Just got word that Guru3D's 24 page GeForce FX 5800 Ultra review has been posted! Here's a snip:
Today we bring you a review on the heavily discussed GeForce FX 5800 Ultra. Ever since the first review came out on the web three weeks ago there has been much talk and gossip going on. It didn't fulfill expectations the consumer had, doesn't beat Radeon 9700 Pro, uses fastest memory in the world yet is 128-bit and most of all we've seen a lot of humorous images around the web where people use the FX as hair-dryer, leaf-blower. In the mean time, 3D Mark 03 was released, NVIDIA was not rather fond of this synthetic benchmark and refuses to see it as a 'gamers' benchmark for many good reasons. While we will not get into that discussion we will state this, much to my surprise Nvidia chose to optimize Detonator drivers for 3D Mark 03 to get the score up and actually delivers these 42.68 drivers along with the press-package I received. That by itself validates the fact that Nvidia recognized 3D Mark 03 as common used and accepted benchmark. If Nvidia would not decided to optimize the drivers and would not have delivered them to the press then this site would not have used the benchmark. However now we will. So there are two things in my mind regarding 3DMark 03:
Right now there is no other way to benchmark DX9 performance .. and you need a DX9 benchmark to review DX9 hardware.
All synthetic benchmarks are liable to be manipulated with drivers optimized for the benchmark ... this has happened since the early days of graphics benchmarking and will continue to occur. It is a moral responsibility for the graphics companies not to do this ... although there is also pressure since if they get caught cheating it will be bad for them (e.g. Quake vs Quack).
Today we bring you a review on the heavily discussed GeForce FX 5800 Ultra. Ever since the first review came out on the web three weeks ago there has been much talk and gossip going on. It didn't fulfill expectations the consumer had, doesn't beat Radeon 9700 Pro, uses fastest memory in the world yet is 128-bit and most of all we've seen a lot of humorous images around the web where people use the FX as hair-dryer, leaf-blower. In the mean time, 3D Mark 03 was released, NVIDIA was not rather fond of this synthetic benchmark and refuses to see it as a 'gamers' benchmark for many good reasons. While we will not get into that discussion we will state this, much to my surprise Nvidia chose to optimize Detonator drivers for 3D Mark 03 to get the score up and actually delivers these 42.68 drivers along with the press-package I received. That by itself validates the fact that Nvidia recognized 3D Mark 03 as common used and accepted benchmark. If Nvidia would not decided to optimize the drivers and would not have delivered them to the press then this site would not have used the benchmark. However now we will. So there are two things in my mind regarding 3DMark 03:
Right now there is no other way to benchmark DX9 performance .. and you need a DX9 benchmark to review DX9 hardware.
All synthetic benchmarks are liable to be manipulated with drivers optimized for the benchmark ... this has happened since the early days of graphics benchmarking and will continue to occur. It is a moral responsibility for the graphics companies not to do this ... although there is also pressure since if they get caught cheating it will be bad for them (e.g. Quake vs Quack).
