Another Site reviwing with 3DMARK and 53.03

[digitalwanderer]

The biased assumptions are that generally you and EB are the first sites to attempt to discredit or tear down an editorial or review on DH, even without checking with myself regarding statements I make - I have also read personal insults from you regarding comments i have made. Now im quite happy with you saying a review has errors or an editorial is flawed and letting us know but ill reply to you (again when ive time) when I see you bitching in an underhanded way on various forums regarding Driverheaven site policies and reviewing stances.

I don't remember seeing Hanners ever bitch unjustly about your site's policies and reviewing stances, please point out what you're talking about so we can reasonably discuss it.

If I decide to remove 3dmark from our reviews, ill do so if I feel it will be beneficial to content, not because ive taken a "tantrum" over futuremark supposedly slapping me down.

No, from my understanding you removed it from your reviews just because of the public outcry against it and not because of anything FM said to you...correct?

I strongly suggest you start looking into your forum conduct across the net and commentary on unfounded "assumptions" or "feelings" before you expect to be taken seriously as a professional and upfront reviewer. Im not quite sure there is enough room on the WWW for two digitalwanderers.

There's plenty of room for anyone who has an opinion, there's already enough sheep out there.

 

[digitalwanderer]

If, indeed the 'proper' 5900XTs are hardwired so as not to work with the Det 52.16, this is very fishy indeed. The only reason that NV might do this as far as I can see is to force people to use the 53.03 drivers specifically to provide incorrect 3DM2003 results.

Can anyone think of any other reasons why you shouldn't be able to use 52.16 drivers with the 5900XTs?

Has anyone looked at the 53.03 .inf file yet to see if the 5900XT's are listed? It could just need a slight bit-o-editing.

 

[Brent]

Veridian3/Brent,

glad I was able to help. Looking forward to what ever you folks find out.

thanks!

i found this site which gives a listing of a bunch of commands that can be used in FarCry, i found it very helpfull

http://personal.inet.fi/atk/kjh2348fs/fc_demo_info.html

 

[Tim Murray]

If, indeed the 'proper' 5900XTs are hardwired so as not to work with the Det 52.16, this is very fishy indeed. The only reason that NV might do this as far as I can see is to force people to use the 53.03 drivers specifically to provide incorrect 3DM2003 results.

Can anyone think of any other reasons why you shouldn't be able to use 52.16 drivers with the 5900XTs?

Has anyone looked at the 53.03 .inf file yet to see if the 5900XT's are listed? It could just need a slight bit-o-editing.

Did this a while ago--it is correct. 5900XT is in 53.03. From what I can recall offhand, it is not in 52.16.

 

[Veridian3]

Excellent find Brent.

 

[digitalwanderer]

Did this a while ago--it is correct. 5900XT is in 53.03. From what I can recall offhand, it is not in 52.16.

Thanks Baron. If I recall it ain't that hard to edit a new card's ID into the the older .inf from a new .inf, but it's been a while since I played around with nVidia drivers like that.

 

[Tim Murray]

StealthHawk added 5900 Ultra support to 43.45 drivers to test IQ, so it's rather easy.

 

[digitalwanderer]

StealthHawk added 5900 Ultra support to 43.45 drivers to test IQ, so it's rather easy.

But wouldn't that affect the test results, or does it just allow the newer card to install the older driver?

 

[Tim Murray]

In that case? Yeah, it most certainly affects test results (PS2.0 stuff simply doesn't work, UT2003 is full trilinear, etc. al). But, forcing 52.16 on a 5900XT? Should work fine.

 

[digitalwanderer]

In that case? Yeah, it most certainly affects test results (PS2.0 stuff simply doesn't work, UT2003 is full trilinear, etc. al). But, forcing 52.16 on a 5900XT? Should work fine.

Cool, problem solved. 8)

 

[karlotta]

so i guess it would be prudent to take down the "review" at DH, and start over with a better method of testing..... Like most of the critics have felt from the start.
Is Zardon "man" enoughf too, or will this be like ANTECH, and it will stay up for ever and a day... even tho we find many err.. issues with the testing bed...... Veridian3?

