Driver cheating

[Tech^salvager]

What is with all this driver cheating about?
I see it as if a driver is optimized to work better with the game and the card then thats a good thing. So what is wrong with optmizing drivers. Now if you are going to run a testing program for your graphics card (3dmark2k3) then there should be a set standard so that the numbers are not out of balance with other peoples tests.
So what are they doing that makes optmizing drivers for your video card wrong.

[Bigjakkstaffa]

The only issue i can see regardign the Ati optimisations is the fact they didnt tell us they were doing it and the knock on implications this has in temrs of making 'liek for like' comparisons. Other than that teh IQ is exactly the same as ever and faster to boot, indeed, if it were really that terrible a thing surely we would have noticed over the last 12 months that they've been using it? Indeed, if ATi had gone about things differently when they implemented the algorithm it could easily have been labelled by the marketing people as another key feature of their range "Increased Image Quality with no performance hit".

In contrast while Nvidia have been optimising their drivers, these optimisations have tended to come in the form of cutting IQ to free up FPS rather than making the algorithms etc any faster, additionally, Nvidia's optimisations arent 'across the board' for example they have made special optimisations to make their cards appear faster under Far Cry and futuremark applications in the past and recently with Doom III John Carmack has noted how the drivers appear to be being tailored to be faster with the graphical effects ot be used in the game, when he's altered aspects of the engine on the fly, speed has dropped dramatically, as such, the Nvidia optimisations arent raising the performance/speeds of the cards as a whole, but only in specific applications which will make or break the cards reputation (Doom II, Far Cry and the 3dmark series are all killer apps in terms of reviews/benchmarking)

Personally i think it all depends on what you want, on my middle machine i dont mind the Nvidia driver explots because i need the extra speed for my card (Nvidia reputation was built amongst the hardcore gaming circles anyways who, back in the day, preferred the additional speed the NV cards brought them and didnt complain over the lesser IQ)

In contrast, on my main machine which is what gets the real money spent on it, i would be enormously peeved if i had just spent 300 nicker on a supposedly "top-of the line"graphics card with which to run everything in all its graphical detail and glory, to find that the only way to make up performance grounds was to lower my IQ, and whatsmore, the drivers had been doing so, unawares to me for some time. Even more annoying to me would be that the card manufacturer has not been concentrating on raising the performance (of what were - on release - cards lagging behind the competition) of the range in all scenarios, but only trumping up performance in applications which tend to heavily influence the purchasing behaviour of the gaming public.

--Jakk

[chris_y2k_r1]

Jack - You mentioned Doom III, has it been released yet? I was under the impression it was not!?

[Bigjakkstaffa]

Legally, no, though leaked Beta's are 'floating around' - on the basis of which i have to say, while its certainly a good looking game - im highly sceptical as to wether it will be enjoyable in terms of gameplay and am almost certain it will not be the 'revolutionary' title it's talked up as.

Similarly prelimenary benchmarks for the engine are relatively easy to find on the net and John Carmack as with most games developers regularly makes comments regarding the development process (the most recent of which was pertaining to the afore-mentioned "optimisations" and how, though suspect in their nature, they have significantly improved the performance of the NV35 in Doom 3)

--Jakk

[zybch]

Hlaflife 2 has a large number of nVidia 'optimizzations' built in, just to let the game run at a reasonable speed.
nVidia cards are not great with Direct X games, while ATI cards aren't as good in Open Gl titles.
Both have made a few tewaks that get the fps speed up a bit, but it is generally nVidia that does this by decreasing the image quality and shaders from Pixel Shader 2 down to 1.1.
1.1 does run faster but looks nowhere near as good.