NVidia cheated with their drivers?

[Guest]

Last night I installed these new drivers on my PII-266 / GeForce2 GTS DDR box.
I tested 3DMark2001 by MadOnion with a previous Detonator driver and these new one.
It was a Win98 system, if it matters.

http://labpro.madonion.com/download/?3dmark2001.shtml

My pitiful box improved it's score from 641 to 700. Yet I saw some small pixels dropped in the test where the statue of the horse gets rotated, I think it's sprite??? test of DirectX 8?? - it's close to the end of the benchmark.

It left me wondering had NVidia cheated somewhat to drop sub-pixel sprites or like. They did the same some time ago when they dropped sub-pixel triangles to improve the benchmark scores yet ZD Bench guys caught them with one of their ‘picture quality’ test.

One can checked it out - see URL above.

Again,
Some pixels were dropped only in the 'horse sculpture rotation' test and only for a second?? in few opening frames. If your system is really fast you might miss it at all.

 

[noko]

I've notice the same thing with the Sprite test. I can also show shots in Serious Sam where alot of textures are not rendered but blended as compared to a Radeon with sharp textures being rendered the farthest you can see. Probably due to the better ability of the Anisotropic filtering of the Radeon, still if you don't render textures obviously FPS would be higher.

Well to eat your <b>C kie</b> and have it too, gotta get <b>Rade n II</b>

 

[Guest]

So they _do_ cheat... it's sad...
I do not care about 10% speed boost when it comes with the neglected image quality.

 

[SerArthurDayne]

If I lose a unnoticeable ammount of image quality for a boost in speed, I'll take that any day.

As a player of First Person Shooters in competition level play, I demand performance over picture And right now Tribes2's engine is too buggy to have anything less than brute force behind a card.... maybe once they've optimized their code I can have a great picture as well as strong performance.

 

[igottaknife]

BUGGY, heh typical of Sierra

Your Signature Sucks

 

[rcf84]

Like i said the Nvidia is scared of ATi. Cheating the customers now. Each new ATi driver i get the Quality gets better. I guess Nvidia has to take short cuts now. Well they can push this on the newbie users that FPS is better then image quality but i know that image quality is better then FPS. All i need is 30fps w/ 2x fsaa. Well the Radeon 2 will should the Geforce3 image quality !!!

Nice Intel and AMD users get a Cookie.... Yummy

 

[Guest]

you must not forget that nvidia is also scared of kyro 2...

 

[rcf84]

yup, your right there the GF3 MX will suffer defeat to the Kyro 3 while the Radeon 2 MAXX whips the GF3 Ultra in a Steel Cage with Razorwire.

Nice Intel and AMD users get a Cookie.... Yummy

 

[mpjesse]

I'd sacrifice image quality if it meant my video card would be able to get 30FPS. What good is a game if it's not playable because the frigin frame rate is crappy?

-MP Jesse

"Signatures Still Suck"

 

[Guest]

So stop complaining, but use 16-bit color, and overclock CPU, overclock video
Or buy new CPU, buy new video

But to give some sh*tty 10% boost bundled with crappy dropped dots - no way, I see the foul play right away.

My first 3D card was Riva128 - it was decently fast for that time, but quality was just as shitty as it gets - in Quake2 I could see holes between triangles all the time, all other games were affected, dithering and texture blending sucked all the way.

So I bought TNT later on to never see the crappy image again.

And now I have GeForce2 GTS DDR and I do require an image quality, that's it! If I would be crazy for FPS I would be running overclocked Athlon 1.4 GHz with overclocked GF3 by now.

 

[rcf84]

NT_Buddy you want image quality get a radeon. FPS get a GF2. Get a radeon and see what image quality is.

Nice Intel and AMD users get a Cookie.... Yummy

 

[killall]

is tribes 2 any good...

you do not strengthen the weak by weakening the strong

 

[mpjesse]

I'm not the one complaining. The dude who originally posted this thread is. I merely said I would trade image quality if it meant my video card could do at least 30FPS in sprites- which is CAN'T. Again, I say this: what good is the card if it can't get 30FPS out of the sprites benchmark?

-MP Jesse

"Signatures Still Suck"

 

[noko]

I don't play the sprites benchmark, not sure in what you are hitting on on your last comment. The benchmark can also be faulty and work only on certain cards. Games are the best benchmark, the ones that you play.

Well to eat your <b>C kie</b> and have it too, gotta get <b>Rade n II</b>

 

[Guest]

Noko I agree with you...

I want to mention kyro 2 image quality... I am please to say that it is up there with radeons cards...

 

[SerArthurDayne]

NT_buddy, you need to settle down just a little bit...

Maybe you demand better image quality with your rig.. well then sift through the million or so driver versions offered by nVidia and find one that has the best performance in the games you play with the best image quality, if you can even tell the difference.

Some people can't exactly afford a brand spankin' new 1.4G athlon with a geforce3 and 512mb of DDR... but would still like an acceptable framerate in games. I think its safe to say that people would rather have a playable game instead of a pretty looking slideshow.

In Tribes2 for example, I'll up my settings a bit during regular pub server play so I can have a prettier picture - come match time those details go way down, in order to squeeze out 20 or 30 extra fps.

And to whoever asked if Tribes2 was any good - yes, so far it's been a great game if waaay too buggy for a commercially released game. As of the next patch however, scheduled for this week, Dynamix has promised that most issues involving game crashes have been completely resolved, and are working on optimizations patches for different graphics cards starting with the voodoo and moving on to the Radeon.