Zardon

ATi and Futuremark both have their own interesting perspectives on NVIDIA's Lab Report. With all the criticism to the the 3DMark03 benchmark program, each party is already voicing out their own points of view. In response to NVIDIA's claim that the 3DMark03 software is lacking any similarity to actual games, it misrepresents the gaming experience, leading consumers to errant conclusions, a spokesman from ATi said:

"In the first test (Wings of Fury) nVidia says its not a realistic representation of a game and they post a screen grab that shows a bunch of small planes in the distance. Lots of holes in that (e.g. there are lots of games like that, and that's a very biased screenshot!), but hold onto the basic point that the tests should represent games realistically."

In the NVIDIA's Lab Report, NVIDIA stated that only two of the pixel shaders are the new ps2.0 while seven others are still from DirectX8 and that is not enough to represent the new DirectX 9.0. Below is a quote from the Lab Report:

"This year’s 3DMark has a new nature scene. It is intended to represent the new DirectX 9.0 (DX9) applications targeted for release this year. The key issue with this game scene is that it is barely DX9. Seven of the nine pixel shaders in this test are still ps1.4 from DX8. The same issues about ps1.4 shaders described above apply here. Only two of the pixel shaders are the new ps2.0. Consumers believing that this test gives a strong look at the future of games will find it merely provides a brief glimpse, if at all."

In reponse to the above statement, ATi said,

"In the final test only two of the nine shaders are full v2.0 shaders. Games developers won't use v2.0 shaders on everything just because they can. They'll use whatever shader gets the job done to the required quality the fastest. So v2.0 does a beautiful job of the water but would be massive overkill for most of the other features in the scene."

More Information here

JAV

Here's the FM part of the response that gets me:

"Our recommendations for correct benchmarking are the following:

Use game benchmarks when you want to find out how fast a certain game runs on your computer;
Use 3DMark2001 for a comparable overall performance measurement of DirectX 7 or first generation DirectX 8 compatible hardware;
Use 3DMark03 for a comparable overall performance measurement of DirectX 9 compatible hardware "

That says 3DM2K1 is for 1st generation DX8 cards (GF3 basically) & 3DM03 is for DX9 cards.

Where is the benchmark for 2nd Generation DX8 (GF4, Rad8500-9100's, Parhelia, Xabre) cards from FM & why have we been using 3DM2K1 if FM now "recommends" it only for those 1st Gen DX8 cards?

Seems to me FM continues to shoot themselves in the foot & this has left the majority of 'gamers' & consumers out in the cold w/no "FM recommended" benchmark for their 2nd Gen DX8 cards.

I've waited 8+ hrs for a reply directly from FM on this & since they haven't replied > I'll take it they mean it the way it is printed & there is no FM bench for 2nd Gen DX8 cards from FM.

Darksider

It's a combo of both 2k1 and 2k3. *shugs* Is it really THAT important?