Sunday, July 20th 2008
GPU PhysX Doesn't get you to 3DMark Vantage Hall of Fame Anymore
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.
Source:
NordicHardware
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.
62 Comments on GPU PhysX Doesn't get you to 3DMark Vantage Hall of Fame Anymore
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)
Hopefully we'll see that happen! :toast:
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.
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
www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121246
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...
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.
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.
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.
I take no offense, and in your case its different its like comparing apples to oranges.
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.