Reply from nVidia about the 3DMark anomaly

[Mize]

Although, HarOCP were one of the sites to run up the 'ATi Cheating' flag and I note Brent posts here but has been silent on ths subject so far.

I used to respect HardOCP for their willingness to talk trash about any company. It's become apparent in recent weeks that they now talk trash about anybody EXCEPT Nvidia. Another one bites the dust I suppose.

They even shut down a poll to prevent a non-Nvidia product from "winning" and admitted it publically. Sheesh.

Before Scott, etc. scream f-boy, please realize I own products from Nvidia and like them just fine; nonetheless it is quite clear that Nvidia has some quite powerful influence with "news" and "review" sites like HardOCP. Really too bad. DriverHeaven and B3D may soon be the only sites worth visiting.

Mize

 

[Ichneumon]

DriverHeaven and B3D may soon be the only sites worth visiting.

Ouch.. Rage3D replaced by DriverHeaven?

 

[Mize]

DriverHeaven and B3D may soon be the only sites worth visiting.

Ouch.. Rage3D replaced by DriverHeaven?

Oops.

No, R3D hasn't been replaced. R3D is a fan site so I wasn't really comparing it to the independents (no nvidia forums on R3D). Don't worry, I still hit R3D a couple times/day . I don't post much lately (anywhere) owing to vacations, biz trips and apathy, but that'll be rejuvinated by some new hardware.

Mize

PS: Those popups (here and R3D) do suck however

 

[jb]

I guess one thing that this proves is nVidias drivers are looking for 3dmark in some way shape or forum. If their drivers were not looking or doing anything different in 3dmark from other applications then a simple clicking on show or not showing spalsh screens should have no impact on 3dmarks scores. Not saying they are cheating, but I am saying its a very interesting point. We all know that companies do this..this just may be a bit of proof

 

[Matt Burris]

Mize:

I guess you weren't around when HardOCP flamebroiled NVIDIA because NVIDIA asked them to put up NVIDIA ad banners up on their site and to take down the ATI ad banners. HardOCP wrote an entire huge article about it, flaming them every which way. I'd post a link to it, but HardOCP seems to be down at the moment.

 

[Mize]

Mize:

I guess you weren't around when HardOCP flamebroiled NVIDIA because NVIDIA asked them to put up NVIDIA ad banners up on their site and to take down the ATI ad banners. HardOCP wrote an entire huge article about it, flaming them every which way. I'd post a link to it, but HardOCP seems to be down at the moment.

Oh no, I remember that quite well...It just seems as though that was then, you know? Hopefully I'm totally off base.

[edit]

The thing is that poll where Kyle wrote:

"Getting Polled:
We locked the current poll questioning your next 3D GPU for a reason. There was a bit of "cheating" going on. I watched it from the start and it was simply a bunch of ATi fan-sites posting for folks to come over and vote, which is cool in my opinion. At the time this started, NV30 was a couple of percentage points ahead of the R300. When I saw 1000 votes drop for the R300 inside one hour we shut the poll the down and left them at a tie. If you have a problem with that, click that little "X" in the upper right hand corner of your browser and your problems will be solved."

We all know that internet polls of computer hardware are fan competitions. The idea that Kyle is going to decide some arbitrary point where the FanATIcs are edging the Nvidiots is just rediculous. Better to leave it up long enough for a large sample set of fans from both sides. In truth, Kyle liked the idea of a dead heat and constructed it.


Mize

 

[Zap]

doomtrooper and OpenGLguy, i just gotta say this about those pics you had of the vid card benchmarking. I've worked with many of those cards and gotten much better results than that... That same GF2 GTS with 32MB of memory i've gotten over 70 fps with all the settings on high and using S3TC. I'd like to say that those are pretty blatently false scores. If this was a joke, sorry i didn't get it But we all know ATI is better than Nvidia without referring to their old line of DX7 cards

 

[Galilee]

I knew it: NVIDIA is EVIL

Optimizing their drivers without reducing imagequality, how dare they!

 

[Randell]

you mean like ATI do as well? How about the nVidia driver set that looked terrible in Dragothic because the fog was banded to high heaven? All compnaies optimise, sometimes the IQ is affected, generally it isn't because that would be construed as cheating if deliberate (if lower IQ=faster).

It doesnt matter what your preferred company is - Both ATI and nVidia optimise - deal with it. Dont flame each other over it again and again.

 

[Althornin]

you mean like ATI do as well? How about the nVidia driver set that looked terrible in Dragothic because the fog was banded to high heaven? All compnaies optimise, sometimes the IQ is affected, generally it isn't because that would be construed as cheating if deliberate (if lower IQ=faster).

It doesnt matter what your preferred company is - Both ATI and nVidia optimise - deal with it. Dont flame each other over it again and again.

I think Galilee was being sarcastic.........

 

[jandar]

Not flaming HardOCP or insisting anything, but isnt one of thier biggest advertisers VisionTek which happens to be a big nVidia 3rd party manufacturer (and reference board designer)?

