ondaedg said:
Maybe this will better explain how I see 3dMark: Imagine the Dallas Cowboys and the Washington Redskins want to play a game to see who is the best football team in the NFC East. They will need a referee and a scorekeeper to make sure the game is played on evil footing. So the NFL pays them to referee the game in an unbiased manner.
Now take ATI and Nvidia and imagine them going head to head in a game of football. Only there is no league paying the referees. The referees (Futuremark) demand that the teams themselves pay them. How many sporting events do you know of where the teams competing actually pay the referees/officials? In the professional world, none do. Little League Baseball yes. Big league ball, no. There is a good reason for this that I am sure is obvious to you.
Explain this to me as well: If 3dMark 2003 was strictly a DirectX 9.0 benchmark, then why do ATI and Nvidia have to participate in their "beta" program? They write the code to Directx 9.0 standards and then you benchmark ATI and Nvidia's hardware. Why should ATI or Nvidia have to participate? And when you answer my question with what I think you're going to answer, then you will see my point. Once again, I don't view 3dMark as a valid benchmark. I firmly believe that the Radeon 9700 was a better card than the 5800fx. But I do not believe that 3dMark should be taken as a "perfectly good benchmark".
Hahaha ondaedg. Futuremark wouldn't be referee's they would be the event organisers. Who are the referees? Well sites like B3D, Techreport(good referees) and even the dreaded [H](think here of a really bad referee) are of course. It's not up to Futuremark to say who is good or bad. Futuremark made the benchmark just like any organiser sets up a tournament. While it's up to the organisers to try and keep the tournament with equal rules(in this case with DX9 which just happens to have been created by MS(which you can describe as the world governing body e.g. in rest of the world terms FIFA for Football)), it doesn't mean that the player won't try to cheat(again football terms, Yellow cards and Red cards). Players all around the world will try to gain the upper hand by any means neccessary(drugs) or in graphic card terms cheating with drivers, replacing shaders etc.
Still it's up to the referee to decide on how the game is decided. No two referee's are the same unfortunately and this can be why you see different sites come to different conclusions. They do try and stay neutral but as the game progresses they might get pulled into favouring a side. It's not common of course but it has been known to happen [H].
As for payment for the organisers. Well Futuremark is a small benchmark. Do you really expect them not to ask IHV's for money if it can help to improve the benchmark? Why does it always have to be made to sound like some kind of pay off?? You are just too paranoid.
Take 3DMark2003 again. Nvidia didn't want to pay Futuremark the money and left the benchmark program(which they are entitled to do), yet they were still able to use the benchmark to show off what it's cards could do. The rules were still the same. But just because they sucked in the benchmark they decided to slant it. Is that fair? Hell no!
US
