- Friday, 10 July 2009
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War settles nothing. To win a war is as disastrous as to lose one - Agatha Christie
Desperate Nvidia accuses ATI of cheating
IT SEEMS NVIDIA will do anything to draw attention from its own problems right now, and the firm seems to have decided that instead of putting its energy into its own products, it would rather slam ATI instead.
Earlier in the week an Nvidia spinner approached us with allegations that ATI was involved in a “major, major cheat” and that Nvidia could prove it. We were pointed to a thread over at Anandtech where Nvidia fanboy and focus group member nRollo seemed to be banging on about the image quality of some rocks (yes really... rocks. Small stones scattered about on the floor).
FarCry2’s ATI hotfix driver apparently had issues which apparently included diminished IQ and yet increased performance. What did all this boil down to? A few transparent rocks and missing textures. Needless to say, we dismissed the issue.
But Nvidia just would not let it lie. Insistant that this was all some evil ATI conspiracy which the INQUIRER and everyone else should immediately write about, we were sent yet more “proof” by the boys in green. Nvidia reckoned ATI was fiddling with the zbuffer format behind the app's back. This was, Nvidia howled, at the very least “a bad error, even if not a deliberate cheat”.
And the really shocking thing? Well, ATI had released a hotfix to solve the problem just 12 hours after it was reported. This, Nvidia argued, was tantamount to panic on ATI’s part, and proof of the firm’s criminality. We patiently explained that, in our humble opinion, releasing a hotfix within 12 business hours was simply good company policy and what an efficient company does when customers complain, but Nvidia would just not let it go. Within an hour, we had yet more “proof” of AMD’s supposed shenanigans.
“AMD plays a trick with 8.10 Hotfix” declared the next email, complete with a link to a Chinese language hardware website. Imagining that we haven’t the time or ability to use Google Translate, our NV spinman kindly obliged us with what he called the “key quote” of the article. “The new driver - driver 8.10 with hotfix improved the FPS result by sacrificing the image quality of the game. With the same driver, when we renamed the file FarCry2.exe to something else, the image quality is better than that without renaming it.” Well… that wasn’t exactly the translation, but feel free to check out what Expreview really had to say on the matter here.
It also bears mentioning that games either have their own NV or ATI optimisations, or – as in this case – the Catalyst Control Centre monitors an app’s EXE name and performance is optimised according to the title at hand. Renaming the EXE will, of course, kill any optimisations in the hotfix outright, which explains things. This kind of in-driver optimisation has been around for a while in both camps. ATI may well have been too eager to please and " over-optimised", but it’s nothing Nvidia hasn't done in the past. DX 11 should kill this kind of nonsense once and for all by taking away all this optimisation rubbish from NV and ATI and unifying everything. Kumbaya.
We again went back to Nvidia and told them to let it go, with a promise we’d check with ATI to see what it had to say on the matter, which we did.
ATI, of course, was well aware of the story and even more aware that Nvidia spinners had been trying to pimp it out to every news site and forum they could think of, handing AMD the opportunity to give free Q&A on a silver platter.
Explaining the issue to us, ATI’s Terry Makedon told the INQ that, late last week, ATI had put out a Catalyst update in the form of a hotfix for Farcry 2 which had helped improve performance for the game significantly. The firm then realised it needed another hotfix to be issued for Stalker Clear Sky which now supports dx10.1. Makedon noted that as ATI started working on the Stalker hotfix, the firm got wind of the fact Nvidia was going around trying to convince the press that ATI was cheating, due to the missing or transparent rocks in some game scenes.
Makedon went on to say “On Saturday one of our engineers came in, took a look at his code, and found that indeed he did overlook something and it was a totally valid bug. He fixed it on the spot, and I asked him to put that bug fix into the planned Stalker Clear Sky hotfix update”. That update was tested and posted within 12 hours and the driver now has support for stalker dx10.1 performance improvements, Farcry 2 performance improvements, and it fixed the bug to bring back the missing rocks.
It’s probably also worth mentioning at this juncture, that despite Nvidia’s best efforts to spread the word, no major sites would take up the Green Goblin’s position, leaving the fanboys alone with their indignation in various forums a la Anadtech.
We mentioned to our Nvidia spinner that the whole ‘story’ had an air of the lame and desperate about it, but he retorted that it was a simple case of the INQ being an ATI lover.
Well, you’ve heard the facts, dear readers... what do you think? Are we at the INQ just insanely biased towards ATI or was this a case of Nvidia making a frantic attempt to divert attention from its loss of market share? Bring on the flames. µ
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If the sequence of events is as you described it, Nvidia's behavior was at best feeble and pathetic, and at worst malicious and potentially libelous. Having said that, I do believe that a comparable error from Nvidia has received much more attention from you and the supposition that Nvidia is evil incarnate is never very far at the Inq! Let's face it, you may not be pro-ATI, but this site is sure as heck on Nvidia's case. Makes for good reading more often than not, so I'm not complaining.
nvidia dogs are just being desperate and trying to throw rocks (pun intended) because they don't have anything else to shoot. Its no INQs fault that nvidia sucks :)
The green team does not take loss very well. 