Kinda hard to bite the hand that feeds you.

Unfortunately, bandwidth = money. Sites needs ads to keep the bills paid. And not many tech sites can do pr0n ads or something else.

 

[Randell]

you mean like ATI do as well? How about the nVidia driver set that looked terrible in Dragothic because the fog was banded to high heaven? All compnaies optimise, sometimes the IQ is affected, generally it isn't because that would be construed as cheating if deliberate (if lower IQ=faster).

It doesnt matter what your preferred company is - Both ATI and nVidia optimise - deal with it. Dont flame each other over it again and again.

I think Galilee was being sarcastic.........

so was I initially, although the last comment wasnt aimed at Galilee.

 

[RiotSquad]

Not flaming HardOCP or insisting anything, but isnt one of thier biggest advertisers VisionTek which happens to be a big nVidia 3rd party manufacturer (and reference board designer)?

Kinda hard to bite the hand that feeds you.

Unfortunately, bandwidth = money. Sites needs ads to keep the bills paid. And not many tech sites can do pr0n ads or something else.

Not hard to understand,but if they rely on money from "provider X" they should make it a fansite...
When I go to any non-fansite I expect an unbiased informative opinion about diverse products,I'd never go to Rage3D to read about what nVidia is cooking up.
I would guess that is what this boils down to,if sites are unbiased and attacks ATi as they did over Quack,they should do the same now with nVidia.
I'm a sucker for facts and from day one thought that the Quack issue was blown out of proportion...
I am not a [censored] and will get the product that suits my needs best for the lowest amount of cash...and will recommend to my friends based on their needs and not what I personally have.(so even though I right now have a 8500LE I would recommend an nVidia card if what they ask for is the highest possible framerate)

Adding to another post I saw earlier about ATi vs. nVidia for OEM makers.
That is the truth for those who make nVidia based cards,as soon as they get their top of the line product out,rumours will start flowing about their next gen. part...leaving a bunch of "old" cards on the shelves...(looking at the Swedish market,you can get a GF4 ti4400 for the same price as a GF3 ti500...since the computer stores bought them at a high price they'd want to get some cash back....catch 22...)
I actually wonder if nVidia wouldn't make more from slowing down....there's a reason that a lot of OEM manufacturers have started making ATi cards and it's not just because their chips are good...

 

[Matt Burris]

Not flaming HardOCP or insisting anything, but isnt one of thier biggest advertisers VisionTek which happens to be a big nVidia 3rd party manufacturer (and reference board designer)?

Kinda hard to bite the hand that feeds you.

Unfortunately, bandwidth = money. Sites needs ads to keep the bills paid. And not many tech sites can do pr0n ads or something else.

On 3DGPU, we asked for donations via Paypal to help pay for hosting for a whole year, and we got an overwhelming response. We now have a year's worth of hosting, and we're stress-free when it comes to that area, so we can focus on the news and not worry about monthly bills. The community gave to us an opportunity to keep continuing what we do best. This allows us to bite any damn hand we want.

HardOCP can do this, and I know hosting costs is much more than we have going, but they also got a larger readerbase. A site, these days, can go without ads if they are good enough and people feel they provide a valuable enough service to be kind enough to donate a small fee to help keep the site alive.

 

[jandar]

very true, thats why I like reading thru 3dgpu and beyond3d.

that and the intelligence factor is higher.

 

[Nagorak]

Not flaming HardOCP or insisting anything, but isnt one of thier biggest advertisers VisionTek which happens to be a big nVidia 3rd party manufacturer (and reference board designer)?

Kinda hard to bite the hand that feeds you.

Unfortunately, bandwidth = money. Sites needs ads to keep the bills paid. And not many tech sites can do pr0n ads or something else.

On 3DGPU, we asked for donations via Paypal to help pay for hosting for a whole year, and we got an overwhelming response. We now have a year's worth of hosting, and we're stress-free when it comes to that area, so we can focus on the news and not worry about monthly bills. The community gave to us an opportunity to keep continuing what we do best. This allows us to bite any damn hand we want.

HardOCP can do this, and I know hosting costs is much more than we have going, but they also got a larger readerbase. A site, these days, can go without ads if they are good enough and people feel they provide a valuable enough service to be kind enough to donate a small fee to help keep the site alive.

The person who runs the site for HardOCP does it full time, so more than just the hosting, he needs to get enough money to live on. That said, I think it's a crappy site and Matrox was right not to send them a card to review. Too bad they went back on it.

 

[Brent]

Her's my views on these issues.

ATI Quak Issue - To be honest I did not really pay much attention to this issue, heh. I mean yeah, I read what was being said out there and stuff, but I did not dive into the issue myself to see what was going on. I just let it play out, and did not get involved wtih it. I think it was hammered on to much myself, some people were making a bigger issue out of it then should have been. Though the issue did need to be brought to light, I think the fault was with the pesentation of the facts. It could have been handled more proffesionaly with just the facts. Also, as I have read the initial information that was posted was not actually true. The image quality was a bug, and had nothing to do with lower iq to gain fps. Therefor this issue was really just blown way outta proportion.

