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View Full Version : nVidia using 3dfx tech

STEvil
09-30-2003, 09:26 PM
Those of you who have read the THG review of the 9800xt may have caught this, but if not...

Test tools don't help much anymore because they can be detected by the driver resulting in an optimal quality in those test apps. The only thing you can do today is to compare the quality in screenshots but those results are only meaningful for this single application. This way is also very time-consuming and you also have to capture exactly the same frame, which is only possible in a minority of games. It's getting even worse when it comes to FSAA because the image you see on your captured screenshot is not inevitably what you see on your monitor. NVIDIA is using a kind of post frame buffer filtering technology, which was already used by 3dfx's Voodoo5. It takes the samples from the frame buffer and finally combines them in the RAMDAC of the card. The problem is that screen captures can only be taken out of the frame buffer. The technology used by NVIDIA is valid but it complicates reliable screen capturing.

http://www17.tomshardware.com/graphic/20030930/radeon_9800-12.html

They didnt buy 3dfx for their hardware, they bought them so they could use the post frame buffer to sneak past benchmarks!

Heh.... j/k?
saaya
10-01-2003, 08:18 AM
they stole a lot of innovations developped by 3dfx and assimilated them...
antipop
10-01-2003, 08:27 AM
Instead of loosing time trying to find the ultimate way to cheat at bench they should rather spend it on designing a better core. It's just lame
saaya
10-01-2003, 08:57 AM
slowely i realize how lame EVERY big company is...

ati just recently held a press conference, it will work harderon their drivers to make their cards "look better" in benchmarks...

and amd sells their fx cpus for a huge load of money and locked the multis of all other cpus...
antipop
10-01-2003, 09:08 AM
Only two things intersted them power and money, nothing else. The customer is only there for them to get more money. That's not a surprise
MrLavender
10-01-2003, 09:36 AM
Originally posted by saaya
and amd sells their fx cpus for a huge load of money and locked the multis of all other cpus... Nobody knows yet whether the A64 multis are locked, it could just be that the current bioses don't support changing them. Wait until a decent board like the Abit comes out.

Anyway, selling a cpu at the price that people will pay is a lot different from from putting benchmark cheats in gfx drivers. The first is called market forces, the second is called fraud.
dojobi
10-01-2003, 12:30 PM
Am I missing something here? From what I can see there's nothing at all wrong with this!

Anyway, it probably explains the comments by Valve about nVidia's drivers detecting when a screenshot is being taken. They just wanted the screenshot to accurately show what is being shown on the screen.

Everyone's very quick to jump on nVidia these days...
Holst
10-01-2003, 12:36 PM
Mr Lavender, I dont think its fraud, it "application specific optimistations", or as most people will say it - "cheats".

LOL.
STEvil
10-01-2003, 01:07 PM
I dont care about optimizations as long as they dont hurt image quality... and that means 2048x1536x32, not on some dinky little 12" monitor... 8-)