# GPU PhysX Doesn't get you to 3DMark Vantage Hall of Fame Anymore



## btarunr (Jul 20, 2008)

With NVIDIA releasing their GeForce PhysX drivers, users of the PhysX accelerating GeForce cards were at an advantage over their Radeon counterparts, reason being that in a certain CPU test routine of the 3DMark Vantage benchmark, the physics processing abilities of the computer are tested, and since the physics API used happens to be PhysX, users of GeForce get higher scores despite not having a physics processor device such as an Ageia PhysX card. This differs from a real-life scenario where a GeForce accelerator does both graphics and physics and the overhead of physics processing affects the graphics processing abilities. 

The relation of GPU acceleration for gaining higher 3DMark scores in physics tests has been controversial to say the least. Futuremark has now decided to update its Hall of Fame to exclude all results using PhysX on a GPU, simply because this was not how they intended it to work. It has also been updated to organise the results better for easier comparison. You will be able to use GPU physics processing to get a 3DMark score, you will not be able to make it to the Hall of Fame using it. You can use an Ageia PhysX card to assist your 3DMark score to make it to the Hall of Fame, as that's how Futuremark intended PhysX processing scores to assist your final scores.

*View at TechPowerUp Main Site*


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## [I.R.A]_FBi (Jul 20, 2008)

i guess that answers damultas questions


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## exodusprime1337 (Jul 20, 2008)

that is the stupidest shit ever.  once again futuremark comes out with a way to uneven the scores.  All because it's not an ageia physx processor the scores don't count, what a crock of shit.   The fact of the matter is that amd cards are unable to do the physx processing on they're own so now the whole lot has to suffer cause amd cards just can't cut it anymore.  Bullshit


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## Cold Storm (Jul 20, 2008)

Well, all you gotta do now is use the tweaker that Guru3d has and turn it off when you bench.. Well, it was fun as it lasted.. lol


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## btarunr (Jul 20, 2008)

[I.R.A]_FBi said:


> i guess that answers damultas questions



He's versed with it. I saw that convo on XS yesterday, now he's after getting himself an Ageia card. Wonder how he squeezes in 3x 9800 GTX + a PhysX card.


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## PCpraiser100 (Jul 20, 2008)

Like Nelson always says: HAHA


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## ghost101 (Jul 20, 2008)

exodusprime1337 said:


> that is the stupidest shit ever.  once again futuremark comes out with a way to uneven the scores.  All because it's not an ageia physx processor the scores don't count, what a crock of shit.   *The fact of the matter is that amd cards are unable to do the physx processing on they're own* so now the whole lot has to suffer cause amd cards just can't cut it anymore.  Bullshit



No its because nvidia had more money and effectively bought the performance crown in this benchmark. If I was involved with futuremark, i'd be pissed as well. If AMD had the money, the scenario could have been the other way around. How does this tell me which card is actually better?


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## Hayder_Master (Jul 20, 2008)

thank god , that what i am say in nvidia physics support thread , and i remember some members make me wrong and they say i am troll too much , i hope they read this thread and i say now i am right and they are wrong


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## exodusprime1337 (Jul 20, 2008)

it tells which on is better because this card that i have does physx and amd's cards don't, which is not my problem, i pay foir performance and my 2 8800gts's beat out most crossfire 4870??


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## Kursah (Jul 20, 2008)

ghost101 said:


> No its because nvidia had more money and effectively bought the performance crown in this benchmark. If I was involved with futuremark, i'd be pissed as well. If AMD had the money, the scenario could have been the other way around. *How does this tell me which card is actually better?*



Hopefully looking at more than just a benchmark score!  

Okay this is good and great, but if FM knew that GPU PhysX was going to happen, maybe even had it available to them? Why not make a test for it that is actually supportive of the technology of PhysX while Rendering to give more accurate results for starters...

So it makes one's score fair as long as they went out and purchased an Ageia PhysX card then? LoL...I'm sorry but maybe FM should've kept this program under wraps until they knew better what was going to happen with NV's and AMD's technologies that have been more recently released...

