HardOCP responds to ATI's recent statement about cheating

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It seems [link=http://www.hardocp.com/]HardOCP[/link] is firmly backing ATI after the graphics chip maker recently made a statement about benchmark cheating allegations.

[blockquote]HardOCP -

We did find that ATI had a better overall image quality in Halo. So if ATI is cheating in Halo, NVIDIA is just doing a bad job rendering the scene. You take your pick of which you would rather have.
...
NVIDIA has been caught red handed this year cheating. They have admitted this to me in private meetings. Before they stand in front of us and accuse their competition, they owe you and me a public apology. This is not the first time we have said this. Quite frankly, I have seen NVIDIA do some pretty questionable things in the past but this all takes the cake on the hypocrisy-meter.

It is pretty sad when the only way to advance your product is to tear down your competition's. NVIDIA's product is sub-standard when compared to ATI's in the DX9 gaming arena. We know, ATI knows it, and NVIDIA damn sure knows it. NVIDIA needs to concentrate their resources on making a product better than the competition's instead of spreading what we see as FUD to the press who will inevitably regurgitate it to you guys.
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Aranyic

Neither company has been exactly honest though in the past, I believe it was a year or so (maybe 2 not sure any more) that ati was 'caught red handed' cheating, so is the way with benchmarking. They are a great to get an idea but just like anything else they can be fooled.

Though I havn't looked at this instance at all though I'm not so sure I believe it yet that they are totally innocent.

Geeky1

Aranyic, neither one is totally innocent. Far from it, in fact. They've both been caught cheating (last time for ATi was in Q3 with the R8500). I do feel that ATi makes better cards/chips, tho, as their image quality has always seemed better to me. However, it's like the P4 vs. Athlon debate... Which one is better, the GeForceFX or the Radeon 9500/9600/9700/9800 series? You can come up with all the benchmarks you want, but as the saying goes... "there are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies, and statistics". So, a lot of it is subjective, and it comes down to personal preference more than anything else.

primesuspect

Ageek?

Geeky1

D'OH! Ageek... Aranyic... same difference... (well, OK, not really, but they both start with A... it's 2:48 in the afternoon... give me a break here!)

I'll fix it.

Jengo

HardOCP is like FANBOY HEAVEN!!

omg... that dude that said that is a moron, i mean come on, Just cause each card renders the graphics alittle differently it sucks? thats like saying all cars that drive down the street have to react to bumps THE SAME EXACT WAY......

personally nVidia isnt the only one trying to tear at there competior, look at ATI, trying to buy out HL2 that way everyone will buy ATI cards... gimme a break...

whatever.... who cares... HARDOCP is dumb... they always were....

nvidia AND ati both need to go to hell

BRING BACK 3DFX!!! lol

Thrax

Kyle at HardOCP is correct. nVidia has no business pointing fingers, nor does ATI (Quack3 incident).

However, they can and will, so the consumers must select who is superior despite the degrading marchitecture. The 59xx series not only renders graphics notably inferior to the competition, it is in excess of FOURTY PERCENT SLOWER in far too many applications. The average performance delta is twenty five percent in ATI's favor.

The analogy about a car's reaction to a bump is far from accurate. Moreso it's like both companies are shipping cars with ferrari bodies. ATI has the Ferrari engine with all the bells and whistles that make their engines wonderful, nVidia has a V8 sans the modern amenities that make an engine.

An allusion to ATI's ability to produce a fully-compliant card, and nVidia's inability to do so.

HardOCP is not dumb, they remain one of the few unswayed websites out there. Despite what others will say, I've always found them to give a respectable opinion, and presented the facts before their opinion. They are clear, concise, and accurate.

Geeky1

To add an image to Thrax's analogy, nVidia would be producing the top car, which is a Pontiac Fiero (mid-engine '80s 4cyl econobox) that's had a Lamborghini Countach kit put on it. The bottom one, would be the ATi car, which is a "gen-yew-ine" Lamborghini Countach

Thrax

Thanks Geeky!

SimGuy

Kyle has always been unbiased when it comes to video cards. I respect and usually agree with what Kyle Bennett has to say with regards to video cards. Look at their round-up of the 5950 and the 5700. Brutally honest truth.

Look at their reviews on motherboards, hard disks, CPU's, etc... it's the same. Truthful comments, not some sissy-boy review written to please the manufacturer that a whole bunch of tech-sites write because they are too afraid of manufacturer-retaliation. If a product sucks, Kyle isn't afraid to say it. If a product kicks ass, he praises it.

We can argue all we want over hardware performance in synthetic DirectX 9.0 benchmarking scores, but the fact of the matter is that ATI's offering is faster in all but Quake 3 titles, has amazing AA & AF technologies, runs cooler, has very well coded supportive software for the most part and is moderatly priced.

Cheating or not, real-world performance in DirectX 9.0 enabled titles and DirectX 8.0 titles show that the R3xx architecture is inherently designed better and performs better than it's NV3x counter-parts.

To continue the analogy, the R3xx series of cards are like fine tuned V6 engines that run as smooth as silk across any surface (asphalt, concrete, cobblestone, gravel & drit), while the NV3x competition are nice large V8 engines that misfire on the down-stroke and provides horrendous performance on every surface except their own proprietary road surface.