Re: Stonewalling: (Re: Ooops... Nvidia was and is cheating on 3dmark03 after all)

"Roger Squires" <rsquires@flash.net> wrote in message
news:UKiJa.257$Nr6.13801597@newssvr15.news.prodigy.com...

> Don't kid yourself. Nvidia silently and surreptitiously cheated on
> 3dmark in multiple, shockingly blatant ways, with the deliberate intention
> to deceive consumers and reviewers about the performance of an entire
> product line, and they are continuing to do so.


Prove it.

Derek Wildstar wrote:
> "Ben Pope" <spam@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:bd4h00$p8e70$1@ID-191149.news.dfncis.de...
>> Derek Wildstar wrote:
>>> "Roger Squires" <rsquires@flash.net> wrote in message
>>> news:UKiJa.257$Nr6.13801597@newssvr15.news.prodigy.com...
>>>
>>>> Don't kid yourself. Nvidia silently and surreptitiously
>>>> cheated on 3dmark in multiple, shockingly blatant ways, with the
>>>> deliberate intention to deceive consumers and reviewers about the
>>>> performance of an entire product line, and they are continuing to
>>>> do so.
>>>
>>>
>>> Prove it.
>>
>> I think cheating in 8 (or so) different ways, including replacing
>> code, setting clipping planes for particular frames which can and do
>> only work for the most respected and utilised consumer graphics
>> benchmark program is evidence enough.
>>
>> 8 seperate mistakes that all just so happen to improve scores in the
>> benchmark do not and cannot happen by mistake - the intention to
>> mislead customers is obvious.
>>
>> Ben
>> --
>> I'm not just a number. To many, I'm known as a string...
>
> That's not proof Ben.

Are we trying to prove that they cheated or that they intended to mislead
customers? I think one follows from the other.

Any court would go on reasonable doubt and nVidia would lose.

Tests that prove that nVidia was cheating*:

http://www.futuremark.com/companyin...udit_report.pdf

*I'll define cheating as: "Optimisations or modifications that improve
performance."

To prove that nVidia intentionally wanted to mislead customers is a little
harder, but why would they go to any effort at all to increase scores?
Since scores are a fundamental part of many of not all comparisons, and that
customers rely on this to make purchasing decisions, then I would say that
beyond reasonable doubt, nVidia wanted to mislead customers over the
performance of their graphics chipset. Bear in mind that these
optimisations DO NOT affect any other game or application, ONLY the
benchmark in question.

Ben
--
I'm not just a number. To many, I'm known as a string...

It doesn't detect the benchmark program by name, but by the way the program
tries to access features. Benchmarking is much different from gaming and
rendering.

"Mark B" <mb@nospam.entomb.net> wrote in message
news:3ef5d377$0$10626$cc9e4d1f@news.dial.pipex.com...
> To prove it, 3dmark03 on an Nvidia card then rename 3dmark03.exe to
> something else and run the test again.
>
>
> Mark
>
>

"Merkutio" <aspec@charter.net> wrote in
news:vfbm1me5630m64@corp.supernews.com:

> It doesn't detect the benchmark program by name, but by the
> way the program tries to access features. Benchmarking is
> much different from gaming and rendering.
>

Link to Futuremarks audit:

http://tinyurl.com/citj

Some will argue this is still not proof Nvidia deliberatley
tried to cheat. However taking into account the fact merely
changing certain call names 'fixed' it to work as intended is
strong circumstantial evidence.

"Lithurge" <bogoffspam@btopenworld.com> wrote in message
news:Xns93A2B37B6786Cfgh54656dfgh@130.133.1.4...
> "Merkutio" <aspec@charter.net> wrote in
> news:vfbm1me5630m64@corp.supernews.com:
>
> > It doesn't detect the benchmark program by name, but by the
> > way the program tries to access features. Benchmarking is
> > much different from gaming and rendering.
> >
>
> Link to Futuremarks audit:
>
> http://tinyurl.com/citj
>
> Some will argue this is still not proof Nvidia deliberatley
> tried to cheat. However taking into account the fact merely
> changing certain call names 'fixed' it to work as intended is
> strong circumstantial evidence.

Nvidia where trying to make the test work they way they advise coders to
program for their cards. I cannot believe with only 2 major GPU makers that
real game coders would ignore the limitations of these makers products. As a
Nvidia owner I want game coders to get the best from my card, so should ATI
owners.

"John Russell" <john_e_russell@hotmail.com> wrote in
news:3ef5ff9d$1_2@mk-nntp-2.news.uk.tiscali.com:
Both ATI and Nvidia users will expect
> games to run well on their cards and complain if they
> don't.
>
>
>

If they have any sense then they will view 3dmark as one of a
large range of tools to test hardware, whether by others or
themselves. If 3dmark is showing it as running slower, then
people should be pleased when game x runs faster because of
these 'optimisations'.