Really as long as my games look and play good on my rig, PhysX on or off....Vantage scores don't bother me at all...I feel bad for the world that feeds off of bench scores if this has those communities up in arms...Yeah I agree NV kinda bullied it's way in this, but if they have the technology, might as well use it! Claimed unfair or not, it's nice to to see for consumers using PhysX enabeled cards I'm sure...and hell now they can go check out much more entertaining pieces of software called games that support physx and hopefully use it TWIWMTBP!

Interesting story, not suprising, I jus thope AMD can get some official physx too so fanboi's stop pissing and moaning and FM can then update Vantange so the PhysX test is "more fair" to both companies' cards! lol...


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## Ryethe (Jul 20, 2008)

exodusprime1337 said:


> that is the stupidest shit ever.  once again futuremark comes out with a way to uneven the scores.  All because it's not an ageia physx processor the scores don't count, what a crock of shit.   The fact of the matter is that amd cards are unable to do the physx processing on they're own so now the whole lot has to suffer cause amd cards just can't cut it anymore.  Bullshit



If you read the article you'll see that they cut support for it because it's a scenario that is unrealistic.  There is no game out there where your GPU will go unused for graphics and will still be used for physics.  That just isn't realistic.  Over on Hardforums, there was a post where someone compared the fps of a game using a 9800 gtx without Physx support, with Physx support and then with an Ageia add in card.  The results were basically that Physx support on the GPU had no effect on actual fps since the graphics card was already saturated doing the graphics.

My main point is that I think you should expect to see CUDA support back in 3dMark in the future, just that it will be used in a graphics intensive scene where the score only gets bumped if your card is truly powerful and can handle doing graphics and physics at the same time.


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## erocker (Jul 20, 2008)

exodusprime1337 said:


> that is the stupidest shit ever.  once again futuremark comes out with a way to uneven the scores.  All because it's not an ageia physx processor the scores don't count, what a crock of shit.   The fact of the matter is that amd cards are unable to do the physx processing on they're own so now the whole lot has to suffer cause amd cards just can't cut it anymore.  Bullshit



You don't seem to understand.  ATi cards are perfectly capable of doing physX, there are just no drivers for it.  Besides, it's a benchmark!  You still have PhysX processing with your card for games.  Isn't that what matters?


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## Darknova (Jul 20, 2008)

erocker said:


> You don't seem to understand.  ATi cards are perfectly capable of doing physX, there are just no drivers for it.  Besides, it's a benchmark!  You still have PhysX processing with your card for games.  Isn't that what matters?



+1 I couldn't care less about making it into the "hall of fame", all it gets me is world-wide renown for doing nothing more than benching constantly 

I'm happy with my 4870, VERY happy with it. Just because an nvidia card gets more in a benchmark because of PhysX enabled drivers doesn't really mean anything. the 4870 IS capable of PhysX, there are just no drivers.

You can understand Futuremarks reasoning, but you can also understand nvidia owners frustrations. *shrugs* either way, isn't it real world performance than matters?


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## mrw1986 (Jul 20, 2008)

exodusprime1337 said:


> it tells which on is better because this card that i have does physx and amd's cards don't, which is not my problem, i pay foir performance and my 2 8800gts's beat out most crossfire 4870??



No they don't. 8800GTS is trash compared to 4870.


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## v-zero (Jul 20, 2008)

Damn straight - you're an idiot if you think it should be otherwise!


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## [I.R.A]_FBi (Jul 20, 2008)

reason for this:

real world scenario, i am playing a game, so gpu gettting used for gpu stuff, but the gpu cant give its all to physx therefore i dont get the same effect like when i have a synthetic bench running when everything may be evalutaed independently


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## Psychoholic (Jul 20, 2008)

LOL, i was waiting for someone to point out the obvious here 



mrw1986 said:


> No they don't. 8800GTS is trash compared to 4870.


