Futuremark has released a new patch and...

[DanTMWTMP]

i have a 9700 pro now.....totally happy w/ it and it's performance.....finally broke the 5000 barrier for my system..yay

 

[Shamrock]

no one has still answered my question about the NV optimizations/cheat/whatever. Do these just work for GFFX 5900's, or is it any NV product? Because I have a GeForce 3 Ti200, and have those new 44.03 drivers...This is a legit question, no flaming whatsoever.

 

[Snooper]

I am firmly in the "I don't really give a damn about FutureMark 2003" scores camp. I look at the various game scores. And in 90% of the games, the 5900 FX owns the 9800 Pro. Period. So I don't give a crap that a benchmark shows this huge difference when a company that is currently engaged in a pissing match with another company (this all started WAY before Nvidia pulled out of the beta program) releases a patch to their benchmark that causes the other companies product to look bad. Do I know which company is cheating more? No. Do I care? No. Look at the performace in a slew of games. The FX 5900 kicks ass.

Oh, and before all the ATI fanatics starts with the various "Nvidiots" type name calling, I currently have a 9800 Pro in my system...

 

[Schadenfroh]

Originally posted by: Snooper
I am firmly in the "I don't really give a damn about FutureMark 2003" scores camp. I look at the various game scores. And in 90% of the games, the 5900 FX owns the 9800 Pro. Period. So I don't give a crap that a benchmark shows this huge difference when a company that is currently engaged in a pissing match with another company (this all started WAY before Nvidia pulled out of the beta program) releases a patch to their benchmark that causes the other companies product to look bad. Do I know which company is cheating more? No. Do I care? No. Look at the performace in a slew of games. The FX 5900 kicks ass.

 

[Megatomic]

My god, talk about beating a dead horse...

3DMark/FanATIcs, find something constructive to do with your time, you are only making a mockery of yourselves.

 

[Markfw]

Originally posted by: Megatomic
My god, talk about beating a dead horse...

3DMark/FanATIcs, find something constructive to do with your time, you are only making a mockery of yourselves.

I am not a ATI fanatic, and 3dmark is just a benchmark, but the policies that a company follows determine my views on them. Would you buy any Enron stock ? (just an example) I have three firends who all lost their jobs to money grabbing companies with no morals, bought out the company, and laid off half of the employees, IBM bought out Sequent (their compitition), and laid off a whole service division. Xerox bought 30% of the color network printer market from Tektronix, then turned to a$$holes and got rid of a bunch of good lifetime employees, not to mention the questionable accounting practices that they got fines $10 million for, and new sucky company policy changes. I have other examples, but I think I made my point, Nvidia company policies suck, and I for one won't be buying any of their products soon.

(also I lost my job due to one of the above mentioned companies after 21 years, so yes I am biased against big companies with suspect policies)

 

[Megatomic]

Originally posted by: Markfw900
I am not a ATI fanatic, and 3dmark is just a benchmark, but the policies that a company follows determine my views on them. Would you buy any Enron stock ? (just an example)

If I thought I'd make money off of the stocks I sure as heck would. Business is business.

If you don't like NVidia's business principles then by all means don't buy any of their products, you have to stick to your standards after all. No one (certainly not me) is going to fault you for doing that. But if you are planning on not buying their products because of 3DMark03 (who did NVidia hurt in this regard?) then I have no sympathy for you.

 

[stonecold3169]

Originally posted by: Megatomic

Originally posted by: Markfw900
I am not a ATI fanatic, and 3dmark is just a benchmark, but the policies that a company follows determine my views on them. Would you buy any Enron stock ? (just an example)

If I thought I'd make money off of the stocks I sure as heck would. Business is business.

If you don't like NVidia's business principles then by all means don't buy any of their products, you have to stick to your standards after all. No one (certainly not me) is going to fault you for doing that. But if you are planning on not buying their products because of 3DMark03 (who did NVidia hurt in this regard?) then I have no sympathy for you.

Well, Nvidia sorta hurt ATI. Although it's too early to tell, most sources are saying that the performance gains by ATI were "legit" in that while they altered techniques, they caused no IQ loss and still executed the written code, whereas nvidia supposedly detected and then ran seperate code.

Honestly, I could care less about the benchmarking program because I'm smart enough to research a product before I buy it. I've alternated between nvidia and ati for a long while, currently using a GF3 from when they came out, and now have a 9700pro in the mail. Where things get sticky is through trickle down among the uneducated consumers.

