[H]ard|OCP Nvidia Editorial

[larrystorch]

[H]ard|OCP has a pretty thought provoking editorial on the whole Nvidia/Futuremark fiasco. Some of you may remember the scandal a few months ago concerning Nvidia being accused of cheating on the Futuremark videocard benchmark. If you don't, it comes down to Nvidia, ATI and Futuremark trying to one-up each other in the high stakes game of videocard benchmarking, marketing, and the bottom line....money. Here are some highlights:


Is NVIDIA on a mission to see just how badly they can upset the enthusiast community that helped put them in the position they are in today?

On the topic of 3DMark03, everyone but NVIDIA, Futuremark, and their lawyers will tell you that NVIDIA cheated in that benchmark to get a better score. No matter what the press releases say about optimizations, I think many of us know very well that it was cheating.

Quite frankly, I don’t like not having that ability taken from me either. I think when we spend $400 or $500 on a video card, we should be able to turn on true Trilinear Filtering in the game if that is what we want, and NVIDIA has taken this away from us.


Check out the rest of this editorial and then post in the comment section your thoughts on this.

 

[Frylock]

Seems they have it out for NVIDIA... Even going as far as telling us not to buy their products. I think it is irresponsible of them to further cloud this mess with ATI, NVIDIA, and Futuremark. He talks about breaking a sacred trust with the community. Well you know what? My trust with NVIDIA is not broken. I've owned two GeForce cards so far and they have done nothing but given me a good, if not great, video card. They haven't broken or given me artifacts or blown up my computer monitor. They run my games, and they run them well. I could say the exact same things about ATI cards, and I know that they are also high-quality products, but since I've never owned one, I wouldn't know. However that isn't the point, the point is that to Joe Consumer, you and me, the "scandal" over Futuremark on both sides is so small that it doesn't make a difference except in very, very extreme conditions. So go out and do your research, but I suggest not to turn to [H]ard|OCP anymore since they let their bias show. Tom's Hardware is a much better and much more objective source of hardware news, just to name one. Also do not rely on Futuremark either, just current game benchmarks and I'll guarantee you that you'll pick out the right card for you, whether it is ATI or NVIDIA.

 

[Iron Archer]

agreed. Most cards will give a general level of performance that a minimal difference of benchmark scores will not matter to the average user. Personally, I will probably stick w/ Nvidia, since they generally issue more robust drivers & most devs stand behind nvidia. In the same way, most people will stand behind MS as OS of choice, versus other OS's, just from a standpoint of long-standing "quality". Anyways, it all sounds like some argument between a trekkie and Star Wars fan as to which is better... ugh... Can't we all just play games and get along? hehe

 

[RaptoR]

I still can't tell the difference between bilinear and trilinear .

 

[larrystorch]

I still can't tell the difference between bilinear and trilinear .

That would be a British thing...oh wait, I went to a U.S. puplic school, wtf do I know

 

[larrystorch]

I agree with what Frylock and Deadpool_1-0 say as far as keeping Nvidia in my computer. I pretty much have to running Linux. Nvidia has done a great job writing Linux drivers for their cards that match and sometimes exceed the performance of the same card under Windows.

I believe HOCP's beef is the dog and pony show being played by Nvidias upper managment. As far as HOCP being biased, Tom is just as bias, just in different ways. Review sites all have some biases in them just from the simple fact that people run them. And we hunams have it tough trying not to be biased.

If anything, this whole futuremark fiasco just shows us that benchmark numbers alone should not determine what card to buy. Support, drivers, and image quality should play just as much, if not more than, an important factor in determining what card to buy.

I will stick with Nvidia because they provide great Linux drivers for their videocard and motherboard chipsets. They have a great community forum to help users.