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## Solaris17 (Jul 20, 2008)

hahah in your face ppl who told me my physx card wasnt good for anything


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## EastCoasthandle (Jul 20, 2008)

Source



> NVIDIA's GPU PhysX was launched in the middle of summer and most of FM's staff are on holidays (Most people are here in Finland). Tero said timing couldn't have been worse but *they have updated filtering system coming up which will handle the runs which are not following Futuremark's guidelines.*
> 
> *When I asked more specific about NVIDIA's GPU PhysX, he confirmed that it won't be allowed.* (Since *Vantage's CPU test 2 is designed to measure CPU physics calculations and it is clearly stated in the rules that GPU or driver can't affect the result significantly*).
> 
> So from now on if you want to run offical 3DMark result or Hall of Fame result with NVIDIA gfx you have to use Futuremark approved WHQL driver and *do not install NVIDIA PhysX System Software*.



That settles that...
Since they had to alter their filtering system to prevent scores from one brand of video cards (do to not following Futuremark's guidelines) this can be considered grounds for cheating.  This may take a few days before we see the removal of all invalid scores.


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## Bytor (Jul 20, 2008)

exodusprime1337 said:


> that is the stupidest shit ever.  once again futuremark comes out with a way to uneven the scores.  All because it's not an ageia physx processor the scores don't count, what a crock of shit.   The fact of the matter is that amd cards are unable to do the physx processing on they're own so now the whole lot has to suffer cause amd cards just can't cut it anymore.  Bullshit





lolzzzz


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## Megasty (Jul 20, 2008)

exodusprime1337 said:


> that is the stupidest shit ever.  once again futuremark comes out with a way to uneven the scores.  All because it's not an ageia physx processor the scores don't count, what a crock of shit.   The fact of the matter is that amd cards are unable to do the physx processing on they're own so now the whole lot has to suffer cause amd cards just can't cut it anymore.  Bullshit





exodusprime1337 said:


> it tells which on is better because this card that i have does physx and amd's cards don't, which is not my problem, i pay foir performance and my 2 8800gts's beat out most crossfire 4870??



Plz ignore the bloody nonsense 

Back on topic: 

My experience with the early PhysX software hasn't been too rewarding at all. Enabling it with both the 280 & 260 slows both cards down a bit in games. It might be great for benching but its doing nothing for gaming as of yet. The decreases can be anywhere from 5 to 10 fps. Its not that much of a hit with these cards since they're fast enough to deal with it anyway, but its still pretty apparent.


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## Bytor (Jul 20, 2008)

I have a Asus P1 PhysX card in the closet and hoping there will be a time where I can pull it out and install it with my ATI cards and have it make a diff. in games...


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## Kursah (Jul 20, 2008)

Megasty said:


> Plz ignore the bloody nonsense
> 
> My experience with the early PhysX software hasn't been to rewarding at all. Enabling it with both the 280 & 260 slows both cards down a bit in games. It might be great for benching but its doing nothing for gaming as of yet. The decreases can be anywhere from 5 to 10 fps. Its not that much of a hit with these cards since they're fast enough to deal with it anyway, but its still pretty apparent.



Yeah it's gotta be a hit though...it's not like there's a seperate PPU on the GTX 2xx cards or anything...and having the GPU crunch even more numbers from a game has to take it's toll somewhere. I can only image what'd happen to performance on my 9600GT!!! 

But it is still promising if games can be created to use PhysX, and whether AMD or NV, enable it, drop a few FPS for an increase in PhysX effects...depending on what resolution one games at, 5-10FPS may not even be noticable or missed. Maybe they can introduce a PhysX performance level that adjusts in 3 steps, and/or scales depending on the stress and monitored performance during gameplay? I dunno what adverse affects could be, but I would assume some wonky physx and sporatic FPS changes...but who knows.

Still promising tech on both sides, hopefully something good comes of it in the future!


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## boogah (Jul 20, 2008)

haha good way to get people who want hall of fame to go out n buy physx card ^___~


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## mullered07 (Jul 20, 2008)

exodusprime1337 said:


> it tells which on is better because this card that i have does physx and amd's cards don't, which is not my problem, i pay foir performance and my 2 8800gts's beat out most crossfire 4870??



proof of that i want to see


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## btarunr (Jul 20, 2008)

mullered07 said:


> proof of that i want to see



I think he means that his 2x 8800 GTS + score increase due to PhysX > 2x HD4870 ?