Many normal consumers don't read in depth reviews like we do. Hell, the average consumer doesn't know this ever happened. The go to google, type in "Geforce FX" and see what they find. They'll find reviews where the geforce has huge, artificial gains, and think they are getting a better product. Worse yet, most consumers are dumb enough to think that a gf FX is a gf FX, never mind that 4 digit number behind it, the gf FX is the fastest card evAR!... thus creating a false market based on consumer ignorance.

I guess what I'm saying is that Nvidia did something wrong, and while the sales they get may be falsely inflated from this, it's more because of a lack of research on the consumers fault. Even though I have my ATI card in the mail, if I could afford one, yeah, I'd be getting a 5900, it's just a faster card. I guess the main thing that ticks me off here, well, ticked off is a strong word, but... the fact is that in all honesty, like it or not this will cost ATI some sales, and it needs everything it can get to fight nvidia. We lose ATI, vid cards go up even more expensive then they are now and the tech pace goes slower. We all lose then. Keep things fair, and let the REAL winner shine, and let the consumer see the true margins cards win by.

PS: In the hard forums, there are some enlarged photos of the before and after the patch IQ lose by nvidia... I'll be the first to say that for as much as a 50% increase in speed in some tests, the IQ didn't drop a whole lot. If this could be replicated in games, it could have potential, as long as it was optional

 

[stonecold3169]

Splinter cell issue, unconfirmed "cheat"

Just saw this on the hard forums... apparently, when running a splintercell demo, but NOT the real game, there is an ocean scene where the game engine tells the card to display ripples and waves randomly over the entire surface of the ocean. The FX cards from the 5600 up ignore the command and only display ripples in set locations, not the whole thing. Ubisoft has not yet mad an official release, but have said that if it's a driver bug, it's a really funny one because the only cards affected are the newest fx cards.

This is what would tick me off, seeing a benchmark in fps of a game I wanted to buy, and then not getting that performance... almost like false advertising, and if it affects performance much I would be PISSED.

 

[nRollo]

Rogodin:
I love it- the Rage 3d link uncovered!
Anyway, the ethics don't matter at all. Why? Both companies have cheated, ATI for the second time now, and I'm not going to stop buying VGAs because they cheated. I'd rather have good cheater cards than a Matrox.

Why don't I care about 3dmark? Perhaps this analogy will illustrate help you understand.

I drive a Ford F250, I use it to pull my boat.
Let's say Ford released some test results that said F250s were best at pulling boats, and also best at pulling trailer homes. It was found that Ford lied about the trailer homes, but it was never proved they lied about pulling boats best, although many tried to do just that. (Chevy and Dodge)
I don't have a trailer home. I have a boat.
Your position appears to be that I should buy a Chevy or Dodge, because they didn't lie about pulling trailer homes. Of course, they won't pull my boat as well, but I'll be supporting the "honest" company.

What a crock. I spit in disdain upon the "ethics" of not cheating on a sythetic benchmark the programmers of which demand hundreds or thousands of dollars a year to "partner" with. Screw them. You show me that ATI plays my UT 2003 better, I'll buy them. You show me ATI runs 3dmark better, I fart in your general direction.

 

[Rogozhin]

Rollo

I don't quite understand your "rage3d link uncovered"


And my response in the second page of this thread was this-
"ati has said they cheated and so they did. my arguments with rollo have been about the problems with cheating (broadly) across all vga makers, not either~or."


I think your analogy would be more along the lines of-

Car and driver and all the periodicals prinited that the for f150 has 300flbs of torque (but they jimmied the pre prodcution test vechiles by putting in overbored blocks) so you lada lada go to pull your boat, your car, whatever else you want to pull and BINGO you're doing 45 on the freeway instead of the claimed 65mph.

Nvidia did this when they claimed the fx5900 was 30% faster than ati's latest offering because they used only their inflated 3dmark scores as evidence of this performance increase-their blanket statement of 30% increase IS what my analogy represents-yours would be correct had they said "the fx5900ultra is 30% faster than ati's latest offering IN 3DMARK."

It's all about what nvidia claims to be true.

rogo
Rogo

 

[Rogozhin]

I never claimed that I wouldn't buy nvidia because of their cheating!

Are you reading my posts or just inferring things rollo?

The difference between the two cheaters is that ati never claimed to have a card 30% faster than the competition (without stating that it was in only ONE synthetic benchmark and NOT games) and then propgate this throughout the web, computer magazines, and television.

Neither company is golden but one is defintely more underhanded than the other-I personally will buy nvidia cards when they are efficacious for the project (such as my recent purchase of 2 geforce 2 gts for two systems I'm building for my friends) but that doesn't mean I accept their underhanddedness as legit business practice.

