Read the futuremark audit .pdf for more info
heres a snippet:
Futuremark¡¯s audit revealed cheats in NVIDIA Detonator FX 44.03 and 43.51 WHQL drivers.
1. The loading screen of the 3DMark03 test is detected by the driver. This is used by the driver
to disregard the back buffer clear command that 3DMark03 gives. This incorrectly reduces the
workload. However, if the loading screen is rendered in a different manner, the driver seems
to fail to detect 3DMark03, and performs the back buffer clear command as instructed.
2. A vertex shader used in game test 2 (P_Pointsprite.vsh) is detected by the driver. In this case
the driver uses instructions contained in the driver to determine when to obey the back buffer
clear command and when not to. If the back buffer would not be cleared at all in game test 2,
the stars in the view of outer space in some cameras would appear smeared as have been
reported in the articles mentioned earlier. Back buffer clearing is turned off and on again so
that the back buffer is cleared only when the default benchmark cameras show outer space.
In free camera mode one can keep the camera outside the spaceship through the entire test,
and see how the sky smearing is turned on and off.
3. A vertex shader used in game test 4 (M_HDRsky.vsh) is detected. In this case the driver adds
two static clipping planes to reduce the workload. The clipping planes are placed so that the
sky is cut out just beyond what is visible in the default camera angles. Again, using the free
camera one can look at the sky to see it abruptly cut off. Screenshot of this view was also
reported in the ExtremeTech and Beyond3D articles. This cheat was introduced in the 43.51
drivers as far as we know.
4. In game test 4, the water pixel shader (M_Water.psh) is detected. The driver uses this
detection to artificially achieve a large performance boost - more than doubling the early
frame rate on some systems. In our inspection we noticed a difference in the rendering when
compared either to the DirectX reference rasterizer or to those of other hardware. It appears
the water shader is being totally discarded and replaced with an alternative more efficient
shader implemented in the drivers themselves. The drivers produce a similar looking
rendering, but not an identical one.
5. In game test 4 there is detection of a pixel shader (m_HDRSky.psh). Again it appears the
shader is being totally discarded and replaced with an alternative more efficient shader in a
similar fashion to the water pixel shader above. The rendering looks similar, but it is not
identical.
6. A vertex shader (G_MetalCubeLit.vsh) is detected in game test 1. Preventing this detection
proved to reduce the frame rate with these drivers, but we have not yet determined the cause.
7. A vertex shader in game test 3 (G_PaintBaked.vsh) is detected, and preventing this detection
drops the scores with these drivers. This cheat causes the back buffer clearing to be
disregarded; we are not yet aware of any other cheats.
8. The vertex and pixel shaders used in the 3DMark03 feature tests are also detected by the
driver. When we prevented this detection, the performance dropped by more than a factor of
two in the 2.0 pixel shader test.
We have used various techniques to prevent NVIDIA drivers from performing the above
detections. We have been extremely careful to ensure that none of the changes we have
introduced causes differences in either rendering output or performance. In most case, simple
alterations in the shader code ¨C such as swapping two registers ¨C has been sufficient to prevent
the detection.
also:
Aren’t These Cheats Just Optimizations That Also Benefit General Game Play
Performance?
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No. There are two reasons.
Firstly, these driver cheats increase benchmark performance at the expense of image quality.
Only the user and the game developer should decide how a game is meant to be experienced,
and not the hardware developer. An act by hardware developer to force a different experience
than the developer or the user intended, is an act that may mislead consumers, the OEMs and the
media who look to our benchmark to help them make purchase decisions.
Secondly, in well-designed benchmarks like 3DMark03, all cards are instructed to do the same
amount of work. Artificially reducing one card’s workload, for example, by using pre-set clip planes
or using a lower precision shader against the program’s instructions, is only aimed to artificially
manipulate the benchmark test result. Please note, that the cheating described here is totally
different from optimization. Optimizing the driver code to increase efficiency is a technique often
used to enhance game performance and carries greater legitimacy, since the rendered image is
exactly what the developer intended.
Also an ati "cheating", they publically stated that the 3.4's gave added performance in 2003, that doesnt mean they are cheating, they could have just made thier shader operations explicitly used in 3dmark to run faster through refined drivers
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