Futuremarks technical response

[Harlequin]

hi and welcome to my first post.


http://www.futuremark.com/companyinfo/Response_to_3DMark03_discussion.pdf

here is futuremarks response to the recent allegations.

 

[Evildeus]

Hehe, 3DMark discussion? I was more thinking of Nvidia PR stance over 3DMark

Well, i think now it's clear that there won't be partnership between Nvidia and Futuremark for some time. Hope for them that won't have some big consequencse on their business... :?

 

[McElvis]

I thought this quote from the .pdf was rather interesting :

According to 3DMark032 license agreement, any review to be published has to use generally available, shipping versions of products and drivers

So,
Is the GeForce FX a shipping and generally available product?
Is the new drivers that HardOCP used generally available?

 

[Kristof]

Nice white paper and hopefully helps the "why did they not fall back to PS1.3 rather than 1.1"-myth out of this world...

K-

 

[MrFloopy]

It seems to me that Futuremark have made it quite clear that 3dmark2003 is for Dx9 Hardware and that for Dx8, hardware reviewers should be using 3DMark2001.

Assuming this then there can be no argument that 3dMark2003 is not relevant to real gaming benchmarks as there are no Dx9 games out yet.

Did anyone complain about the Nature test in 3dmark2001, especially since there have still not been any games out yet that match anything seen in that benchmark!

Did anyone say that it was unfair because it exploited Dx8 and advanced Dx7 features that were not well supported in current games?

nVidia have to accept that their cash cows are not going to cut it in the new generation of hardware, and take the criticism and move forward. All great people or organisations look for any opportunity to learn and move forward (after all, that's why they got so good in the first place!). nVidia are no different. They are a fantastic company with great talent, results and potential. I pray that they do not let marketing pride get in the way of the advancement that they are so well known for.

Todays informed consumers are not going to accept marketing as well today as they did two years ago. Live by the sword, take a hit by the sword and move on!


(Edit: bad grammar. I am a colonial after all )

 

[LeStoffer]

nVidia have to accept that their cash cows are not going to cut it in the new generation of hardware, and take the criticism and move forward.

I agree but still have to wonder why the heck they would attack 3Dmark03 in a short term defence of the GF4MX line when they are about to release a full NV3x line. :?

 

[Joe DeFuria]

I agree but still have to wonder why the heck they would attack 3Dmark03 in a short term defence of the GF4MX line when they are about to release a full NV3x line.

Perhaps when the "full NV3x" line is released, we'll get our answer...

 

[THe_KELRaTH]

I think the section on driver cheating / optimizing really means they know damn well what Nvidias' upto and benchtests should be used with WHQL drivers (unless they're prepared not to be classed as DX9 compliant).

I really don't understand the PR thinking with Nvidia just now. If they just kept things clean and just accept that their NV30 isn't quite on par with ATI's 9700Pro and looked towards the NV35 or whatever as a better competing product then all that would have been said is it's not too suprising due to various problems.
Nvidia would still be held in high regard but all this PR nonsense, ridiculous claims around the term CineFX, cheating drivers, complaining about synthetic tests just because it doesn't favour their DX9 card etc etc is just making the company look sleazy.

I am looking to upgrade my motherboard and CPU, I've always used Intel based kit but thought maybe the AMD Barton with the Nforce2. In the past I stayed with Intel as I've always been put off using Via or SiS chipsets.
With all this nonsense from Nvidia I've decided I'll buy another Intel based kit as I don't feel like supporting a company where it's idiology is win at any cost. Next we'll see them kissing babies!

 

[MrFloopy]

I agree but still have to wonder why the heck they would attack 3Dmark03 in a short term defence of the GF4MX line when they are about to release a full NV3x line.

My point exactly (although I was also referring to Ti4x00 as well).

I don't understand why the accepted leader in the industry is critical of the method promoted in the past by the same.

I cannot see any real reason for their stance in the long term, It is out of character for what I know of high performing entities (persons or corporations).

I have always lived by the rule that successful people see only solutions, where as underachievers see only problems. May sound elitist but looked at in depth this axiom holds quite some logic.

 

[mr]

Thanks Futuremark that's a very sound response.

I would like to encourage everyone who is using 3DMark03, either as a hardware reviewer or as a hardware enthusiast, to read both the official whitepaper released with 3DMark03 and this response to get a better understanding of 3DMark and benchmarking in general.

Of course an article on benchmarking itself on a general basis would be a nice addition to the beyond3d article archive.

 

[LeStoffer]

I agree but still have to wonder why the heck they would attack 3Dmark03 in a short term defence of the GF4MX line when they are about to release a full NV3x line.

Perhaps when the "full NV3x" line is released, we'll get our answer...

Well, I'm aware of the rumours that NV31 and/or NV33 wont be full DX9 parts, but if nVidia have made another GF4MX marketing foul, I think that I'll get pissed.

