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News [H]ardOCP heading for another lawsuit

Discussion in 'Article Discussion' started by Tim S, 6 Oct 2004.

  1. Mnet_Gaming

    Mnet_Gaming What's a Dremel?

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    Just wanted to mention something, dont you guys think its interesting how you [bittech], Futuremark and [H]ard|OCP forum users react to this news.

    Check this out
    http://discuss.futuremark.com/forum...er=4456820&page=0&view=&sb=&o=&fpart=all&vc=1

    annnuway,
    Before you guys jump the gun. I think you need to look at the facts
    *The FM representative spoke in an informal manner (trying to be "nice", not threatening etc)
    *The replies from [H] are surprizingly immature, using the "good nature" of [FM] as a spring board to gain the upper ground
    *[H] Brings up the First ammendment in a pethetic attempt to gain leverage.
    * I have a feeling there is more than meets the eye to this communication, maybe a little reading between the lines may explain this further?

    However saying that...

    the FM guy (from appearences) did a few things wrong
    *It appeared he "snapped" and threanted legal action, he should have looked for proof. Some sort of counter opinion. Especially considering [H]'s difference to authority.
    *Maybe should have been a bit more formal, considering the nature of the email

    Either way. I suspect this is isn't the last we'll hear of this....
     
  2. Guest-16

    Guest-16 Guest

    Its an enthusiast site and H arent known for exactly being the most mature people.
     
  3. Gordy

    Gordy Evil Teddy

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    I'm sorry but [h] is right the last years constant "cheating" from nvidia and ati show how worthless 3dmark is as a tool. The fact futuremark even asked them to take their stuff down shows how clueless they are.
     
  4. Tim S

    Tim S OG

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    tis funny how FM refer to us as a "bunch of Brits" :hehe:

    By the way, it's nice to see both sides of the story... I can't wait to see Kyle's editorial... but I hope it's not a piece of work that serves nothing but tear something apart without a good backup behind it.
     
  5. Harlequin

    Harlequin Modder

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  6. Guest-16

    Guest-16 Guest

    yes! :D /bigz

    So, the question being: has futuremark made themselves redundent and are just afraid of others actually stating this? Or are the driver developers/graphics cards companies to blame? Or are they just suffering from end-user abuse like say, (microsoft)? - people cheating etc? There's only so much a company can do, so is it FMs fault?? Or is [H] being overly finger-pointy and not seeing the whole picture just because FM is the biggest benchmark company doesnt mean its the only one (microsoft syndrome again).
     
  7. Harlequin

    Harlequin Modder

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    Thats a very wide ranging assessment - , its a user there called SSV , and he`s american.
     
  8. Tim S

    Tim S OG

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    I'm not sure bindi, it's a tough one.

    I don't quite go to the extremes of what Kyle does with his religious use of real world gaming... but I do believe that for the purpose of comparing two graphics cards, there are far too many fundamental problems with 3DMark05 as a whole.

    A quote from my initial article - please bear in mind that there will be a follow up article in the near future with some further investigations surrounding 3DMark05:

    "However, our feelings about this benchmark are slightly mixed. We're starting to believe that moving away from time demos and synthetic benchmarking is a step in the right direction. After all, 3DMark is a synthetic benchmark that ATI and NVIDIA appear to concentrate on more so than the majority of game titles, because being number one is so crucial for their sales. Really speaking, they should be focusing their funds and manpower on fixing driver bugs and increasing performance in the top game titles. From our perspective, there are some useful feature tests included, but apart from that we are not overly impressed by the latest 3DMark release - this is probably due to the fact that we were spoilt with eye candy in the recent release of Doom 3."
     
  9. Tim S

    Tim S OG

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    yes, maybe I was being a little stereotypical about things, but I do think he's got bit-tech.net rubbed up the wrong tree, a little. :)
     
  10. Harlequin

    Harlequin Modder

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    true - but maybe , [H] got the community @ FM *rubbed up the wrong tree, a little* as well :) , being that things are getting toasty on both forums (amoungst all the others)


    and 1 thing about your article - yes D3 may have brought us eye candy , but so did FarCRy and with D3 its all about shadows and stencil`s with very little fragment_programmes being used ; well that and its OGL and not DX9.0c ;)
     
  11. Anakha

    Anakha Minimodder

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    Okay, IMHO (Get those lawyers away from me, this is my OPINION):

    Programs like 3DMark now are still generally very much like Final Reality was back in it's day. A Tech Demo (in essence), which also happened to show you how quickly it had executed.

