Hey, Nvidia hasnt the best reputation nowadays and this seems to me more like 'something on purpuse' than a simple 'mistake'.I received this from the Team of FutureMark:
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3DMark03 Patch 330 FAQ
Q: What does patch 330 do?
A: This patch produces correct and comparable 3DMark03 scores for all hardware.
Q: Was there something wrong with earlier builds?
A: No. However, we verified that recent NVIDIA drivers detected when 3DMark03 was running and then switched into a special mode, taking control from 3DMark03. This ultimately resulted in incorrect 3DMark03 results and made performance comparisons between NVIDIA's and other manufacturers' hardware impossible.
Patch 330 changes 3DMark03 code in trivial way so that these drivers are not able to detect when it is running.
For independent media analysis of the situation, please read
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,3973,1086025,00.asp; and
http://www.beyond3d.com/#news5856
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And some comments from extremetech:
"we noticed the Nvidia board was well ahead of ATI's Radeon 9800 Pro in Futuremark's 3DMark2003 benchmark"
"Nvidia may be special-casing 3DMark2003, throwing away work, to attain higher scores" :?
"The company (NVIDIA), on the other hand, again believes that the problems can be attributed to a driver bug" :|
What do you think?? I own a GF4, but beacuase i had to, and because of compatibility, and because 3dfx no longer exists. To be sincere, im getting convinced to migrate to Ati, and beleive me, im trying to be as objetive as posible...