Tables Turn Again (iXBT/Digit-Life Gainward 5900 GS review)
- Thread starter Pete
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StealthHawk
Regular
You would think it would be rather trivial to run the benchmark and see if AF was being applied or not :?
But aren't they just doing that much more damage to themselves? Isn't it a case of "stop digging when you're in a hole"?WaltC said:
Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.
Legend
digitalwanderer said:
Yes, but Nvidia is hoping that if they keep their heads down and stay quiet, it will just blow over. Maybe they actually believe what they say about optimisations and what they are allowing to be said on their behalf from the like of Tom's Hardware and HardOCP.
The latter is more dangerous to Nvidia as a company, because they are denying to themselves that there is any problem that is in need of fixing. I've seen stranger things happen in big corporate environments.
What Nvidia execs seem not to realise is that the public are not foolish and they are not forgiving. In the same way they Nvidia have sold cards for years on their brand name, this continuous lying and cheating will soon have people associating the Nvidia name with dishonesty, and people have a very long memory about this kind of thing. Look how long it is taking for ATI to shake off the "poor driver" reputation that has dogged them for years.
People are already buying/recommending other cards because of the inability to tell whether Nvidia cards are good/bad/slow/fast because of Nvidia's refusal to play fair with benchmarking.
And before someone pops up to say "benchmarks are not games", I'd agree they are not. However the same techniques used to cheat the scores of the likes of 3DMark2003 are also being used to cheat the scores in the benchmark mode of game. In the end, all that is remembered is that you cannot trust anything Nvidia say, or the reviews of their products, so you should buy other graphic cards.
digitalwanderer said:
Agreed, and of course...
But fast-growing companies like nVidia often become the victims of their own success--biting off more than they can chew, too many irons in the fire, etc. The company gets big so fast and is into so many different things that it begins to resemble a multi-armed octupus with some of the tentacles separated from the brain and twitching with a life of their own...Sometimes the guys at the top aren't really conversant in some of these newer directions and they hire people who supposedly are and upper management turns to these people for guidance, and for excuses when things go wrong. Human nature being what it is these people have their "turf" within the company which they seek to protect, and so the buck gets passed, and internally they play the blame game (Such as: "Hey, our chip is great--it's TSMC's fault!", etc., or "Our hardware is great--it's the driver guys who dropped the ball," or "Our drivers are great, it's really a poor chip design we have to deal with," etc.)
I see this as the top management in the company being too aloof from the nuts and bolts and consigning things to underlings who are acting out of self-preservation instead of from a coherent vision of how the company should serve its markets. That kind of thing can only come from the top--and if it's not there...it's not there, and you are going to see these kinds of situations develop. Instead of digging their way out of the hole they just resolutely keep digging it deeper. IE, nobody in management has enough of a macro picture to understand they're in a hole in the first place. Or else nobody in management is perceptive enough to even see the problem, which is disturbing. It could even be the "deer in the headlights" syndrome, which is most distrubing of all...Heh...
StealthHawk
Regular
Pete said:
I don't see how that's really true. I haven't run Code Creatures in a long time, but even in Asheron's Call2(hilly terrain) it is easy to spot AF on/off. Simply put, with AF off, the game is a blurry mess. With AF on, the ground textures should be significantly crisper. I agree that evaluating 2x AF versus 0x AF might be difficult, but it should be very easy to spot the difference between 8x AF and 0x AF. Since Digit-Life is making the assertion that NO AF is being applied, rather than that a limited degree of AF is being applied, this should be, as I said, easy to test by setting AF to 8x and seeing if it looks different from 0x. If you wanted to judge whether or not 8x was really being applied, as opposed to a lower degree of AF, then that would of course be much more difficult.
StealthHawk
Regular
Bouncing Zabaglione Bros. said:
Ok, I agree with you to a certain extent. You are right when you say that there will be a level os mistrust from many consumers over what NVIDIA is currently doing. But with one caveat, only to those who think NVIDIA is doing something wrong, and only to those who know about NVIDIA's behavior.
There are still many people who think NVIDIA's optimizations are not decreasing image quality. There are many people who read articles from Digit-Life that falsely accuse ATI of cheating even when there is zero evidence to support that claim. And, as a whole, there are many people who don't know what NVIDIA is doing at all. The latest ExtremeTech article, for example, said there are no clipping problems anymore, and they proclaimed that NVIDIA's driver was now clean and legit. People who read these "half truth" articles do not get the full picture. They don't know the scope of what NVIDIA is doing. We know, because we see bits and pieces of evidence and make the connection between them all.
