- Joined
- Oct 12, 2001
- Location
- Folding in Barbados
Read it here : http://hardocp.com/article.html?art=NDgx
" Futuremark Statement
For the first time in 6 months, as a result of Futuremark's White Paper on May 23rd, 2003, Futuremark and NVIDIA have had detailed discussions regarding NVIDIA GPUs and Futuremark's 3DMark03 benchmark.
Futuremark now has a deeper understanding of the situation and NVIDIA's optimization strategy. In the light of this, Futuremark now states that NVIDIA's driver design is an application specific optimization and not a cheat.
The world of 3D Graphics has changed dramatically with the latest generation of highly programmable GPUs. Much like the world of CPUs, each GPU has a different architecture and a unique optimal code path. For example, Futuremark's PCMark2002 has different CPU test compilations for AMD's AthlonXP and Intel's Pentium4 CPUs.
3DMark03 is designed as an un-optimized DirectX test and it provides performance comparisons accordingly. It does not contain manufacturer specific optimized code paths. Because all modifications that change the workload in 3DMark03 are forbidden, we were obliged to update the product to eliminate the effect of optimizations identified in different drivers so that 3DMark03 continued to produce comparable results.
However, recent developments in the graphics industry and game development suggest that a different approach for game performance benchmarking might be needed, where manufacturer-specific code path optimization is directly in the code source. Futuremark will consider whether this approach is needed in its future benchmarks.
NVIDIA Statement
NVIDIA works closely with developers to optimize games for GeForceFX. These optimizations (including shader optimizations) are the result of the co-development process. This is the approach NVIDIA would have preferred also for 3DMark03.
Joint NVIDIA-Futuremark Statement
Both NVIDIA and Futuremark want to define clear rules with the industry about how benchmarks should be developed and how they should be used. We believe that common rules will prevent these types of unfortunate situations moving forward. "
Both sides have backed down , with Nvidia opening the door to participation in 3dmark again ( possible ) , Nvidia has backed down from the silly " it's a driver bug " argument and at the same time has stopped blaming Futuremark for purposely harming their performance . Future mark has done their part of the deal by conspicously removing the word cheat from their statement and calling Nvidia's cheats optimisations and code paths they will be looking into .
This avoids the lawsuits everyone expected were going to start . in my opinion Futuremark would have won but it would be a war that both sides would lose . Nvidia's reputation would be further tarnished ansd maybe permanently so in the mainstream , which would be a worse case scenario for them . While Futuremark would win the battle but probably go under financially before seeing victory .
Where does that leave us gamers .................. well we are somewhat better off since the stories of 3dmark's imminent marginalisation and death have been put to rest for now , leaving us with a good benching tool . But at the same time , if they support all these extra 'paths' and allow the sort of stuff Nvidia did , then the benchmark will be useless .
Thus I sincerely hope that they have told Nvidia behind closed doors not to do it again and made this statement to avoid lawsuits and to help Nvidia save face .
" Futuremark Statement
For the first time in 6 months, as a result of Futuremark's White Paper on May 23rd, 2003, Futuremark and NVIDIA have had detailed discussions regarding NVIDIA GPUs and Futuremark's 3DMark03 benchmark.
Futuremark now has a deeper understanding of the situation and NVIDIA's optimization strategy. In the light of this, Futuremark now states that NVIDIA's driver design is an application specific optimization and not a cheat.
The world of 3D Graphics has changed dramatically with the latest generation of highly programmable GPUs. Much like the world of CPUs, each GPU has a different architecture and a unique optimal code path. For example, Futuremark's PCMark2002 has different CPU test compilations for AMD's AthlonXP and Intel's Pentium4 CPUs.
3DMark03 is designed as an un-optimized DirectX test and it provides performance comparisons accordingly. It does not contain manufacturer specific optimized code paths. Because all modifications that change the workload in 3DMark03 are forbidden, we were obliged to update the product to eliminate the effect of optimizations identified in different drivers so that 3DMark03 continued to produce comparable results.
However, recent developments in the graphics industry and game development suggest that a different approach for game performance benchmarking might be needed, where manufacturer-specific code path optimization is directly in the code source. Futuremark will consider whether this approach is needed in its future benchmarks.
NVIDIA Statement
NVIDIA works closely with developers to optimize games for GeForceFX. These optimizations (including shader optimizations) are the result of the co-development process. This is the approach NVIDIA would have preferred also for 3DMark03.
Joint NVIDIA-Futuremark Statement
Both NVIDIA and Futuremark want to define clear rules with the industry about how benchmarks should be developed and how they should be used. We believe that common rules will prevent these types of unfortunate situations moving forward. "
Both sides have backed down , with Nvidia opening the door to participation in 3dmark again ( possible ) , Nvidia has backed down from the silly " it's a driver bug " argument and at the same time has stopped blaming Futuremark for purposely harming their performance . Future mark has done their part of the deal by conspicously removing the word cheat from their statement and calling Nvidia's cheats optimisations and code paths they will be looking into .
This avoids the lawsuits everyone expected were going to start . in my opinion Futuremark would have won but it would be a war that both sides would lose . Nvidia's reputation would be further tarnished ansd maybe permanently so in the mainstream , which would be a worse case scenario for them . While Futuremark would win the battle but probably go under financially before seeing victory .
Where does that leave us gamers .................. well we are somewhat better off since the stories of 3dmark's imminent marginalisation and death have been put to rest for now , leaving us with a good benching tool . But at the same time , if they support all these extra 'paths' and allow the sort of stuff Nvidia did , then the benchmark will be useless .
Thus I sincerely hope that they have told Nvidia behind closed doors not to do it again and made this statement to avoid lawsuits and to help Nvidia save face .
