such a big deal but nVIDIA fans really inflated the whole situation ;
-SiS , Trident : they do this for a living , if not , their cards would be much too slow to make an impression on the customer ;
-nVIDIA : rising the cheating galore to unimaginable levels .
Why are nVIDIA's cheats so much more disturbing that the others ... ?
Well ... ATi's R200 was roughly twice as powerful as the R100 . SIS's Xabre was a whole revolution from the SIS 315 line .
nVIDIA's 5900 is ... well it only has some more bandwidth and less features .. clock speed etc.
But hey , the benchmarks show almost twice the performance is some situations .
That's why this whole thing is disturbing , because companies can get money from launching a "new" line of cards which's performance boost is based on cheating drivers .
That's dangerous .
So cheater were here for a long time but FutureMark only started to bite from nVIDIA's NV35 which ... is a lot better than NV30 from the architectural point of view and deserves it's money ( up to a point ) unlike the NV30 implementation .
There are two possibilities :
1) FutureMark decided to end , once and for all , cheating , and defend user's interests .
2) FutureMark decided that is they make enough scandal , nVIDIA will get back in the "Beta Program" officially or unofficially with a lot more contribution than before .
It is probably clear that if you design apps for the video card market and the biggest player in this market renegates you , you are put in a ... lets say "less credible position" .
Please give an objective answer and don't give in to subjectivity . Don't imagine that this thread insinuates FutureMark guys are the negative side of the story . Maybe they really are on to doing something better as they've started with the 03 generation .
I've written all of this because I'm horrofied by the cheating going of in he IT industry these days . After reading that ASUS sends much batter mainboards to reiewers than it sells in it's retail chanel and that MSI overclocks it's systems without letting us see it I think nVIDIA's "biggest lie " as JC called Geforce 4MX is getting small considering that it started a trend with ATi calling the RV250 9000 and the RV350 9600 .
Also , notice how ASUS calls it's line of NV3x cards "9800" in the 9700 Pro days and now "9900" just to make it sound bigger than ATi's 9800 Pro .
This is getting too dangerously close to efectively fooling the customer and stealing it's money .
And , also , please say if you agree with my wannabe definition of synthetic banchmarking in video card industry .