 

[Khedlar]

In that case? Yeah, it most certainly affects test results (PS2.0 stuff simply doesn't work, UT2003 is full trilinear, etc. al). But, forcing 52.16 on a 5900XT? Should work fine.

Cool, problem solved. 8)

No the problem is not solved. What you are suggesting doing is something the average person a review will not be able to do. I'm not interested in reading a review that is using old drivers, bios etc. In fact if I had my way all reviews would be run with out of the box drivers only. With that said there would be no problem with doing reviews to compare different drivers.

Face it the only way 3DMark03 will be usable to compare ATI vs Nvidia cards will be:

1. The driver markers stop cheating, optimizing, whatever for bench marks. (preferred solution)(this a Nvidia problem at this time)

2. FutureMark figures out an anti-detect scheme that will work. (might be the the only thing that will save 3DMark03)

 

[Veridian3]

so i guess it would be prudent to take down the "review" at DH, and start over with a better method of testing..... Like most of the critics have felt from the start.
Is Zardon "man" enoughf too, or will this be like ANTECH, and it will stay up for ever and a day... even tho we find many err.. issues with the testing bed...... Veridian3?

I dont think it would be prudent to take down the review. The "contriversial" 3dmark section is now gone. And the only other issue (or possible issue) is the pixel shader used in the Farcry benchmark. That will be resolved ASAP.

Also whats the reason for your little crusade against me doing reviews?

 

[Althornin]

so i guess it would be prudent to take down the "review" at DH, and start over with a better method of testing..... Like most of the critics have felt from the start.
Is Zardon "man" enoughf too, or will this be like ANTECH, and it will stay up for ever and a day... even tho we find many err.. issues with the testing bed...... Veridian3?

I dont think it would be prudent to take down the review. The "contriversial" 3dmark section is now gone. And the only other issue (or possible issue) is the pixel shader used in the Farcry benchmark. That will be resolved ASAP.

Also whats the reason for your little crusade against me doing reviews?

problem is, now tons of people have read it.
you editing it doesnt fix your mistake - misinforming tons of readers.
You'd have to write a piece about how you screwed up and get it linked everywhere like your review did. Chances of you doing that? I'd bet 0.

Trash journalism at its finest.

 

[Veridian3]

ok,

I've spent this evening testing Farcry again...

From a framerate point of view here are the findings:

Review Scores:
Avg: 29.640 - Min: 1 - Max: 50

With dev mode/Pixel Shader 2.0 command:
Avg: 28.933 - Min: 1 - Max: 49

To me those scores are within the margin of error. I have taken some screenshots and to the naked eye the quality appears to be the same (To me, a family member and a friend that was over). When i have time i'll upload them and post the links here or add them to DH's review however its not too high a priority for me as there is really nothing to see.

 

[Veridian3]

you editing it doesnt fix your mistake - misinforming tons of readers.

as per the post above i didnt missinform people on the farcry bench, i also noted that the 53.03 set may have optimisations in 3dmark....so didnt misinform anyone there either.

Other than finding out how the 52.16 were installed on the 5900SE/XT i dont think there is anything else left to discuss here. I'll post again if the reviewer responds with anything useful.

 

[StealthHawk]

StealthHawk added 5900 Ultra support to 43.45 drivers to test IQ, so it's rather easy.

But wouldn't that affect the test results, or does it just allow the newer card to install the older driver?

Some things appear to work fine. And some things only work "sometimes." DX9 shaders in particular, were glitchy. Rightmark3D was even more so(all tests, not just DX9). It was almost impossible to get through the tests, something would always freeze.

 

[Tim Murray]

But that was before NV35 existed, and PS2.0 support for all NV3x cards really only worked correctly after 43.51 (IIRC). So, maybe that's to be expected.

 

[StealthHawk]

But that was before NV35 existed, and PS2.0 support for all NV3x cards really only worked correctly after 43.51 (IIRC). So, maybe that's to be expected.

Well, one would expect that something would either work or not work. Not work sometimes. At least that's my take on it. If something didn't work I would think it would at least be reproducible.

 

[Tim Murray]

GLSL support in ATI drivers is somewhat odd.. GLSL in the NVIDIA developer drivers is most odd. I don't think it's really surprising.