What Are The Identified Cheats? […]
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What Are The Identified Cheats?
Futuremark’s audit revealed cheats in NVIDIA Detonator FX 44.03 and 43.51 WHQL drivers. Earlier GeForceFX drivers include only some of the cheats listed below.
1. The loading screen of the 3DMark03 test is detected by the driver. This is used by the driver to disregard the back buffer clear command that 3DMark03 gives. This incorrectly reduces the
workload. However, if the loading screen is rendered in a different manner, the driver seems to fail to detect 3DMark03, and performs the back buffer clear command as instructed.
2. A vertex shader used in game test 2 (P_Pointsprite.vsh) is detected by the driver. In this case the driver uses instructions contained in the driver to determine when to obey the back buffer
clear command and when not to. If the back buffer would not be cleared at all in game test 2, the stars in the view of outer space in some cameras would appear smeared as have been reported in the articles mentioned earlier. Back buffer clearing is turned off and on again so that the back buffer is cleared only when the default benchmark cameras show outer space. In free camera mode one can keep the camera outside the spaceship through the entire test, and see how the sky smearing is turned on and off.
3. A vertex shader used in game test 4 (M_HDRsky.vsh) is detected. In this case the driver adds two static clipping planes to reduce the workload. The clipping planes are placed so that the
sky is cut out just beyond what is visible in the default camera angles. Again, using the free camera one can look at the sky to see it abruptly cut off. Screenshot of this view was also
reported in the ExtremeTech and Beyond3D articles. This cheat was introduced in the 43.51 drivers as far as we know.
4. In game test 4, the water pixel shader (M_Water.psh) is detected. The driver uses this detection to artificially achieve a large performance boost - more than doubling the early
frame rate on some systems. In our inspection we noticed a difference in the rendering when compared either to the DirectX reference rasterizer or to those of other hardware. It appears
the water shader is being totally discarded and replaced with an alternative more efficient shader implemented in the drivers themselves. The drivers produce a similar looking rendering, but not an identical one.
5. In game test 4 there is detection of a pixel shader (m_HDRSky.psh). Again it appears the shader is being totally discarded and replaced with an alternative more efficient shader in a similar fashion to the water pixel shader above. The rendering looks similar, but it is not identical.
6. A vertex shader (G_MetalCubeLit.vsh) is detected in game test 1. Preventing this detection proved to reduce the frame rate with these drivers, but we have not yet determined the cause.
7. A vertex shader in game test 3 (G_PaintBaked.vsh) is detected, and preventing this detection drops the scores with these drivers. This cheat causes the back buffer clearing to be
disregarded; we are not yet aware of any other cheats.
8. The vertex and pixel shaders used in the 3DMark03 feature tests are also detected by the driver. When we prevented this detection, the performance dropped by more than a factor of
two in the 2.0 pixel shader test.
