ATI's Initial Responce to NVIDIA's Editors Day IQ Issues

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

The whole style and content of this ATI press release is in stark contrast to the style and content of what's come out of Nvidia over the last year regarding cheating issues. It speaks volumes for that reason alone.

 

[vb]

Still people should not lie, lying and saying that Toms said "They are cheating" is worse than toms implying that they might be. People are diliberately misinforming people and that is wrong, so quit it please .

nvidia's 3Dmark03 generally accepted cheats were refered to in a certain press-release as "application specific optimisations".

Now Toms calls this "questionable optimisations" and doesn't say ATI was cheating?

No, he's not saying it, he's shouting it.

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

Well I am touchy about news organizations taking things out of context, and the like. If you actually read what toms wrote, it really is not like they accused ATI of cheating they waffled around a lot and they implied it could be possible, but in the end they did not endorse any idea.

Isn't this kind of like the Nvidia "leaked" internal document after the ATi Shader Day where Nvidia pointed out that ATI had paid money for a bundling deal with Valve (the same one that Nvdia was after), but then went to great pains to point out how they had no evidence that Valve were lying about Nvdia's poor performance because of it? All the while Nvidia implied exactly such a link in the spirit of the words, whilst still reserving the right to deny that spirit by pointing at the literal words.

Example:

Same old same old from Nvidia and their lapdog PR extensions. It's well known that THG agrees with a lot of Nvidia's theories, and gets advertising and special exclusives from Nvidia.
Of course I am not implying that THG is an Nvidia lapdog that parrots exactly what Nvidia tell them to say, and I have no evidence that might show that THG is in Nvidia's pocket and thus cannot be trusted.

 

[bloodbob]

Most of what nvidia had to say was complete foobar
other stuff they said was that FP16 calculations are good enough because the file format to store HDR video that a major CG company used was only 16 bits.

 

[Arun]

Well, the phrase 'questionable optimisations' is not all that far away from saying cheating, there isn't really a huge distinction between the two in my mind beyond arguing the semantics.

I know this was in the beggining of the thread and we're at page 2 now but...
The correct semantic is, as used internally by NVIDIA for their "questionable optimisations", is: optimizations, that some have argued are overly-aggressive.

Damn, I *love* that 44.67 internal memo

---

Regarding that ATI statement...
Couldn't agree more with them on most points. And saying I thought NVIDIA couldn't become any lamer...



Uttar

 

[Mark0]

Most of what nvidia had to say was complete foobar
other stuff they said was that FP16 calculations are good enough because the file format to store HDR video that a major CG company used was only 16 bits.

The funny thing is that OpenEXR support even full 32bit FP!
From http://www.openexr.org/about.html:

In addition to the half data type, OpenEXR supports 16-bit unsigned integer and 32-bit floating-point data types

Bye!

 

[digitalwanderer]

I thought NVIDIA couldn't become any lamer...

You gotta give 'em points for that, they keep surprising us with just how awful/scummy/cheap-shotish they can be.

Sort of overwhelming in an underwhelming kind-o-way.

 

[Tim]

HardOCP on the nVidia claims.

If you go back and look at our recent GeForceFX 5950Ultra Preview, you will notice that we covered the two games that are actually referred to above, as for the benchmark put out by the NVIDIA "TWIWMTBP" Partner, we find little reason to evaluate that as we do not use it and you can not play it. After evaluating multiple screenshots of each game and hours of ingame evaluation we saw no difference in UT2K3 that were worth mentioning. We did find that ATI had a better overall image quality in Halo. So if ATI is cheating in Halo, NVIDIA is just doing a bad job rendering the scene. You take your pick of which you would rather have.

NVIDIA has been caught red handed this year cheating. They have admitted this to me in private meetings. Before they stand in front of us and accuse their competition, they owe you and me a public apology. This is not the first time we have said this. Quite frankly, I have seen NVIDIA do some pretty questionable things in the past but this all takes the cake of the hypocrisy-meter.

It is pretty sad when the only way to advance your product is to tear down your competition's. NVIDIA's product is sub-standard when compared to ATI's in the DX9 gaming arena. We know, ATI knows it, and NVIDIA damn sure knows it. NVIDIA needs to concentrate their resources on making a product better than the competition's instead of spreading what we see as FUD to the press who will inevitably regurgitate it to you guys.

NVIDIA should be ashamed of themselves. I know we are.

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

HardOCP on the nVidia claims.

NVIDIA should be ashamed of themselves. I know we are.

You know what they say about "lovers scorned"... I'm not surprised to see HardOCP swing to the other extreme. It been a long time coming, but at least they are arguing from the mostly factually correct side of the argument, rather than the Nvidia PR BS as they were for the first two-thirds of the year.

 

[Pr( )ZaC]

After reading the [H] comment I conclude that miracles DO happen.