Over the past few months they have been pushing everyones buttons, and with failing chips, i guess you would have to divert attention from yourself to the other major player.

Nvidia is that kid in the playground that pushes everyone around, and when a bigger bully comes around they run crying home to mommy.
Is that it's quite sad the way TheInq has gone. Any reputable news publication reporting this would have internet message boards alight with argument. But because it's TheInq, it doesn't matter how much damning evidence you show us, because you simply have no credibility left.

And besides, the fact that changing the exe name seemingly disables these IQ-ruining optimisations gives nVidia a pretty strong case in my opinion. Gives your lack of credibility a strong justification, too.
AMD/ATI release update breaks game, but increases FPS, issues fix witihin 12 hours (btw what impact on FPS did the 2nd fix have)

Nvidia spins the story as best they can, as their engineers are still working on a way of increasing FPS

And anything that looks bad for AMD/ATI must increase OEM sales of Nvidias broken chips (or so they hope).

Perhaps what Nvidia should have done was take a screenshot of ATI's image quality (b4 second patch) and their own image quality and sent that round the WEB. and just said FC2 looks better on nvidia or something


talk about 'badger bating' Sylvie lol, this is gonna be grrrrrrrrrrrreat O_O

/dons FULL alumimium suit and legs it to his secret nuke bunker in deepest darkest rural england :O)

P.S. wheres charlie Sylvie, makin the bullets ?? priceless !!!!
Sounds like Nvidia is grasping at straws. Come on now people, get a grip. You'll be OK.
It is absolutely clear that you are biased toward ATI. I mean you are not willing to sell the spin of a company which is being sued by its own shareholders for lying to them. So therefore you must be in the tank for their competition. How much more obvious could you get.
it goes both ways... NVidia obviously dropped the ball and is struggling to get out of the hole. They had a couple years of being ahead with the 8800 series, but didn't capitalize on it. Instead, they milked every dollar and didn't push new technology. 

So... F*#K 'em.

Either way, when one is ahead, the other points the finger at someone else for whatever reason. Whether it be in the graphics industry or CPU, for that matter. Nvidia has always pointed at ATI's quality when they slack in speed. ATI pokes at number crunching and clock speeds on the other hand... quoting that certain benchmarks don't matter... only numbers do. (Try telling that to me when I adjust to a higher resolution during a game).

Everyone knows the truth.. but, you know that.
nVidia cheated on purpose for years!
Then they denied they did that.
They where caught and then they called it optimalisations....but they simply cheated on benchmarks.
Ever since nVidia did that reviewers don't take benchmarks serious anymore.

nVidia, GROW UP AND MAKE BETTER PRODUCTS!
..it sure is a lot of fun speculating. Sylvie, you've nailed the art of the textual raised eyebrow without losing it, or foaming at the mouth, unlike Charlie. Whether I agree or disagree, it's fun watching this one play out.

Actually, truth be told, I don't trust ATI or NV. They're both nests of cheating, backstabbing sons of seamstresses, and I wouldn't trust either any further than I could spit their respective still-warm corpses.

The Inq might well be horribly ATI-biased (though luckily not biased towards the demonstrably fail-packed Phenoms too), but then it might be right, too. This piece has only villains, anyhow- so it's better not to hitch your wagon to any particular star based on fanboi urges.

Anyhow, I still use NV stuff because ATI's drivers still aren't reliable enough for my needs (cue the "London Bus" joke), but I still feel like the unwilling recipient of surprise buttsecks whichever brand I opt for.

Nice article, thanks!
nVidia, DEAR nVidia (i owned your cards since the late great TNT.

When Kyle Bennett (who is like a ex you're still friends with) ignores your crying, you are well and truly fncked!
Though the Inq has been too much biased towards DAAMIT and against Nvidia overall by a noticeable scew, I'd say you're right on the ball on this one. I've seen this elsewhere & to call it a serious conspiracy is just ludicrous. Nvidia are just pissed that they can't produce hotfixes that quickly and which actually work. The DAAMIT driver guys have laid their hands clean and Nvidia is trying to kick its fanbois (and fangals) into some free negative campaigning. I'm just hoping the free press will stop this evil seed from taking root, as it's clearly rotten to the core.

