Futuremark Replies to Nvidia's Claims

Nathan writes "Tero Sarkkinen, Executive Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Futuremark, has commented on the claims by Nvidia that 3DMark2003 intentionally puts the GeforceFX in bad light, after Nvidia had declined becoming a member of Futuremark's beta program. This issue looks like it will get worse before it gets better." ATI also seems to be guilty of tweaking their drivers to recognize 3DMark.

nVidia vs. ATI

[wowbagger]

nVidia: "Well, for this program they will never step off the rail, so we can fake it so it looks good from the rail only."

ATI: "Well, this shader program isn't optimally coded - here is a more optimally coded shader that does the exact same thing but more quickly."

nVidia: "Well, you caught us, but we have to cheat because you have it in for us!"

ATI: "Well, you caught us, and although we were doing the exact same thing (only faster), we will remove that code ASAP."

Hey, on the upside

[Frederique Coq-Bloqu]

3DMark will look totally sweet because it's *optimised* for both cards.

ATi wasn't so bad

[Loie]

ATi's tweak yields a 1.9% gain by rearranging the instructions 3dmark issues it's hardware. Anyone familiar with assembly language knows that properly arranging your instructions prevents stalls; the end result, however, is exactly as intended. It sounds to me that this is what ATi did. nVidia, on the other hand...40% gains with very obvious visual errors is..well, wrong.

Re:nVidia vs. ATI

[KillerHamster]

SCO: Hey, we have a patent on cheating, pay us money!

Preposterous!

[LegendOfLink]

What!? Two giant corporations actually doing something MS-like to make themselves more appealing?! That's unheard of! Why, one might think this is a ploy to increase marketshare! Corporations are our friends, they would never manipulate the people. Damn the man!

Re:nVidia vs. ATI

[Anonymous Coward]

"SCO: Hey, we have a patent on cheating, pay us money!"

Wouldn't that be:

SCO: Hey, we have a patent on SOMETHING you did, pay us money!

Does anyone think it's coincidence

[bhsx]

Is it coincidence or some sort of nVidia inside joke that changing the name of the Dawn executable (fairy.exe iirc) http://www.nvidia.com/view.asp?IO=demo_dawn
to quake3.exe removes those pesky leaves, revealing her suptle nature, and that renaming it to 3dmark2003.exe removes the leaves and her wings? Is the inside joke that they leave "certain things out" of quake3 and 3dmark? Does the government know of the existence of aliens and wormhole portals to other worlds?

Re:NVIDIA DID NOT CHEAT

[AvengerXP]

Our initial assessment - as usual - is that we will slaughter them all. The ATI cards are commiting suicide at the gates of our plants as we speak.

Re:Driver strategies

[stud9920]

Here's that pedantic schooleacher again ! Who are you ? ID Software's chief engineer or something ?

JC: WHEN WILL YOU FINISH DUKE NUKEM FOREVER?

[egg troll]

Perhaps if you spent less time on Slashdot and more time on Duke Nukem Forever, it would be on the shelves. I don't mean to be insulting. After all I'm a huge fan of your work with Half Life and Unreal, but I've been waiting *forever* for DNF and its just vaporware. Do you know - for certain this time - when it will be released?