 

[John Reynolds]

Well, I don't think there's much love lost between Tom and Kyle, and the latter is definitely also criticizing the former for running with the allegations.

 

[digitalwanderer]

HardOCP on the nVidia claims.

If you go back and look at our recent GeForceFX 5950Ultra Preview, you will notice that we covered the two games that are actually referred to above, as for the benchmark put out by the NVIDIA "TWIWMTBP" Partner, we find little reason to evaluate that as we do not use it and you can not play it. After evaluating multiple screenshots of each game and hours of ingame evaluation we saw no difference in UT2K3 that were worth mentioning. We did find that ATI had a better overall image quality in Halo. So if ATI is cheating in Halo, NVIDIA is just doing a bad job rendering the scene. You take your pick of which you would rather have.

NVIDIA has been caught red handed this year cheating. They have admitted this to me in private meetings. Before they stand in front of us and accuse their competition, they owe you and me a public apology. This is not the first time we have said this. Quite frankly, I have seen NVIDIA do some pretty questionable things in the past but this all takes the cake of the hypocrisy-meter.

It is pretty sad when the only way to advance your product is to tear down your competition's. NVIDIA's product is sub-standard when compared to ATI's in the DX9 gaming arena. We know, ATI knows it, and NVIDIA damn sure knows it. NVIDIA needs to concentrate their resources on making a product better than the competition's instead of spreading what we see as FUD to the press who will inevitably regurgitate it to you guys.

NVIDIA should be ashamed of themselves. I know we are.

Wowzers! I might have to start reading [H] if they're going to be putting up fun reads like that!

Well, I don't think there's much love lost between Tom and Kyle, and the latter is definitely also criticizing the former for running with the allegations.

Yeah, but it's sort of like watching Republicans fight amongst themselves for me. It's fun to watch and you can cheer when either side loses.

 

[jjayb]

Yeah, but it's sort of like watching Republicans fight amongst themselves for me. It's fun to watch and you can cheer when either side loses.

Hey watch it now. If democrats had their way you'd still be waiting in line for the "free" health care rather than recovering.


I think a few people actually predicted this would happen with Kyle and Nvidia. I'm just glad it's finally happened. It sucks watching major websites churn out an IHV's PR fluff time after time after time. It's nice when websites actually look at the fluff and see it for what it is.

 

[Hellbinder]

After some thought there is one part of this that is really bad.

If Nvidia admited to Kyle earlier this year that they were indeed cheating. Yet he said nothing. Still wrote that editorial about Futuremark, Still made many public comments about "if you cant see it then its not cheating"..

That is just plain wrong. No its actually a lot worse than wrong. Is being completely Dishonest to his readership. As I think about it i actually get a little sick. However I am now a happy non flame type person so thats as far as i go.

 

[Natoma]

Uh Hellbinder, those meetings could have occurred in September and still have been labeled "earlier this year".

We don't have a timeframe, so easy there young fellah.

 

[micron]

However I am now a happy non flame type person so thats as far as i go.

Yep, you promised

 

[Hellbinder]

Uh Hellbinder, those meetings could have occurred in September and still have been labeled "earlier this year".

We don't have a timeframe, so easy there young fellah.

well.. The cheats were pretty obvious to the entire rest of the internet. which makes his comments on them Questionable from the Git go.

Say those meetngs took place in september. Then there should have been an immidiate retraction of previous comments by him or at least a new editorial piece on the subject.

 

[Dean]

Uh Hellbinder, those meetings could have occurred in September and still have been labeled "earlier this year".

We don't have a timeframe, so easy there young fellah.

well.. The cheats were pretty obvious to the entire rest of the internet. which makes his comments on them Questionable from the Git go.

Say those meetngs took place in september. Then there should have been an immidiate retraction of previous comments by him or at least a new editorial piece on the subject.

He did have an editorial piece on the subject!! http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=NTAz

 

[StealthHawk]

Well, the phrase 'questionable optimisations' is not all that far away from saying cheating, there isn't really a huge distinction between the two in my mind beyond arguing the semantics.

I know this was in the beggining of the thread and we're at page 2 now but...
The correct semantic is, as used internally by NVIDIA for their "questionable optimisations", is: optimizations, that some have argued are overly-aggressive.

Damn, I *love* that 44.67 internal memo

---

Regarding that ATI statement...
Couldn't agree more with them on most points. And saying I thought NVIDIA couldn't become any lamer...



Uttar

So, Uttar...how's that editorial of yours coming along 8)

 

[PaulS]

Say those meetngs took place in september. Then there should have been an immidiate retraction of previous comments by him or at least a new editorial piece on the subject.

It doesn't work like that. Just because a company tells you something, it doesn't mean you can go and tell the entire world, even if you wanted to.