Thursday, August 28th 2008
ATI Deliberately Retards Catalyst for FurMark
It is a known flaw that some models of the Radeon HD 4800 accelerators fail oZone3D FurMark, an OpenGL based graphics benchmark application that has found to stress Radeon HD 4800 series far enough to result in over-heating, artifacts or even driver crashes. The Catalyst 8.8 drivers have found to treat the FurMark executable differently based on its file-name. Expreview tested this hypothesis by benchmarking a reference design HD 4850 board using Catalyst 8.8 driver, with two runs of FurMark. In the first run, the test was cleared at a low score, much lower compared to those of whatever successful runs on older drivers could churn out. Suspecting that the driver could be using some sort of internal profile specific to the FurMark executable, Expreview renamed the furmark.exe file, thereby not letting the driver know it's FurMark that's being run. Voila! the margin of lead the renamed FurMark executable gave over "furmark.exe" shows the driver to behave differently. A shady thing since Radeon HD 4800 almost became infamous for failing at FurMark, and at least passing it with a low score seemed better than failing at it altogether.
Expreview caught this flaw when testing the PowerColor Radeon HD 4870 Professional Cooling System (PCS+) when odd behaviour with the newer driver was noted. Successive BIOS releases didn't fix the issue, in fact, it only got worse with erratic fan behaviour caused due to a "quick-fix" BIOS PowerColor issued (covered here).
Source:
Expreview
Expreview caught this flaw when testing the PowerColor Radeon HD 4870 Professional Cooling System (PCS+) when odd behaviour with the newer driver was noted. Successive BIOS releases didn't fix the issue, in fact, it only got worse with erratic fan behaviour caused due to a "quick-fix" BIOS PowerColor issued (covered here).
89 Comments on ATI Deliberately Retards Catalyst for FurMark
TBH are you trying to make a point based on what? You tricked the benchmark to think it was a Nvidia card and you didn't expect something strange to happen? For instance, because the benchmark thinks is a NVidia card, probably isn't loading all the shaders because Nvidia cards don't have 5 ALUs per SP... :shadedshu
EDIT: Wizzard beat me to it.
I didn't do this to compare scores but to see if a difference was found in temps/amps.
When disabled or when at idle the SPs act like resistances. High resistances when at idle and almost infinite resistance when totally disabled (I think only GT200 GPU can do this right now though, not sure). Now when voltage is constant (as is the case) the higher the resistance the smaller the amperage it will be.
They should be fixing the overheating problem rather than trying to slow the card down under our noses.
thats just bad business practises :(
So is this limited to powercolor and their card bios? The life of a graphics card isn't that long anyways. With improvements, upgrades and so on, this bench means nothing IMHO.
But if it isn't powercolor and it is ati and their drivers ,well lets hope they fix the dam problem and quick.
It's a bummer ATI decided to do this driver "un-tweak"...but it's just a benchmark in the end...gaming performance is what SHOULD matter to most of you out there...if you're a bencher, then obviously these drivers will be skipped or maybe a "patch" will be created to override what has been done.
:toast:
all this tells me is ATI is scamming there drivers, and they can't cope with 100% load on the GPU. I think ill get either a 9800GTX or GTX260 and not have to worry that in a year or so other games will be just as intense and smoke my card to ash.
I see that all the long fraustrated nv boys who bought the overpriced GTX200 series are crawling out of the woodwork to celebrate.
It is amusing to see all the nv girls are having orgasm at the same time because a shady software and a shady website.
Anyway, I ran a test because of this "news":
My setup:
An overclocked 4870 running at 820/1000 using stock cooler
Furmark 1.4.0
Windows Vista Sp1
after running two tests for 1000 seconds, i took two image.
The first image was before the name change.
The second image was after "FurMark.exe" changed to "fuckmark.exe"
As you can see, the temperaure, the load, the VDDC current remain almost the same.
Also notice that the fan is even not spinning at half of the max speed.
so much for the "overheat"
So much for the "ATI Deliberately Retards Catalyst for FurMark" :laugh:
cheers:roll:
I'm not a fanboy, though you show your true colors...and maybe need to take a brake from the PC...but I get what makes sense for me and my budget...I spent less than an HD4870 on my GTX260 and have had nothing but an excellent experience with it. The HD's just seemed too finicky to me, fan speed issues, driver issues, temp issues, mediocre cooling, it's gotten better on most fronts and can only improve and even with the issues I found to be "issues" for my "preference" those cards still kick ass and are only improving, for the most part.
Kind of a crap time for news like this to come out tho...almost in-opportune for ATI, hopefully this isn't some sort of scam as I like ATI, I've had many ATI and NV cards...but this kind of crap is unnacceptable from either side...the GPU needs to perform, not be retarded with drivers so less users complain...both sides have done it in one way or another...it will continue, just depends on what seems like the biggest deal or is most noticable at the time I guess.
:toast:
Catalyst® Version 08.8
Provider ATI Technologies Inc.
2D Driver Version 7.01.01.809
2D Driver File Path /REGISTRY/MACHINE/SYSTEM/ControlSet001/Control/Class/{4D36E968-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}/0001
Direct3D Version 7.14.10.0603
OpenGL Version 6.14.10.7873
Catalyst® Control Center Version 2008.0731.2322.39992
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@btarunr, people do not report when their cards are working perfect. I admit, I have too much time tonight :p
I was using a GTX 260, overclocked at 720/1440/1200, it gets a significant lower score than a stock 4850 at furmark, does it mean nvidia deliberately turns down performance on furmark too?
It looks to me it is nothing more than a bug in the furmark, ATI fixes it in the driver update, thats all. Some people, especially the nv fanboys are making a mountain out of a mole hill.