...please read this.
I wrote this after reading threads from people who were knocking companies because of "cheating" on benchmark programs
I could honestly care less about companies like nVidia or ATi "cheating" on drivers to inflate their scores attainable. Benchmarks are a tool to sell product and everyone should understand that.
I could also care less if a set of drivers lowers my 3DMark score by 300-500 points. 3-500 points in 3DMark is the difference of a few frames per second, and seeing as my LCD display can't show more than ~60fps as it stands, it makes no difference to me if drivers give me 70fps or 120. It's still smooth, and absolutely no one can say that they can see a discernable difference between the two. Anyone who does is talking out their a**, and wants to appear like he's some kind of videophile.
What matters to me is stability. Above all else.
Okay, so the newest nForce drivers don't have it in spades. BUT, they work fine for some. So here we have the two basic contingents - people happy with the drivers, and people like me, who have just read the "reviews" so far and haven't piped up.
Bottom line: If you want nVidia, ATi, and other computer companies to stop "cheating" in 3DMark, quit making such a fuss about your scores. The more emphasis you place on a tool like 3DMark, the more companies are going to twist and turn it into something they can use to hold over their rivals. In essence you created the thing you hate by idolizing numbers which change every time you run the program. "Oh, I get 19,000 so my computer must be better than yours." "Well, I get 19,750, 50 1'/\/\ 13373|2 7|-|4|\| j00." You give them a tool by which to win your adoration and business, and they'll exploit it. It's dirty business, but it's good tactics. And like it or not, it's not illegal - it's immoral. It's only illegal if you then claim your product is technologically superior to your competitors because your product scores higher in said program, and use it to sell your product under those false pretenses. nVidia and ATi might inflate numbers, but they're smart enough not to make stuff like that official word - so they "trash talk" each other. Trash talk is not illegal. Also, when's the last time you saw a 3DMark graph on a product box? Thought so.
And the only thing you can do about immorality in the computer business is to stop giving the company that's being immoral your attention or business. They either have to straighten their sh*t out or go under. It's that simple. So instead of making such a huge deal out of your 3DMark scores, start saying "I like my computer because I can play [insert current game of choice here] at an incredibly high detail and it's smooth." Not "Wow - I got 17,000 Marks!" If you stop reading here, that's the only thing I want you to remember: if you idolize something like 3DMark, that's what the companies are going to futz with to make you want their product more. If you tell them en masse that "I want to be able to play current games, and I want to be able to play them at a high level of detail smoothly," it's ambiguous. They'll sh*t a brick. For once, you let them off the hook - they no longer have to walk on the tip of the sword to give you bleeding edge performance, usually at the cost of stability. You can't have bleeding edge performance and stability at the same time. They're mutually exclusive. Matrox understood that, and decided to let it go with the Parhelia. The Parhelia was a dud, and Matrox will pay for it in the years to come. They tried to circumvent the fundamental truth that in the computer world, unless you're Bill Gates, you cannot have your cake and eat it, too.
Like it or not, nVidia is still trying to make a name for itself in the chipset industry. It's not in their interests to purposely put out crappy drivers for a product line they're still trying so desperately in to get a large foothold in the market. They're working at a deficit already due to the fact that no large OEMs other than HP/Compaq have adopted the nForce2 architecture, and that's only on their top-shelf AMD lines - and let's face it, if you're here, you're most likely not buying a premade box from HP/Compaq. Those people get their drivers from Windows Update, or better yet, configure the autoupdater to do it for them.
I wouldn't be surprised if nVidia reads these forums. If I were them I sure as hell wouldn't post here because the flak they'd receive from people who feel they've been jilted would be enormous. Now, some of you have experience with WPCREDIT, and know what the inside of your chipset looks like. All that hex could make a man go nucking futs. And each time nVidia or any other company makes a new chipset, some poor schmuck gets the directive from on high to "make a core logic for this new chipset that works with pretty much anything."
Now, imagine that you're that programmer for a second. Imagine you've just been given an impossible task like that. You know you're screwed. You know you'll never be able to pull off "the perfect code." No one ever has. It's statistically impossible for a human being or group of human beings to write a core logic so breathtakingly perfect that any and all hardware you connect to the PC both internally and externally will work without a hitch, unless you're working with a restricted hardware set - which I discuss in the paragraph after next.
Now, imagine you and your team have been tasked with this impossible thing. To add insult to injury, your execs say "we need it in nine months to beat out [insert main competitor's name here]'s new thing." Now, you've got an impossible job...now with a deadline. And if you miss that deadline, it's your neck. SO, what do you do.... You and the damned underneath and above you sit in a large room smoking and drinking heavily (whether you do or not is of no consequence), and you settle on one very important thing. You try to make the hardware as stable as humanly possible using your own products and you brainstorm about what the typical consumer you're building this product for will most likely connect to/install on it. Then you start with prototype systems. You give the press a whirl on it, let them see success with a system specifically designed not to fail. You then start to advise OEMs and systembuilders about the best and most stable hardware to equip systems with using your new wunderproduct - and you keep this list guarded under threat of legal action - since it's leakage would immediately spark massive undertow in the computer industry. Imagine if Via were caught redhanded in a scandal that they purposely made sure ATi cards would run better on their chipsets than nVidia's. I think it's quite obvious that Radeon cards WILL work in nForce chipsets, and I commend nVidia for that. If they truly wanted to, they COULD get away with making sure that Radeon cards didn't do well on their boards.
My Mac friends, whenever they hear of me or someone else having a trouble configuring hardware of course tout their "rock-solid" Macs. I usually respond with the fact that on any modern Mac system, the total number of configurable combinations (aside from things like RAM and hard drives, which are pretty trouble free unless you get one from a bad batch), is well-below the millions of possible combinations you have to deal with in a PC environment. I've long since believed that if OSX had to have a fixed driver database even 50% the size of Windows', we'd all be kicking our PCs out of frustration. But no, everything is closed-circle at Apple - that's why the Radeon 9700 Pro for the Mac just came out about two months ago - it's completely rigged for the Apple architecture and is probably certified to work in literally any combination you could possibly imagine. And seeing that Mac gamers get their games (on average) 4-6 months and sometimes longer than we do on the PC, they'll run like greased lightning.
Now, you [pee] on the WHQL guys. I've known some people who do testing for the HCL. Do you have ANY idea how many driver candidates for all sorts of different drivers they have to pour through, certify, reject, approve, tweak, analyze and mess with on a yearly basis? TENS OF THOUSANDS. For all different makes, models, and types of hardware. Companies like nVidia, ATi, Intel and Via don't stop R&D and production just because the WHQL guys say "hey, we're a little bogged down here, could you hold off on making the nForce2 for a while?"
And all these people you're [peeing] on play a large part in making sure that you get your perfect set of drivers...your perfect BIOS...your perfect piece of hardware...tell me, just how fast would you slave if you saw people telling you your work sucked. Keep that in mind the next time you're biting the hands responsible for writing the drivers that makes your PC run smoothly.
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