Rogo

 

[oldfart]

You show me that ATI plays my UT 2003 better, I'll buy them

I did in this thread 9800P = Double to triple the framerate of 5900U with better IQ to boot.

 

[Megatomic]

Well, I'm going to sum my perspective up like this: if the ATI cards continue to be as difficult to install/picky in their operation as they have been to this point, I will avoid using them no matter what the fanbois say and no matter what the 3DMark whatever version says. To this day I have attempted to use a Radeon 64 ViVo, a Radeon 7500, and a Radeon 9500 Pro. All were flaky, all required major troubleshooting/debugging to get them running halfway properly, and all had trouble with some of the popular games that were out at the time I tried them.

Yeah I hear it coming, "if you are such a n00b that you can't get the card to work then you don't deserve it". To this I say screw you, I know I am way more experienced than the vast majority of the ATI fanbois that might say that. The ATI cards just aren't worth the trouble.

 

[Ketchup]

Originally posted by: Megatomic
Well, I'm going to sum my perspective up like this: if the ATI cards continue to be as difficult to install/picky in their operation as they have been to this point, I will avoid using them no matter what the fanbois say and no matter what the 3DMark whatever version says.

I somewhat agree with this. What's the point of having a card that beats another by a few FPS but won't work on your system? I wouldn't diss their whole line forever, but if my 9700 PRO didn't work on my system, I would have no problem returning it for a Geforce card.

 

[oldfart]

My last few cards in my primary rig were Radeon 64 VIVO, GF3 (original), GF4 Ti4600, 9700P. Never had any big issue getting any of them working properly.

 

[Megatomic]

My cards in the last 2 years:
GF256
GF2 GTS
Radeon 64 ViVo
GF2 Pro
GF2 Ti
Radeon 7500
GF4 Ti 4200
Radeon 9500 Pro
GF4 Ti 4800 SE

The nVidia cards were by far the easiest to install and configure and they gave me far less trouble in games. The 9500 Pro did, however, perform best once I got it working right (it took a week for me to get it right). And the IQ was spectacular.

 

[Rogozhin]

My cards in the last 2 years

tnt2 m64
geforce 2 mx 400
geforce 2 gts
radeon 8500
geforce 4 ti4200
geforce 4 ti4400
radeon 9700

Never had install problems on any of these cards.

I can give you some pointers if you'd like about how to uninstall cleanly.


rogo

 

[Megatomic]

I do fresh installs of windows whenever I install any new item in my computer that requires me to load drivers. It wasn't a "clean uninstall" issue that made the ATI cards a b!tch.

 

[Rogozhin]

what did?

rogo

 

[nRollo]

Rogodin:

I think your analogy would be more along the lines of-

Car and driver and all the periodicals prinited that the for f150 has 300flbs of torque (but they jimmied the pre prodcution test vechiles by putting in overbored blocks) so you lada lada go to pull your boat, your car, whatever else you want to pull and BINGO you're doing 45 on the freeway instead of the claimed 65mph.

You cannot fool all of us with your Rage 3d agenda.
The problem with your changes to my perfectly good analogy is that in your analogy, the performance of boat towing is somehow affected by cheats made on the trailer towing.
My analogy works because it states that trailer home towing and boat towing are mutually exclusive performance issues, and since I don't tow trailers, I have no need of trailer towing prowess. Much like a cheat coded to work on specific programs in 3dmark won't work on other programs, so if you don't use 3dmark, you really have nothing to worry about.

Your analogy assumes (for no defensible reason) that cheats coded for 3dmark somehow work on other games.

 

[nRollo]

Old Fart:

9800P = Double to triple the framerate of 5900U with better IQ to boot.

Sigh. Old Fart, like I said then, 2 benchmarks at unequal settings, on cards where one is old tech/mature drivers and one is new tech/new drivers, does not exactly convince me.
You can point to those two benches at that one site till arthritis sets in, but when I can point to MANY benchmarks on MANY websites where the 5900 is winning, that will remain my first choice. (here included)

I try to take a little more info into consideration than the one guy who's saying what I want to hear......


BTW- No one disputes ATIs AA looks a little better, but that still doesn't mean it's a fair comparison to say the nVidia can run at a higher setting and the benchmark is still fair? If it never gets as good, it's kind of a moot point to just ratchet the setting till the framerate is gone, don't you think?

Like I've said before, the only way ATI gets my money this time is if the vendor profiteering forces my hand. (I won't pay $50-$100 above MSRP for ANY video card that's already overpriced to begin with)
I might buy a 5800 or 5800 Ultra just to be a rebel and try something new if the vendors get greedy.

