Futuremark Announcement Delayed

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Nick[FM]

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Hello everyone,

We were supposed to post the new 3DMark usage ground rules today (September 19th), but unfortunately due to some last minute minor changes and edits we made, it had to be postponed. The reason is that we want all our Beta members to be able to read it thoroughly before we post it on our website to the public. We will publish the clarifications and new ground rules next week, as soon as possible.

We are very sorry for this delay, and hope you can bear with us a couple of more days.

If you have any questions concerning this, you can contact Tero Sarkkinen (EVP Sales and Marketing, Futuremark) at tero@futuremark.com.

Best,

The Futuremark Crew
 
Ah, that's funny. 1 minute ago I checked the forum and your post was not there yet. So I've started a new thread. After starting the new thread - bomb, your post is there. Now I'm looking a bit stupid... :oops:
 
worm[Futuremark said:
]Hello everyone,

We were supposed to post the new 3DMark usage ground rules today (September 19th), but unfortunately due to some last minute minor changes and edits we made, it had to be postponed. The reason is that we want all our Beta members to be able to read it thoroughly before we post it on our website to the public.
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O h yes. And you forgot this thing and just realized this righ now, today: "Ouch! We never discussed this withour beta m,embers!"[/i]

Ah, Jesus Christ... :rolleyes: it's so miserable...

I bet your reason is a veto, came from some IHV, bnot this mysteriously forgotten basic step...:rolleyes:
 
Good stuff... Looking forward to reading it.

Hopefully this will clear up some of the recent confusion on where futuremark really stands as a company.

BTW dont forget to run it by the lawyers too.. just to make sure theres not something in there that will come back to bite you later. ;)

EDIT: SP.. wow now I remeber why I dont post much.
 
T2k said:
O h yes. And you forgot this thing and just realized this righ now, today: "Ouch! We never discussed this withour beta m,embers!"[/i]

Ah, Jesus Christ... :rolleyes: it's so miserable...

I bet your reason is a veto, came from some IHV, bnot this mysteriously forgotten basic step...:rolleyes:
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Heh...thanks...:) I didn't want to be the first to say this...

Conflict of Interest:

We are posting these rules for the benefit of the public using our software so that they can be assured that our software provides a level playing field for comparisons between competing hardware products. However, we don't want to unduly upset or irritate any of our IHV partners, as we'd hate to see any of them get mad with us and quit our program once again, so we'd like to run it by them first so that they can guide us into making whatever changes to these rules they may feel are in the best interests of their respective customers. The new rules will be posted just as soon as they give us the green light!

But, T2k, although I fear this is what is happening, I'd rather give them the benefit of the doubt and wait until they post the rules before making a judgement on them. After all, once they post them they will have to abide by them, so I guess we should wait and see the rules before making any judgements.
 
Yeah, I know, you'right. :)
It's just my small rant... why we need always these kind of yakyakyaks instead of straight speech...
 
Damn, this is a tough crowd. ;)

As much as I strongly disagree with how Futuremark has handed the whole nVidia thing the past couple months, I'll reserve judgement on this until I see the new guidelines.

I just hope one of the last miute changes wasn't substituting the word "cheat" for "optimization." ;)
 
Boy all this raw emotion based descision stuff by some reminds me of the 3dfx days.

It seems to me this "announcement"is really going to define the future of futuremark (err..uhm) and they really want to make sure they dont have to go back on something later. I am a bit perplexed at how some people can switch sides so quick but I guess thats the nature of the beast.

One thing not to forget is futuremark is a company which means they are bound by law... this means there are things they can and cant say (or do) without the hawks hovering overhead. I know we all want to find the company that will fight for US (the community) but from a company standpoint thats extemely difficult to do and survive. Especially so with such an unorginized and constantly irrational crowd. Companies are full of people, and people have lives, what we are asking is they risk their livelyhood for us. Thats scary proposition for someone who just wants to survive.

Does that mean im trying to make an excuse for the moraly bad descisions these companies make, NO. What im saying is they have alot more to risk than we do so try to make sure your requests are fairly rational.

P.S. You know things are nuts when Joe says this is a tough croud. :D ;)
 
As much as I strongly disagree with how Futuremark has handed the whole nVidia thing the past couple months, I'll reserve judgement on this until I see the new guidelines.
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Ditto. While I'm really not expecting much, I still have some hope, especially since some developers and reviewers recently showed some backbone with regard to the various IQ butcheatoptimizations.
 
Joe DeFuria said:
I just hope one of the last miute changes wasn't substituting the word "cheat" for "optimization." ;)
Click to expand...

That's really an interesting question...:) I kind of think we'll see "legal" and "illegal", though, as in light of their previous joint statement with nVidia they've decided "application optimizations" are not illegal after all and therefore don't qualify as "cheats." And, if they don't legalize optimizations then nVidia's going to quit again since none of its drivers would be legal...:)

I predict we might see something like "Application optimizations will be legal from here on out, but only allowed on a case-by-case basis," which will essentially mean that nVidia has free reign, so long as it refrains from doing something as obvious as it did with the clip planes, etc. I'd like to think the new rules would simply outlaw any and all optimizations for the benchmark, but somehow don't think we're going to see that, considering how important it is to FM to retain its IHVs as partners. I'm still not sure what was wrong with the "old" rules...but I guess we'll find out next week...
 
Unfoturnately I think the relevence of 3dmark03 has been passed by. Had they stuck by there guns and rode this out without wavering on their stance it might be a different story. Now the fact that any synth. benchmark has been derailed because of Nvidia, add to that in game time demos, shader benches, screen shots and just about every other form of card measurement, I don't think there is anything anyone can say to re establish the previous "review model" is pretty slim.

It's simply going to take a lot of time and some different players in this industry to restore any faith that anything used to measure Video card performance is valid.
 
The only way that Futuremark can come back from the wilderness is if they don't allow Nvidia-style cheats, ie only allow true optimisations that do not degrade IQ (including overriding the requested user settings), or use sub-DX precisions, and do not allow any techniques that cannot be used in-game, such as static clip planes or disabling buffer clears.

However, given the lack of confidence everyone has since Futuremark capitulated to Nvidia, it may not be possible for Futuremark to return, especially now that Valve and to a lesser extent Aquamark are in position to replace 3DMark as the standard benchmark.
 
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