 

[MrFloopy]

I am looking to upgrade my motherboard and CPU, I've always used Intel based kit but thought maybe the AMD Barton with the Nforce2. In the past I stayed with Intel as I've always been put off using Via or SiS chipsets.
With all this nonsense from Nvidia I've decided I'll buy another Intel based kit as I don't feel like supporting a company where it's idiology is win at any cost. Next we'll see them kissing babies!

Hey don't let marketing tactics get in the way of an informed decision. There is no doubt that nVidia have fantastic products, and we at work use nForce based motherboards in general.

This is what I am having trouble understanding, nVidia are fantastic with what they have produced and will be again, I am just trying to understand their thinking purely with regards to 3dmark2003.

For me, marketing indisretions are a matter of curiosity as I do not put much value on them to begin with (hey everyone does it), not a reason for informed commitment.

Personally I would prefer an Intel/nForce combo, purely from a trust point of view (Yes have had nothing but trouble from Via and AMD re our custom hardware products we have developed), however we are not in that game anymore so we chose the best performance / feature set we could get.

 

[Colourless]

Off topic: Damn, i never expected, nor noticed another person from Adelaide here...

 

[MrFloopy]

Off topic: Damn, i never expected, nor noticed another person from Adelaide here

All this time never knew you were from here either. What you doing up so late? Watching the cricket?

 

[antlers]

Well, I'm aware of the rumours that NV31 and/or NV33 wont be full DX9 parts, but if nVidia have made another GF4MX marketing foul, I think that I'll get pissed. icon_evil.gif

I'm not sure it's a marketing foul if the chip code-names are misleading. What are they going to actually call the product?

 

[Colourless]

All this time never knew you were from here either. What you doing up so late? Watching the cricket?

I could ask the same of you. But no, not watching the cricket. Mostly just reading this

 

[Sabastian]

I am still shocked at this whole thing really.

Firstly I was rather disappointed with the Geforce FX in terms of performance compared to the Radeon 9700.

Secondly nvidia has did a 180 with regards to 3DMark and now attacks the company for creating a DX9 benchmark. But this is rather strange considering Nvidia is producing DX9 hardware (Geforce FX) did they not expect to have their hardware tested?

Nvidia had no complaints when 3DMark released the DX8 benchmark 3DMark2001, even though there were no software titles supporting these DX8 features. None and no complaints from Nvidia either.

Also there is another issue here that I am somewhat less surprised with and that is the movement towards better pixel shaders. Consider Nvidia touts the Geforce 4MX as a full compliment DX8.1 card(even though everyone that knows anything about that card knows it is at best only a DX7 peice of hardware.) Nvidia still does not fully support DX8.1 because of their failure or unwillingness to go to PS1.4. AFAIK this is purely a technical argument of course as a result of their hardware still being able to do the implement except it takes more passes thus doing it less efficiently but still does it.

On the other hand ATi has a plethora of cards that fully comply to the DX8.1 ps1.4 standard. It really doesn't take a brilliant person to realize that nvidia is keeping the standard low on purpose to control the developer content at ps 1.1. Still even though the superior ps1.4 has been out for over a year nvidia does not want to support it. Why? Well the most logical answer is that ATi had the spec in hardware well in advance of nvidia and thus displayed a technological advance with absolute full compliance with DX8.1 but what is worse is that they moved it into the mainstream product range rather promptly as well. But nvidias mainstream cards still do not support full DX8.1 PS1.4... Now that Futuremark is using this benchmark as a standard nvidia is upset but were not upset (and understandably so) when 3DMark incorporated the nature test and they(nvidia) had the only supporting hardware. Hypocrisy.

 

[MrFloopy]

All this time never knew you were from here either. What you doing up so late? Watching the cricket?

I could ask the same of you. But no, not watching the cricket. Mostly just reading this

Well yeah, was looking forward to long night watching cricket but all over far too quick. Waste of a saturday night really.

Look for PM.

 

[Nappe1]

Well, I'm aware of the rumours that NV31 and/or NV33 wont be full DX9 parts, but if nVidia have made another GF4MX marketing foul, I think that I'll get pissed. icon_evil.gif

I'm not sure it's a marketing foul if the chip code-names are misleading. What are they going to actually call the product?

for NV31, GeForce FX MX sounds pretty right (also very funny too )
and for NV33, they could call it Ultr.... wait they got that one already... hmmh... how about getting both sound like faster than FX 5800 ("we are working on with something as twice as fast as we always do") ?? something like GeForce FX 2 MX and GeForce FX 2 GTS/Pro/Ultra?
yeah, I know it sounds funny... but hey, if we look the product names they had since releasing GeForce, what wouldn't have been funny?

 

[Joe DeFuria]

Well, I can only hope and assume that Lars will post another article on Tom's hardware about this response. It's also extremely prudent that [H] address this response as well, since it more or less addresses all the "issues" that [H] brought up in their 3DMark article.