Nvidia need to stop putting their foot in their mouth and fix their own problems.
Oh no, not a bug in game-based optimizations! Of course they optimize individual titles. It would be absolutely retarded if each company didn't try to get the most performance from their hardware as possible for a given, popular app. As a customer, frankly, I'd be pissed if they weren't trying to get me the highest possible framerates and were instead settling for the lowest common denominator.
So it looks like nVidia is trying to re-assign or offload the FartCry label, which applied to their original 'cheat' in the original FarCry with the Geforce 6800 having lower IQ and significantly improved fps when the game was renamed FartCry.exe 

That rose to a much higher level of 'cheating' than this, but hey, if your looking for a way to combat the other guy's better product, why not use the 'cheat' accusation, just like the silly render-bug for the Geforce 8800s was exploited as a Crysis cheat.

As for who I trust in situations like this, history forces me to trust ATi more than nVidia in such matters; and makes me believe that nVidia just wants something they can try to hang around ATi's neck that's more recent than the Radeon 8500 Quack fiasco.

However if there's one benefit of this maybe it'll stop reviewers from using HotFixes or the bazillion nV betas when testing new games / cards and sticking to WHQL certified drivers only. Of course that would probably hurt nVidia more than ATi since they rely on beta drivers for day to day operation, and their bi-annual WHQL package isn't always a 'performance driver'.
If in fact nvidia employees have persued this ghost chase, i have only one word for it... PATHETIC!
Regarding AMD/ATI attitude on this matter... FLAWLESS!
I wonder why in almost 20 years dealing with PCs i never had a nvidia card...
Company releases software/driver. 

Users report errors/bug in software/driver.

Company fixes bug and releases updated/software driver.

Which is what happened here is it not?

Nvidia - you desperate, desperate fools. Going after ATI over one case like this has made you look pathetic. If you had a portfolio of evidence showing ATI consistently doing things like this I could understand it, instead its backfired big time.
They both try and call out each other's stumbles as often as they can. Nothing new here.
Hey Charlie you're pathetic.
if nvidia had made some rocks less than perfect or "over-optimised" their drivers you'd be all over it.
As its ATI you're like "what? so its just a few rocks..like on the ground." and "gee it was fixed in a few hours".

At least grow some balls and write under your own name again because we all know its you.
Yeah, you're in the tank for DAMMIT, but only because the Green Goobers have pulled their marketing crap tricks so many times in the past, who believes ANYTHING they say?

But yeah, there's no story here. Even if DAMMIT was trying to pull a fast one, the fact that they issued a fix promptly, instead of pursuing the oft-used Greenie tactic of "what problem?", eliminates the problem and any "advantage" DAMMIT might have accrued.

So, shaddup, nvidia, and FIX YOUR WRETCHED PRODUCTS!
nuff sed.
This sort of mud slinging is (or was) common when ATI and NVIDIA had similar offerings and needed to sling as much mud as possible. Good to see their base natures are still intact.

As for bias. I don't think the INQ is in the ATI camp but NVIDIA reporting does not seem to be even-handed. That worries me as a reader looking for a fair assessment of technology news.
I think this last guy might be a stalker Charlie ... 

I wonder if he has any bunny suits ??

All drivers have bugs.

Good companies release regular driver updates and work with games companies to release patches.

I see ATI has done that.

I don't see NVidia has done anything to improve their product's PATHETIC performance though.

The 260 and 280 chips are like the 2900's ... 1st iterations.

Way too hot ... way too buggy.

The 48xx series built on the lessons learned with the 38xx series based on the earlier 2900 series chips ... so the improvements are surefooted (well sorta anyway).

NViidia's still tripping around in the dark, and as usual are firing the "not so odd" angry shot at everyone else.

Pathetic marketing crew there ...

The tosser over at Gonad's is probably being paid for his "concern".

I'm not.


I'm way too old on the Net to bother about such shenanigans any more. Be it ATI/AMD or Nvidia, others before them and most certainly others to come, they all cheat and use horrible shortcuts and drive up FPS at the expense of image quality with more or less happy results.
And all waste no time in pointing fingers at the other whenever the opportunity arises.
Although I must say, when it comes to lying PR, obviously biased presentations and PowerPoint fluff that just "happens" to get out in the wild even though it is marked "Confidential" six ways to Sunday, Nvidia really takes the cake.
I am at the moment an All-Green household, even if I did have a Radeon at some point. I've bought Nvidia cards since the TNT2 (but not the DustBuster generation - that was Radeon time) and I have never experienced all the bugs and woes that everyone around me seems to blame on either side - then again, I only ever use Gold drivers, never beta ones.
So I cannot say that either maker has more buggy software than the other - with cards from either side I can play my games without trouble.
And that is what I care about. All this hoopla is just a storm in someone else's teacup and matters not a whit to me.
It does make for some quality irony though, that's why I read it.
And if the INQ is on anyone's side, I'd say it's on the side of Truthfullness. If ATI stumbles, I'm sure I'll see an article about it here.
It just so happens that Nvidia is still on the floor from its previous stumble, and there's apparently no getting up in sight.
look left
think
which team is the inq most likely to be with: red or green?
hey JustNiz it wiznie charlie that penned this, you d-i-ck
This is good, they should keep doing this, they'll keep eachother on their toes, all too often both companies engage in driver shenanigans that cause issues or loss of quality in a way that are not welcome so it's nice if they check each other and start pushing for good drivers (finally) not just good hardware.