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## mullered07 (Jul 20, 2008)

the whole point futuremark are making is that the physX test in 3dmark vatage were made for the cpu not a gpu and it doesnt represent real world gaming as the nvidia gpus are only being used for the physx in the test and not for rendering graphics at the same time which is what would happen in a real world scenario (ie gpu would be rendering graphics and physx at the same time)

and ati gpu are fully capable of doing physx only they would have to create there own api as cuda belongs to nvidia (who didnt create it either before the nvidia fanboys start)


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## Kursah (Jul 20, 2008)

mullered07 said:


> the whole point futuremark are making is that the physX test in 3dmark vatage were made for the cpu not a gpu and it doesnt represent real world gaming as the nvidia gpus are only being used for the physx in the test and not for rendering graphics at the same time which is what would happen in a real world scenario (ie gpu would be rendering graphics and physx at the same time)



This is what dissapointed me most of FM...they knew this was coming, couldn't have been completely blind to it and should've done another physX test that stressed modern GPU's on the PhsyX and Rendering at the same time for a more proper score...sure it might've been headscratching at release, and maybe they didn't know or didn't have the proper tools...if not then an update will hopefully truly be in the works to alleviate this. I'd like to see a test just for simultaneous Rendering and PhysX GPU...I don't care as much about benches or scores, but to tout a bench that should be better at predicing modern performance, it should have this test in it.

Hopefully we'll see that happen!


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## candle_86 (Jul 20, 2008)

personally whats the issue, the GPU was designed to act as a Physx card, so whats the issue you dont have to spend 100 bucks for the card now?


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## Darknova (Jul 20, 2008)

candle_86 said:


> personally whats the issue, the GPU was designed to act as a Physx card, so whats the issue you dont have to spend 100 bucks for the card now?



That's not the issue.

The issue is that a CPU physics test is being offloaded onto the GPU. In Futuremarks rules this is NOT allowed. Therefore its technically cheating.


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## Megasty (Jul 20, 2008)

Darknova said:


> That's not the issue.
> 
> The issue is that a CPU physics test is being offloaded onto the GPU. In Futuremarks rules this is NOT allowed. Therefore its technically cheating.



I don't care about the cheating. I just want them to get it right for the games.


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## Darknova (Jul 20, 2008)

Megasty said:


> I don't care about the cheating. I just want them to get it right for the games.



Same lol, but that's the topic of this discussion is it not?


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## Megasty (Jul 20, 2008)

Darknova said:


> Same lol, but that's the topic of this discussion is it not?



Yeah, but that is FM's problem. Its plain to anyone to see who is using PhysX & who isn't. The GPU score isn't affected by it but the overall score is. FM turned a blind eye to it at first but its still cheating, so they had finally step in, especially when it was making such a ridiculous difference with the CPU score :shadedshu


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## H82LUZ73 (Jul 20, 2008)

this is from Driver Heaven`s R700 preview test setup pic.......notice the blue card?


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## mullered07 (Jul 20, 2008)

candle_86 said:


> personally whats the issue, the GPU was designed to act as a Physx card, so whats the issue you dont have to spend 100 bucks for the card now?



read my last post  

no one is moaning the gpu can do physics but in the cpu physx test the gpu is soley using physx, its not rendering anything else like it would do in game so therefore doesnt represent real gaming/benchmarking(in a game the gpu would be used to render the game aswell as using physx thus taxing it more ), if people are to stupid/ignorant to actually read the article and understand what fm are on about they really shouldnt be commenting on the topic at hand


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## Hayder_Master (Jul 20, 2008)

guys i just want to ask what is the last physics card release , last one i see it is asus p1 , anything new , and i see someone say the physics on nvidia gpu better than physics card is that true


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## Bytor (Jul 20, 2008)

I think this is the latest Asus P1 and its PCI-e.  The Asus P1 I have is PCI..


http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121246


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## Hayder_Master (Jul 20, 2008)

as i told before , only a program can help physics on ati , just like some guy do it before and go more than p22000 score in vantage with 4870 , and nvidia got the guy and he work with nvidia now , aslo i sure for something which is it my frien want to buy a program from nvidia to help him render 3d max projects on gpu , we now it is more fater than cpu , and am sure physics is same thing


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## 1c3d0g (Jul 20, 2008)

This is why I dislike Futuremark and their stupid benches so much. It's just some rabid fan boys trying to measure who's e-penis is the biggest, but at the end of the day, what did they really "win"? Even if they get the highest score, they're still retarded...nobody with an ounce of sanity wastes so much time and energy into such a pointless benchmark.