 

[stonecold3169]

Originally posted by: Rollo
Rogodin:

I think your analogy would be more along the lines of-

Car and driver and all the periodicals prinited that the for f150 has 300flbs of torque (but they jimmied the pre prodcution test vechiles by putting in overbored blocks) so you lada lada go to pull your boat, your car, whatever else you want to pull and BINGO you're doing 45 on the freeway instead of the claimed 65mph.

You cannot fool all of us with your Rage 3d agenda.
The problem with your changes to my perfectly good analogy is that in your analogy, the performance of boat towing is somehow affected by cheats made on the trailer towing.
My analogy works because it states that trailer home towing and boat towing are mutually exclusive performance issues, and since I don't tow trailers, I have no need of trailer towing prowess. Much like a cheat coded to work on specific programs in 3dmark won't work on other programs, so if you don't use 3dmark, you really have nothing to worry about.

Your analogy assumes (for no defensible reason) that cheats coded for 3dmark somehow work on other games.

The issue I have is that they don't. I say, have nvidia put the options for the "cheats" to be enabled or disabled in the drivers, but only if they work for everything.

My main point for this is the splinter cell issue, where the same scene rendered in a benchmark and then in the game, the benchmark runs faster. If, say, you were a splintercell player looking for a card upgrade, and saw that performance, you'd expect that or at least similar with the retail game, right? This is, of course, assuming that the scene is identical, which it is. If performance were identical in the demo and the real deal, and you had the option of using the feature or not, not only would I not have an issue with it, I would be incredibly happy with nvidia. Big performance boost for little IQ difference is worthwhile in my eyes... but if I saw scores for splinter and then played it and mine were way off, I have issues.

 

[oldfart]

Originally posted by: Rollo
Old Fart:

9800P = Double to triple the framerate of 5900U with better IQ to boot.

Sigh. Old Fart, like I said then, 2 benchmarks at unequal settings, on cards where one is old tech/mature drivers and one is new tech/new drivers, does not exactly convince me.
You can point to those two benches at that one site till arthritis sets in, but when I can point to MANY benchmarks on MANY websites where the 5900 is winning, that will remain my first choice. (here included)

I try to take a little more info into consideration than the one guy who's saying what I want to hear......


BTW- No one disputes ATIs AA looks a little better, but that still doesn't mean it's a fair comparison to say the nVidia can run at a higher setting and the benchmark is still fair? If it never gets as good, it's kind of a moot point to just ratchet the setting till the framerate is gone, don't you think?

Like I've said before, the only way ATI gets my money this time is if the vendor profiteering forces my hand. (I won't pay $50-$100 above MSRP for ANY video card that's already overpriced to begin with)
I might buy a 5800 or 5800 Ultra just to be a rebel and try something new if the vendors get greedy.

If its not fair, it's actually not fair to the 9800P. The 5900U is at a lower IQ level as far as AA goes. Maybe it is "set" to 8x, but it looks worse than the 9800P 6x. There are questions whether it is actually running 8x or 6x. I dont care if it was set to 100x AA. It still looks inferior to the ATi 6x. I look at it as actual gameplay, not some bench that is "optimized". And I do play ALL games at max IQ (sliders to the right) 6xAA 16x AF. If I set my new 5900U to max quality and got a pathetic 30 FPS (that IS the way I set up my cards), I would not be very happy with it. Max quality (which looks better) on the 9800P gets 90 FPS. That is what I expect.

I have no real preference between nV and ATi (I've owned far more nV than ATi cards), but I am taking this whole benchmark stuff with a BIG grain of salt these days. [ H ] is one of the few sites that tries to match IQ (not setting numbers) but actual IQ to make benches more meaningful. The are lots of questions also on Doom3 and SC. From what I've read so far, those tests flawed.

 

[Rogozhin]

Rollo

I know how your analogy worked and it is wrong because of nvidia's pr that claimed "30% faster than ati's offering" implying that the towing circumcribed all manner of towing-not exclusively boat towing.

If you had read this-
"Nvidia did this when they claimed the fx5900 was 30% faster than ati's latest offering because they used only their inflated 3dmark scores as evidence of this performance increase-their blanket statement of 30% increase IS what my analogy represents-yours would be correct had they said "the fx5900ultra is 30% faster than ati's latest offering IN 3DMARK."

It's all about what nvidia claims to be true."


-you would have understood where my analogy came from.

You and your buddies with that gestapo crap, how inane. I've posted what my names are at all the forums I visit and post in.

I like ati and own ati because they produce more iffecient, faster, cheaper, and better looking (iq wise) video cards at this moment.

I do not shove my opinion down peoples gullet but give them my impressions when asked.

Rogo