    For reproducability, using benchmarks like this is great. It means you get (virtually) consistant results each time you test. Whereas using FRAPS and a game means different run-throughs can give you different data per session.

    But at the end of the day, all 3DMark (And other such programs) show is how quickly a given spec can run 3DMark. Nothing more.

    Sure, it's all nice and easy to say "Look at the size of my penis, my PC gets 30,000 3DMarks", but it means nothing really. And as Quality is a purely subjective thing, it's very difficult to say "This looks better" in a programatic fashion.

    I remember a version of VideoMark that did wonderful things, like display an overlay image and asking you to select the moire points and the like, to show how well (Or badly) the graphics card was rendering video. But for all the good they do, you may as well run FRAPS and .The .Product in a loop 5 times and average the result. Hell, the test suite would be miles smaller too (As .The .Product is 64Kb in size).

    Timedemos, while more difficult, can be optimised for too, so the best bet would be to (say) run a multiplayer lan of various games, with one "Lead" player on a base system, and the rest as "Chase Cam" spectators, each spectator running a different GFX card, and all running Fraps, and comparing the results between the chase cams.

    That would be difficult, however, and require a lot more resources than most places are willing to devote (Or indeed, have).

    I'm not sure where I've ended up with this rant, but IMHO a Synthetic Benchmark like 3DMark is like an IQ test. It's only good at telling you how good you are at taking IQ tests.
     
  12. Tim S

    Tim S OG

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    But you have to remember that 3DMark05 has stepped outside of DX9 specification. Something which Futuremark said they would never do. Depth Stencil-Textures aren't an official feature of DirectX 9.0, but they are a standard feature of OpenGL as well as other APIs.

    Depth Stencil-Textures aren't expected to appear in Direct3D until after it is renamed to the Windows Graphics Foundation - that isn't going to appear until Longhorn, which is currently slated for a 2006 release. I wouldn't be surprised if it was actually 2007 before Longhorn appeared, though.
     
  13. Mnet_Gaming

    Mnet_Gaming What's a Dremel?

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    This is quite amusing, 3 threads over 3 forums. All based on the same topic..


    I've moved to [H]ard|OCP, I'm going to do my bitching there ;)

    (TeamMCS on both [H] and FM)
     
  14. white modder

    white modder What's a Dremel?

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    I dont run 3d mark anymore, it WAS a good tool, but now its just to damn stupid, why run such an application that will tell you: your pc suck while I still can play cs:source with a nice 65 fps
     
  15. Mnet_Gaming

    Mnet_Gaming What's a Dremel?

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    Its a benchmark, its designed to stess your system beyond its capasity to show you what its capable of.

    If you want to see your system running a benchmark @ 200fps, then go download 3Dmark01. Its a pethetic arguement for not using 3DMark.

    Benchmark definition
    "A standard by which something can be measured or judged", not "A standard by which a user can view the system operating under capacity to assure the user his system is capable".


    ..serious though, consider what you're saying
     
  16. Tim S

    Tim S OG

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    Why do they market it as "The Gamers Benchmark" ?

    Surely no gamer, in their right mind, would run any game below 35-40fps at the least! This chuggs along at 20-30fps on an X800 XT, nevermind a typical graphics card that a large quantity of people have. ;)
     
  17. Mnet_Gaming

    Mnet_Gaming What's a Dremel?

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    Well sadly I'm not a highly paid Futuremark marketing rep, so I cant tell you :D, only my opinion :thumb:
     
  18. Tim S

    Tim S OG

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  19. Mnet_Gaming

    Mnet_Gaming What's a Dremel?

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    Though its a good point, I think FM analyse what area's of the DirectX spec for an overall performance idea.

    So for instance, if you know games X,y and Z all use part of a function call, process or similer it would be logical to use that idea in some way.

    At the core of it, they all have to call back to directX along the way, so its just a case of identifying which ones are used most etc.
     
  20. Tim S

    Tim S OG

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    Read up a little... 3DMark05 steps outside of DirectX 9.0 specification.

    I posted the following:

     
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