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## mullered07 (Jul 20, 2008)

i must say 3dMark vantage looks like a piece of shit to me anyway, god knows who they had coding that for them but that first test "jane nash" looks absolutely awful, i think all they have really done is concentrate on sm3/4? shaders and giving everything that gay unrealistic looking glow and thought bollox to the rest. im not impressed and feel its more of a tideover until 3dmark09/10? comes out.


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## Evo85 (Jul 21, 2008)

People get waaaay to bent out of shape over this kind of thing. Must be a E-peen thing.. 

 I have always look at benchmarking as a way to judge changes I make to my system. OC this,   
add a better cooler there, run Futuremark, see what the difference is. What matters to me is real world performance. As long as my system is capable of running what I throw at it, and is rock solid I dont really pay to much attention to the numbers...


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## warhammer (Jul 21, 2008)

3dMark vantage is not real world gaming or performance..


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## farlex85 (Jul 21, 2008)

warhammer said:


> 3dMark vantage is not real world gaming or performance..



Real world gaming is just another benchmark, and is subject to the same biases and differences that 3dmark is. I really don't know why that argument always gets brought up. Just b/c a game is popular doesn't make it a better bench than a program like 3dmark.

I personally find it a little hard to believe fm didn't intend for this sort of effect on scores, as physX is built into the final and difference making test. PhysX being there completely changes the way the test is run. Did they not know nvidia was putting physX on their cards? Did they think this would just be for dedicated physics cards? I doubt it. The bench really is done poorly, and planned very poorly. That last test should be a seperate category for physics, calling it a cpu score is a cause for all the frizzy. I also agree w/ mulder, I think it doesn't look very good at all. They need to figure out something new to accomodate this changing graphics processing arena.


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## mullered07 (Jul 21, 2008)

farlex85 said:


> Real world gaming is just another benchmark, and is subject to the same biases and differences that 3dmark is. I really don't know why that argument always gets brought up. Just b/c a game is popular doesn't make it a better bench than a program like 3dmark.
> 
> I personally find it a little hard to believe fm didn't intend for this sort of effect on scores, as physX is built into the final and difference making test. PhysX being there completely changes the way the test is run. Did they not know nvidia was putting physX on their cards? Did they think this would just be for dedicated physics cards? I doubt it. The bench really is done poorly, and planned very poorly. That last test should be a seperate category for physics, calling it a cpu score is a cause for all the frizzy. I also agree w/ mulder, I think it doesn't look very good at all. They need to figure out something new to accomodate this changing graphics processing arena.



its mullered


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## farlex85 (Jul 21, 2008)

mullered07 said:


> its mullered



 Sorry. I confused you w/ a paranormal investigator.


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## btarunr (Jul 21, 2008)

H82LUZ73 said:


> this is from Driver Heaven`s R700 preview test setup pic.......notice the blue card?



PhysX driver allows you to use either the Ageia card or GeForce physics, not both. So if they use a test bed with a Ageia card, it makes for an even (fair) ground in which to test R700 against GTX 280 or any other card, since GTX 280's physics abilities won't be used by the driver, in each test, the PhysX card adds to the score.


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## Wile E (Jul 21, 2008)

I think it's silly to not include the Physx scores, so long as you are using FM approved WQHL drivers.

Banning gpu Physx in Vantage is like banning quad core cpus in 06. Going from a 3Ghz dual core to a 4GHz quad doesn't change your gaming experience at all, but it sure as hell boosts 06 scores. 