The fact is that none of the Big Three review sites have investigated the issues themselves nor presented all the facts. I am talking about Tom's Hardware, Anandtech, and [H]ardOCP. What exactly NVIDIA has done has not been publicized in a comprehensive manner whatsoever. Depending on what article you read at what site, NVIDIA is not decreasing IQ, NVIDIA is not cheating, ATI is cheating more than NVIDIA, etc, etc. The truth is just not getting out there, and that is unfortunate. Because without people knowing the truth, and without a backlask, NVIDIA has absolutely no reason to change.
StealthHawk said:
In Codecreatures there are actually very few areas of ground that are visible at all - the ground is mostly covered with moving grass. Since the grass polygons are basically screen-aligned it is very difficult to see the effects of anisotropic filtering on them. You would be surprised just how carefully you need to look at Codecreatures to see the effects of even 8x anisotropic filtering.
Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.
Legend
StealthHawk said:
But the secret is out. Sure, there will always be the fanboys that live in denial, but information wants to be free, and it wants to spread. There are sites (like Beyond3D) that have helped show those that want to listen what the true behaviour of Nvidia is. Sites like HardOCP are (for many people like myself) in fact being tarred with the same dishonesty that Nvidia is displaying.
Every time someone asks in a game forum "what graphics card should I buy?" what's the betting that for *years to come* someone will point out that Nvidia has poor IQ and cheats on the benchmarks? It will take ages for Nvidia to shake that off.
Nvidia may spend a lot of money on marketing, but in the end the facts become known. Look at what (finally) happened to the cigarette companies. Sure, idiots still spend money to kill themselves with cigarettes, but a *lot* of people now know that it kills you.
Tom now has an review of all cards out there, No word (i could find) about the driver issue.
VGA Buyer's Guide 07/2003
VGA Buyer's Guide 07/2003
Bouncing Zabaglione Bros. said:
If you think its really out there then you are deluding yourself - the magazines have not picked up on it to any extent (perhaps a few vague references). Even reviewers who know these things are happening haven't spoken about it. I think I;ve seen at least two reviews using UT2003 from reviewers who know they are dialling down IQ in UT but haven't mentioned it at all.
Here, take a look at Brent's latest review:
http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=NDk2LDM=
Now, take a look at the mip levels of Antilus:
Image
Can you see a shred of Trilinear Filtering on the floor textures??? Nope. The floor is covered with detail textures which NVIDIA are applying their "High Performance" mode to, regardless of what setting you select its no wonder it "dominates". The only reason we are seeing variances in UT2003 as two who has the upper hand is because the maps have different useages of detail textures - those that jave less is fairer for the 9800 (even though the normal textures are still not full Trilinear), and those with more Details texture makes it easier on the 5900.[/quote]
Doomtrooper
Veteran
Another good reason not to visit [H], false adverstising, incomplete information, innacurate information, misleading readers even though obvious proof is shown.
I hope this is mentioned in your 5900 review Dave, these kinds of 'optimizations' are there to sell video cards and trick unsuspecting consumers that look at graphs in magazines.
In fact a full blown article from this sites staff would be good about the state of industry in general.
http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=6719&start=0
I hope this is mentioned in your 5900 review Dave, these kinds of 'optimizations' are there to sell video cards and trick unsuspecting consumers that look at graphs in magazines.
In fact a full blown article from this sites staff would be good about the state of industry in general.
http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=6719&start=0
StealthHawk
Regular
andypski said:
Fair enough. I will take your word for it, because it was hard as hell to track down Code Creatures for download a few months ago, and I don't want to go fishing for a link again. Also, I don't care enough to re-test it and see who's right
beyondhelp
Newcomer
you can find CodeCreatures at majorgeeks.com
Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.
Legend
DaveBaumann said:
The fact we are talking about it shows that it's no longer the nasty little secret that Nvidia was keeping six months ago. The fallout from Nvidia cheating on 3DMark was all over the web. The lack of comment on some of the big websites just goes to show what a big stick Nvidia still holds over these people, and how they are operating to their own agendas.
It's getting to the point where the credibility of magazines and websites are suffering because they appear to be deliberately avoiding the issue because they are either too stupid or too corrupt to address it honestly for their readers.
Sooner or later there will be a backlash (remember how Anand bitterly reviewed the NV30?) and then there is always the posibilty that ATI may get into the same kind of "dirty war" to counter the Nvidia PR spin.
Nvidia is a big player, but so are the likes of IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Creative, etc, but look at where their reputations are now? Look at what the *generally accepted* views are of these companies from large portions of the informed buying public - and Nvidia is heading exactly down this path.
I personally no longer advise buying Nvidia cards unless all that is wanted is a 2D integrated MX400 (for a cheap video solution on a good AMD board). I no longer visit HardOCP or Anands, and Tom never had any credibility with me. I can attribute these things directly to Nvidia's behaviour over the last year. Seven months ago I was looking forward to buying a NV30, now I have nothing but disdain for Nvidia graphics cards and the company itself.
I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who feels the same way.