Poll: Should only FM approved drivers be counted towards 3dMark

[gclg2000]

Is this how ya'll do it here? I mean it only levels the playing field right? It forces people to provided the best overclock and quality of cooling?

i don't take notice to people's scores (at the very top at least) that don't have approved futuremark drivers, because of the potential for driver hacking....like that one person who hit 20k in 03.......

Am in the minority here; for "official" top 10's around the web, shouldn't we only use official drivers.

I knmow other drivers like Oega and etc, really do make a difference, and they are not approved (if i'm not mistaken), so what your opinion on this issue?

[Kanavit]

i'd say no. they should just make it so everyone can see what tweaks have been enabled for the score. Like if LOD bias has been tampered or level of detail. They should make it so, they can see what drivers have fully enabled dx 9.0 api or omitted some important details and rendereing that factor into the performance and gives unfair advantage.

[Noktar]

Would say NO
Why not using the best drivers !?

[dwwalker14335]

If FM approves newer releases of the WHQL driver within a short timeframe, then I would support using them only, but this is not always the case. You may get stuck using a older driver for quite some time.

Also, most who benchmark like to use the newest driver to see what it will do. This valuable insight would be lost if FM approved drivers were required.

[lalPOOO]

I'd say no, the FM approved drivers thing appears a bit fishy to me. I know its ment to weed out cheat drivers from ati/nvidia but I also get the feeling that theres payoffs involved in the drivers that are or aren't certified. If not a literal payoff then some sort of mutal backscratching...
Unfortunatly the way things are now, its easiest to just use certified drivers when it comes to 2k3 and 2k5 because of the way the orb is viewed.

[STEvil]

no, would rather futuremark listed stuff as has been suggested in this thread already.

[gclg2000]

I see what everyone is saying.

I have NO PROBLEM using non certified drivers for gaming and all the rest. Even for your own leasure benchmarks.

But to me approved FM drivers are the ONLY way to keep it organized and legit for comparing to each other.

If people are going to be "competing" against each other, there has to be some rules for it. Look at all other competitoins......they are some rules in everything.

Thats why everyone laughed off the guy that had "20,000 something" in 03'; everyone knew he was driver hacking.

I just think for "official top 10's" you must use FM approved drivers.

It's almost like me buying 2 new identical sports cars, and racing somone. But i get to use race grade octane gas, and you get "regular" unleaded.

See what i'm saying?

[Kunaak]

if futuremark wasn't so damn slow to verify drivers, then I would say yes, approved drivers only.

I feel anything that increases the reliability of the information you get from a benchmark, is always a better thing, knowing the drivers used are accurate and don't allow cheating, like PS Nulling and forcing no mipmaps or whatever, then that would be a great thing over all.
but the plain old fact is...

futuremark is so damn slow to verify drivers, that I'd never benchmark if I had to wait for them to catch up.

[gclg2000]

yeah. I'll leave it with this comment.

You CAN still use non approved drivers to get an idea of how good "new" drivers that aren't approved yet are. And your own personal 3dMark score will be reflected upon this.

But when competing with others for a "world record" or top 10 spot. I see it as evident that one MUST use approved drivers. That way no one can use hacked stuff and make it unfair.

All i'm saying is, if your going to try to be #1 on a top 10 (or even make the top 10) then you should be requird to use Approved drivers. Only when everyone is using the same approved drivers will it be an even match of "who is the best overclocker, tweaker and benchmarker.

And also, does this board have its own "top 10" or ya'll just all go with the top20 on the futuremark ORB, under the hall of fame.

[Mini]

No... Cuz FM arent always fast enough

And mostly the OC community detects cheat quickly... Both in the score and drivers

[Kunaak]

gclg2000

if people did it your way, there would be no Nvidia overclocking at all, and most beta drivers would just be blacklisted, even though they almost always are approved later on.

on the case of Nvidia, seems nothing they release gets FM approval, and I hardly doubt that Nvidia is cheating like hell on thier last dozen drivers...

Futuremark is just too damn slow to approve drivers, especially in Nvidias case.

[gclg2000]

I agree on the slowness. I'm not saying either ATI nor Nvidia themselves are cheating on the drivers. Its people that write special bios that disable features that boosts scores up is what i'm talking about. And the only way i see to eliminate that is to unfortunately eliminatd those drivers.

Also, i'm mainly talking on the very top benchmarks around....all of which use ATI x800 series cards anyways (i know there are exceptions, but you kinda get what i'm getting at).