I think if they are gonna ban hardware that gives an "unfair advantage" in their benchmarks because "it doesn't reflect real world scenarios", then they should do it with all of there benchmarks.

It's not the decision that upsets me, it's their lack of consistency in this. If you apply an "unfair advantage" rule to one bench, you should do it to all of them.


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## tkpenalty (Jul 21, 2008)

Wile E said:


> I think it's silly to not include the Physx scores, so long as you are using FM approved WQHL drivers.
> 
> Banning gpu Physx in Vantage is like banning quad core cpus in 06. Going from a 3Ghz dual core to a 4GHz quad doesn't change your gaming experience at all, but it sure as hell boosts 06 scores.
> 
> ...



Think of this. One system with one 8800GT. When you're gaming I doubt the GPU will simultaneously process physics while processing graphics. FM basically are saying that and thats why the GPU score is invalid. 

Okay so lets say you have one 8600GT for Physics and one 8800GT for Graphics.

Going from 3Ghz to 4Ghz DOES give performance gains with Core 2. GRID goes from moderately smooth 30-40 FPS up to 50-60 FPS.


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## Wile E (Jul 21, 2008)

tkpenalty said:


> Going from 3Ghz to 4Ghz DOES give performance gains with Core 2. GRID goes from moderately smooth 30-40 FPS up to 50-60 FPS.


I'm sorry TK (and no offense intended), but I don't believe that. I think you are simply mistaken. I would need proof. I've already seen countless benchmarks that say otherwise, even in some of my own testing.


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## tkpenalty (Jul 21, 2008)

Wile E said:


> I'm sorry TK (and no offense intended), but I don't believe that. I think you are simply mistaken. I would need proof. I've already seen countless benchmarks that say otherwise, even in some of my own testing.



Consider the chipset, and memory that you are using first. This RAM doesn't yield good memory performance; latencies are fairly high with rather weak read/write. 

I take no offense, and in your case its different its like comparing apples to oranges.


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## Wile E (Jul 21, 2008)

tkpenalty said:


> Consider the chipset, and memory that you are using first. This RAM doesn't yield good memory performance; latencies are fairly high with rather weak read/write.
> 
> I take no offense, and in your case its different its like comparing apples to oranges.



Well, my system doesn't suffer from high latencies and low read/write speeds. But that's neither here nor there, I'm not speaking purely from my own personal experience. I'm speaking about the multitude of benchmarks available in the wild that do not support your claims. The only 2 exceptions are games like SupCom, and where your res is so low the gpu isn't fully stressed.

If you are running at that low of a res, your framerates are gonna be so high to start with, that the frames given by OCing your cpu won't be noticeable at all, unless you are specifically measuring them. AKA: Going from 200fps to 240fps.


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## Hayder_Master (Jul 21, 2008)

ati cards now is very good and have high score in 3d mark , so nvidia find the weak point in vantage and they took it and develop software like hacking on 3d mark to increase the score , and we must not forget the 3d mark 2006 score Affected with high cpu , so it is weak point too


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## Hayder_Master (Jul 21, 2008)

Bytor said:


> I think this is the latest Asus P1 and its PCI-e.  The Asus P1 I have is PCI..
> 
> 
> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121246




pci-e 1 , so that mean physics card don't take high bandwidth , but core speed run at 733


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## tkpenalty (Jul 21, 2008)

Wile E said:


> Well, my system doesn't suffer from high latencies and low read/write speeds. But that's neither here nor there, I'm not speaking purely from my own personal experience. I'm speaking about the multitude of benchmarks available in the wild that do not support your claims. The only 2 exceptions are games like SupCom, and where your res is so low the gpu isn't fully stressed.
> 
> If you are running at that low of a res, your framerates are gonna be so high to start with, that the frames given by OCing your cpu won't be noticeable at all, unless you are specifically measuring them. AKA: Going from 200fps to 240fps.



I'm running at 1280x1024.

I see you're running at 1920x1200, and there ya go.


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## Wile E (Jul 21, 2008)

tkpenalty said:


> I'm running at 1280x1024.
> 
> I see you're running at 1920x1200, and there ya go.