INQ isn't biased, it's JUST.

they're writing against nvidia cause cause nvidia did something wrong. and it isnt INQ's fault that nvidia keep doing wrong things and they have to keep writing about it.

both nvidia and amd/ati issued far cry 2 performance optimized drivers. both improved performance. but there was a bug in amd/ati's drivers and they fixed it within 12 hours. and nvidia starts complaining about it. doesn't make any sense to me.

and renaming the file will of course degrade performance for then the driver will have no way of knowing that the game being played is far cry 2 and this will render all the performance optimizations useless.

@nvidia: being a gpu company, i think you should focus on actually making gpu's.
if you can't fix your own problems, divert attention away from them instead. my less than 6mth old 8800gt has just died, never been overclocked in its life and the whole things just a waste of space. its being replaced on warranty but i'll never buy an nv card again simply 'cos they won't fess up and admit their range has a critical flaw. Poor show nv and well done ATI for admitting a mistake and rectifying it.
Well i have a 4850 and I'm upgrading to a hair dryer.

I mean gtx 280.

hmm.
I used to be totally pro-Nvidia, i.e., MB chipsets, graphics cards. But they have become absolute navel-gazers, and ignore 2D (and 3D) performance in Linux, that I have given up on them. All my clients' servers are now non-Nvidia chipsets, all graphics cards are ATI, and I just don't care if they survive in business or not ... I ignore them and their shadiness.

They brought on all of this by themselves, and I certainly hope that they go bust soon, so that their wailing and reportage disappears from sight and mind.
If only nVIDIA was a passionate about it's GPU's... there might be more competition.

But i find it funny how nVIDIA is accusing ATi of hotfixing 'cheating', when they have had a history of much worse hotfixing cheating. One of ATi's engineers misses something in the driver code... So?

Every time a graphics driver is released that claims to improve performance of a certain game/program, it contains hotfixes. And too the comment regarding changing the exe name which results in the rocks being present, of course it does that is how hotfixes work, when a program starts the driver checks the program name against it's table of hotfixes and optimisations, if you change it, it wont implement any because it doesn't recognise it!
Maybe nVidia should spend more time writing drivers to support their chips with all OS's and with all hardware (example of nforce 3 with ATI video, dual core cpu and vista comes to mind -see here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NForce3) rather than keep their coders looking at other companies code.

Personally I don't care who is faster anymore, after so many let downs from nvidia I'd get anything from anybody else even if it was 100 times slower, as long as it worked.
This is the greatest thing in the world for computer enthusiasts. I love Nvidia for watching their competition so closely. It is this type of scrutiny that creates a constant striving for perfection on both sides. If you live in a glass house, don't throw stones. Nvidia is making a statement about their own quality control and attention to detail as well as keeping their competition honest. This conduct benefits all computer users.
I think nv better do a headectomy.
You're biased towards ATI and NV is wrong.
The Inq reports about serious faulty hardware chips from nVidia fanboys dispute it saying the inq is a ATi fanboy. Yet if it was any other website like CNET.Com the report might get a diferent reaction and the green fanboys who currently dont like the idea of ATi at the crown currently will b*tch about anything to say it's not true.

Nvidia now complain how there rival is fixing a issue after the new driver release WHAT!!! oh come on. If they release a fix so what least they do listen to there major income base the general consumer what do nVidia do f*****g ignore them and don't offer nothing because nVidia only like 2 things 1) Money & 2) Make sure the shareholders are happy thats it (but no.2 hasn't worked gone well has it)

And before anyone goes on that I am ATi fanboy get this I currently own a 8600GT before that a 6200 and before that a FX5200. But I also owned a ATi X800 AGP too I go where I can get a decent card for cheap (£23 on ebay for 8600gt). I like how ATi fix a problem for consumers who report a bug least there providing help unlike the green.
Two days ago I bough a low end Radeon 4XXX card. After reading this article I'm glad I did. 

A company that commits to releasing a fix in 12 hours an even admitting there was a bug is a company I like to patronize.

Thanks ATI, thanks Inq
The INQ again shows that are NV haters :) Good job. Thats ridiculous. Instead going after AMD/ATI that cheating in their drivers, they are saying "Few missing rocks" i bet if that was happened with NV drivers they were going to say that is missing whole mountain , and to rip off the heart ot NV....

PATHETIC!
I read theinq and the rumor feed - http://rumorfeed.blogspot.com

Both of you painted a bleak picture of Nvidia. I think they really hit a new low spreading all this crap all over the internet.