A few things from the "Guideline Enforcement PDF:"
http://www.futuremark.com/companyinfo/Enforcement_Process.pdf
1) There is nothing in their proces map that indicates FutureMark will create patches to deal with "reviewed" drivers. In fact, the driver is only to be identified on 3DMark's site as reviewed if there are "no issues" found.
2) The PDF states: "The objective is to reach a state within the industry, where all new drivers fulfil the guidelines for 3DMark. It is in everyone’s interest that hardware reviewers, end-users of Futuremark’s products and OEMs know that they can trust the benchmark results they obtain with new drivers."
The above seem to go against issuing patches that defeat detection, and at the same time labeling cheat drivers as "reviewed."
However, the PDF also states this:
"The next step in enforcing the guidelines will be a release of a new build of 3DMark03. There will be both full version, and a patch. The patched version with drivers that are listed on Futuremark’s web site as ‘Reviewed’, will produce a valid 3DMark result."
What 3D Mark did with this patch, is consistent with their "next step." The patch, and the drivers listed as reviewed, do produce valid 3DMark scores.
So, I'm left with this line of thought:
Path 340 and the current listed drivers are the BASELINE for 3DMark.
FutureMark informed nVidia of all the invalid cheats it found in nVidia's drivers. FutureMark defeated them. nVidia now has zero excuse to STILL have such cheats in their next WHQL drivers.
If the next drivers out of nVidia still have cheats detected by FutureMark, 3DMark will should NOT label them as "acceptable." 3DMark should still issue a new patch to defeat new cheating mechanisms in the drivers that defeat patch 340
but they should still only approve the Det 52.16 drivers as valid for 3DMark..
So, nVidia has ONE WHQL DRIVER RELEASE to get their act together.
In the end, this is acceptable to me. FM needs to have as much hardware supporting it's benchmark as possible, and by using path 340 (even if it's with drivers that are
attempting to cheat), allows this to happen. At the same time, it gives nVidia no excuse for not taking these optimizations out, since 3D Mark obviously identified them and communicated them to nVidia.
Assuming that FutureMark does not label any FUTURE nVidia drivers that attempt to cheat as "accptable for benchmarking", I'm perfectly happy with what they did.