NVIDIA 3DMark Issue - I saw some sites comment on this, but that was it. I think this one could have used a lot more emphasis. If I recall correctly NVIDIA has done things like this in the past before? This should have definitely been brought to the lime light. Is NVIDIA lieing about it just being a bug? Well, obviously we don't know, heh. All we can do is go by their word and do our own research, as people have done in this thread already, to see.

Overall I think all cards are optimized in certain things over another card. I am 100% in favor of video card manufacturers implementing otpimizations with their video cards, this only helps us get the best perofmrnace/IQ for the game in question. However if they DO any kind of optimization I feel they definitely MUST document it with the drivers or something. I'm all for optimizations as long as it's well documented exactly WHAT they are doing and to maybe even go a step further and allow an option in the drivers to disable the Optimization if we so choose. That I think would satisfy everyone. The fact that a company would implement optimizations and not tell anyone, or lie, or hide the truth is not good in my book one bit, NVIDIA, ATI are both culprits for doing this, if not now defintely in the past. I'm not sure about other manufacturers, I would thinkg that others have as well.

I myself am biased toward no vid card company, well actually I was (and i guess still am) a huge fan of 3DFX, i will never let their name die Then from there I became an ATI nut, i live and swore by ATI, then I tried some NVIDIA products and started using them too, so now I get to play with a lot more, and see their weakness and strengths, I have no loyalty toward one or the other though. I make sure to stick to the facts.



Also, just a quick comment about hardocp's postings of these issues. You are always welcome to contact me via email if you think something needs to be clarrified, or you have found more info, or you think something is wrong etc... I check my mail dialy brent@hardocp.com If it is something I have no control over I will forward it to Kyle. You can also contact him directly about any news postings. I do not do the news, I am strictly writting reviews right now, so I have no control over the news section. I can't comment on Kyle's position on the Quake Issue or NVIDIA 3DMark issue, only he knows where he stands, you can contact him if you'd like, or contact me and I'll forward it to him.

 

[jb]

Brent,

I have sent you some emails on reviews you have done on other cards (like the k2). I know from those your a really level headed guy that likes to think for himself and does not get swaded into things. For that I am gratefull. However not everybody is like that at HardOCP. And that is fine. I still like the sight for news. And your reviews are always good. I am sure the others over there will get better at it. Thanks for the good work!

Jb

 

[KimB]

Her's my views on these issues.

ATI Quak Issue - To be honest I did not really pay much attention to this issue, heh. I mean yeah, I read what was being said out there and stuff, but I did not dive into the issue myself to see what was going on. I just let it play out, and did not get involved wtih it. I think it was hammered on to much myself, some people were making a bigger issue out of it then should have been. Though the issue did need to be brought to light, I think the fault was with the pesentation of the facts. It could have been handled more proffesionaly with just the facts. Also, as I have read the initial information that was posted was not actually true. The image quality was a bug, and had nothing to do with lower iq to gain fps. Therefor this issue was really just blown way outta proportion.

Two things:

Any possible "3DMark2k1 cheat" by nVidia does not currently lower image quality, so by that basis, should not be a problem in your eyes.

If nVidia manages to put out drivers that give the same score whether or not splash screens are shown, will you again say that this "was really just blown way outta proportion?"

Why was an obvious cheat by ATI that reduced visual quality less important than a possible one by nVidia that does not?

And, perhaps more importantly, ATI has done this sort of thing in the past. I've never heard of nVidia doing it. I do know that ATI had the exact same type of detection for an optimization in a benchmark back in the '98 or so range (I think with Winbench3D or something like that...).

But yes, I am of the opinion that any benchmark-specific optimization is a cheat and should be treated as such.

However, I'm not certain that it is entirely bad to detect load screens, as many games use them...if the detection can detect most load screens in other games, then it's a good thing.

 

[Joe DeFuria]

Sigh...

Why was an obvious cheat by ATI that reduced visual quality less important than a possible one by nVidia that does not?

How is what ATI did an obvious cheat again?

And, perhaps more importantly, ATI has done this sort of thing in the past. I've never heard of nVidia doing it.

What you mean is, every time some driver issue emerges with ATI, you assume it's a cheat, and every time one emerges with nVidia, it's a bug.

I am of the opinion that any benchmark-specific optimization is a cheat and should be treated as such. However, I'm not certain that it is entirely bad to detect load screens, as many games use them...

Trying to play both sides of the fence?

Look, bottom line:
1) ATI detected the Quake3 game using the executable name, and performed some type of specific optimizations. Image quality was lowered, but we also know that the next driver release fixed the image quality with no performance degredation.

2) nVidia "detectes" 3DMark using the splash screen, and performs some type of specific optimization.

IMO, the two situations are pretty much identical (other than the method of detection), and should be treated identically. The only other difference is that at least quake3 is a GAME, so any optimizations would apply to a game, where as 3D mark is purely synthetic.

BTW....has nvidia released the fixed drivers yet?