"Lithurge" <bogoffspam@btopenworld.com> wrote in message
news:Xns93A2CF9B451ECfgh54656dfgh@130.133.1.4...
> "John Russell" <john_e_russell@hotmail.com> wrote in
> news:3ef5fb74_1@mk-nntp-2.news.uk.tiscali.com:
>
> >
>
> > Nvidia where trying to make the test work they way they
> > advise coders to program for their cards. I cannot believe
> > with only 2 major GPU makers that real game coders would
> > ignore the limitations of these makers products. As a
> > Nvidia owner I want game coders to get the best from my
> > card, so should ATI owners.
> >
> >
> >
>
> Did you look at the screenshots in that PDF?
>
> I wouldn't want my games to look like that.
>
> You seem to be missing the point this is not a chip maker
> advising a coder on how to get the best out of their chipset,
> it's about fiddling with the way a driver works to produce the
> fastest results, in one set of circumstances that works to their
> advantage in reports on the speed of their card.
>
> Your argument might hold water if NVidia had publicly stated
> they were doing this before (or even admitted to after being
> found out), but they did not.
>
> And if they were really that altruistic they would pay the money
> to be in the 3dmark beta program. (Not that I necessarily agree
> with the way futuremark are running things)
>
> Lets wait for them to specifically code drivers to play games
> the way they want to shall we? ;-)

If there coded as bad as 3dmark I hope so!

On Sun, 22 Jun 2003 20:13:15 +0100, "John Russell"
<john_e_russell@hotmail.com> wrote:

>> "with the deliberate intention to deceive consumers and reviewers about
>> the performance of an entire product line"
>
>The opposite was true. It is futuremark who are decieving everyone as to how
>good cards are at running games.

Then they should have made their cheating drivers look for game
benchmarks and cheated on them instead of 3d marks. or they could
,and should, have been up front about their feelings toward 3dmarks.
They didn't and the line from them now, which you now spew, is simply
back peddling to cover their ass.

> Nvidia intent was to make the test reflect
>how nvidia advise coders to code games, and hence how fast their cards would
>be running games.

So are you planing on running your games with features turned off
just to get a better FPS rate than an ATi card ? I thought not


>Clearly the degree to which this can be done is crude when done at the
>driver level. Never the less,

Never the less it shouldn't have been done at all.

<snip Nvidia's company, we got caught now what, line>

>

"bp" <6ball@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:ga3cfvgljhjlo5djhu9c9j9o969gc9jeja@4ax.com...
> On Sun, 22 Jun 2003 20:13:15 +0100, "John Russell"
> <john_e_russell@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> >> "with the deliberate intention to deceive consumers and reviewers about
> >> the performance of an entire product line"
> >
> >The opposite was true. It is futuremark who are decieving everyone as to
how
> >good cards are at running games.
>
> Then they should have made their cheating drivers look for game
> benchmarks and cheated on them instead of 3d marks. or they could
> ,and should, have been up front about their feelings toward 3dmarks.

They did when they left the 3dmark support group. No one listened. Their
rather crude tactic has created a debate about whole issue of graphic card
testing which wasn't there before. Now you can go on with the mistaken
believe that a handful of Finns have a benchmark that reflects how thousands
of game coders world wide will code games if you want too.
If we all give up on 3dmark, because we either believe it's coded badly, or
we can't trust the drivers, we will all be better off. The focus will then
be on how fast games run, and preferable the games each of like to run, not
somebody elses.

> > "with the deliberate intention to deceive consumers and reviewers about
> > the performance of an entire product line"
>
> The opposite was true. It is futuremark who are decieving everyone as to
how
> good cards are at running games. Nvidia intent was to make the test
reflect
> how nvidia advise coders to code games

John, this statement makes it clear that you are not aware of what
Nvidia was doing with these cheats. One example: one major cheat was to
introduce clipping planes that cut out everything in the scene not covered
by the camera. This only works when the camera path is fixed and known
beforehand, in other words, it will not work in actual gameplay! It's only
possible purpose is to deliberately cheat on the benchmark.

>Nvidia intent was to make the test reflect
> how nvidia advise coders to code games, and hence how fast their cards
would
> be running games.

There is now some evidence that Nvidia is cheating on the builtin
timedemos that games contain. This is not optimizing real gameplay, but
cheating for artificially high benchmark scores. I hope to see articles
soon on hardware websites investigating this non-3dmark cheating further.

rms