Even at 1280x1024, if you are cpu limited, your frames are so high that the OC will not make one iota of difference in playability.

To put it in perspective, even on my 6400+ X2 at 1440x900, there is no difference from 2-3.4Ghz. The cpu just doesn't play that important of a role in modern games.


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## tkpenalty (Jul 21, 2008)

hayder.master said:


> pci-e 1 , so that mean physics card don't take high bandwidth , but core speed run at 733



Clockspeed doesnt equal bandwidth therefore I doubt its anywhere near enough to saturate the PCI-E 1x bus. I honestly think that GPUs are better off for PhysX though... (not for benching; for real world) GPUs provide far more processing power in comparison to Dedicated PPUs and CPUs.

Just to remind you ladies and gentlemen, the PPU is technically a GPU that lacks output for Graphics. 

Aegia really need to drop their manufacturing process of the PPU core.


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## Millenia (Jul 21, 2008)

exodusprime1337 said:


> it tells which on is better because this card that i have does physx and amd's cards don't, which is not my problem, i pay foir performance and my 2 8800gts's beat out most crossfire 4870??



It doesn't really reflect a realistic scenario since the physics test is meant for the CPU and the GPU is just idle..

It's not like you can have free physics calculation when you're actually PLAYING something


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## Wile E (Jul 21, 2008)

Millenia said:


> It doesn't really reflect a realistic scenario since the physics test is meant for the CPU and the GPU is just idle..
> 
> It's not like you can have free physics calculation when you're actually PLAYING something


But then again, I thought that wasn't the case on the G200 series cards. I was under the impression that they had a dedicated section of the gpu that does no gfx processing, and is dedicated entirely to CUDA.


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## Wshlist (Jul 21, 2008)

*Daft*

The whole thing is a bit daft since they themselves put in the PhysX test, and use it while not rendering graphics, and it took them long enough to get the benchmark software out so they had plenty of time to think about it.
So what they are saying is that their 3dmark is flawed, but if that's so their solution should be to fix it with a patch that does the physx test WITH graphics I'd say, and release a few apologies for being so stupid in their original design.

Incidentally I never tried vantage (I avoided vista so far) but in the 2006 CPU bench there are graphics during the test of the CPU, low res but still, so if vantage doesn't have graphics during the CPU/PhysX test as I read here it means they actually deliberately made the test worse, and now moan about themselves, pfft.


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## Wile E (Jul 22, 2008)

Wshlist said:


> The whole thing is a bit daft since they themselves put in the PhysX test, and use it while not rendering graphics, and it took them long enough to get the benchmark software out so they had plenty of time to think about it.
> So what they are saying is that their 3dmark is flawed, but if that's so their solution should be to fix it with a patch that does the physx test WITH graphics I'd say, and release a few apologies for being so stupid in their original design.
> 
> Incidentally I never tried vantage (I avoided vista so far) but in the 2006 CPU bench there are graphics during the test of the CPU, low res but still, so if vantage doesn't have graphics during the CPU/PhysX test as I read here it means they actually deliberately made the test worse, and now moan about themselves, pfft.



There are gfx during the test. Just nothing that will stress a gpu, just like the cpu tests in 06.


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## Wshlist (Jul 22, 2008)

Wile E said:


> There are gfx during the test. Just nothing that will stress a gpu, just like the cpu tests in 06.



Oh I see, so they think it's a cheat because the GPU can't be used if it were to have to do PhysX AND graphics at the same time, although with the processing power of the current and future GPU's you must wonder if there isn't room to spare for doing both, but I guess you'd have to have a fair test for that.


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## Wile E (Jul 22, 2008)

Wshlist said:


> Oh I see, so they think it's a cheat because the GPU can't be used if it were to have to do PhysX AND graphics at the same time, although with the processing power of the current and future GPU's you must wonder if there isn't room to spare for doing both.



That's what I figure. I know that the G200 cards have a reserved area for only CUDA. But people are complaining because the whole gpu is being used to process the physx in the test, instead of the same amount that would be used during normal gaming.


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## Wshlist (Jul 22, 2008)

Understood.


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