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An alleged screen capture of the ATI version of Rydermark (saved and reposted to preserve metadata)

An alleged screen capture of the NVIDIA version of Rydermark (saved and reposted to preserve metadata)

A difference map of the two images
"Rydermark developers" make bold claims which turn out to be nothing more than a Photoshop hoax

It would appear The Inquirer was quick to jump the gun on a story accusing NVIDIA of lying about full DirectX 9 support. The story accused NVIDIA of not allowing developers to use 24-bit or 32-bit shader precision. Instead it claims NVIDIA forces developers into using 16-bit shader precision as the technique is faster. This is a problem as DirectX 9 compliancy requires 24-bit shader precision or better.  "Rydermark" is not a commercially shipping application yet, and has had very little information published to confirm its authenticity.

The original story lacked any type of physical evidence and The Inquirer claimed its sources were developers for the program. Images allegedly proving that NVIDIA forces developers into using 16-bit shader precision were posted on The Inquirer. The posted images compared a rendered scene in Rydermark 2006 between ATI and NVIDIA graphics cards.

It turns out the images "proving" NVIDIA’s wrongdoings were nothing more than poorly done Photoshopped images.  The NVIDIA rendered image appeared to have blurrier water while the ATI rendered image had sharper water detail. However, the ATI rendered image just didn’t look right with poor cut offs and a creation date three minutes after the NVIDIA rendered image.  A difference image of the two JPG files can be seen to the right, with the outline of the modified  area clearly visible in the ATI image.  This would suggest the NVIDIA image was the original source image, and that the ATI version was modified afterwards.

A difference of the metadata from both images reveals that the NativeDigest delimiter is identical for both images, but has two different InstanceIDs.  This would be consistent with an image that was modified and saved twice.  In the author's defense, images that are created and saved on his computer have distinct metadata tags that are very easily identifiable.  These are not present in the two images supplied by The Inquirer for "Rydermark" -- suggesting the images may not have been modified by the author.

There’s been an outcry of The Inquirer images on various forums including Ace’s Hardware, AnandTech and Beyond3D.

Update 07/19/2006: The Inquirer has posted something resembling a rebuttal to this article. Incredibly, a user from the ModTheater.com forums managed to track down some of the stock art used in the screen renders, and believes the entire image is actually fraudulent.

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wow
By cciesquare on 7/19/2006 6:09:50 AM , Rating: 2
I know nothing about graphics or to that matter how the heck did they find out its a photopshop image. All the high tech graphics lingo was confusing.

So if i sent someone a photo how do you go about figuring out if its photoshop are not, suppose that you cant simply detect differences by eyeing it.




RE: wow
By shadowzz on 7/19/2006 6:16:29 AM , Rating: 2
Well, 3 minutes seems like a bit fast to switch graphic cards and rerun the benchmark. I think you can tell that just by looking at the image timestamps and not even really knowning the technical BS.

Incredible though, I'd expect nothing less from the inquirer. Not that I visit there on purpose or anything.


RE: wow
By Dfere on 7/19/2006 7:40:00 AM , Rating: 2
I don't disagree it a hoax, but are you sure it was the same computer. What about 2 different computer- that could exlpain the three minute difference.


RE: wow
By Knish on 7/19/2006 7:43:41 AM , Rating: 2
If you actually open the metadata with Imagemagik you can see that the UUIDs are the same, meaning it's the same computer. Of course all this can be faked, by why put it in there in the first place if that's the case.

Stupidity of some people apalls me. This guy should get fired.


RE: wow
By defter on 7/19/2006 6:34:18 AM , Rating: 2
In this case it was very easy to see that it was Photoshopped.

1. There were clear sharpening artifacts in "ATI screenshot" image
2. There were two images, thus it was very easy to compare them and see the differences.


I see this site is full of graphics experts...
By Justin Case on 7/19/06, Rating: 0
By glennpratt on 7/19/2006 9:46:42 PM , Rating: 2
I think the difference map was used to point out that it looks like the difference was something along the lines of a photoshop blur tool, rather then a totally different video card. But who knows.


RE: I see this site is full of graphics experts...
By Knish on 7/20/2006 2:07:05 AM , Rating: 2
Actually, you don't know what you're talking about. I'm sorry.

Image compression at diferent levels will produce different sampling, which would be very evident in a difference map. As many others have pointed out, the difference map seems to indicate the boundaries of the photoshop. Please explain to me why only the water shows a difference and the rest of the image is completely static??? I mean come on, there isn't a single pixel difference in the rest of this image (I tried it myself too). Please I'd love to eat my hat if you can show me evidence of an image where such a difference map can be produced other than with photoshop. Oh and never mind the metadata, the timestamps or the fake screenshot.

I didn't even know the inquirer had fanboys until today.


By Justin Case on 7/20/2006 1:37:41 PM , Rating: 1
Do you know what a pixel shader is?

It's essentially a small program that modifies the colour of pixels. It's trivial to make a pixel shader that behaves exactly like a Photoshop (or PSP, GIMP, etc.) "sharpen" or "blur" filter. In fact, a lot of games do use such pixel shaders to simulate depth of field, Windows Vista uses it to simulate frosted glass, etc.

If a certain area of the image uses a certain shader, but other areas don't (or if they use shaders with different precisions), it's perfectly possible to get the same results on some areas, but different results in other areas.

You'll even see that in some "real" games (ex., compare a screenshot with water in Source, using two cards, a DX8.5 one and a DX9 one, and the only place where you'll see a difference is the water's edge).

Does this mean the screenshots are "genuine"? Of course not. But the fact that most people here don't seem to understand what a pixel shader is (it's not the same as "old-school" texture maps, it's a completely different concept) or how it works (pixel shaders can work in screen space, so they can even operate on pre-rendered bitmaps) doesn't mean the benchmark author's claims (that there is a difference between ATI's and nVidia's shader pipelines) is false, either.

Like I wrote before, there simply isn't enough information. If, instead of two stills with lossy compression, we had a movie, maybe we could say for sure "it's fake" or "it's real". As it is, and without knowing what exactly the benchmark is doing (for all we know it could simply be applying a shader to a pre-rendered bitmap), it's just silly to make any definitive statements.

The only way to really "discredit" the benhcmark author's claims (as this "article" purports to do), is to write a few high-precision shaders and compare the results on both cards (preferably just compare the numbers; don't bother with images). That would be a useful article.


By JarredWalton on 7/20/2006 4:10:40 PM , Rating: 2
Okay, LOOK at the boundary of the "pixel shader" - why on earth does it apply on SOME of the water, but not all of it? Why does it apply on some of the railing in one area? Why is it that the ATI water looks like garbage (oversharpened)? Sorry, but the Inq is completely clueless if they thought they could pass that off on a tech website as being real.


By glennpratt on 7/20/2006 5:05:27 PM , Rating: 2
Unfortunately for you, pixel shaders don't work like a paint brush either. Take a look at the images back to back and tell me it was shaders with a strait face.


By The Cheeba on 7/20/2006 5:12:16 PM , Rating: 2
I'm fairly positive "Justin Case," who just registered after this article was published, is an inquirer employee. His comments seem to mimic what Fudo has written in his articles, and it seems very abundantly clear to most people who know what they are talking about that pixel shaders and photoshop have nothing to do with 16-bit precision, which was what these images were supposed to "prove"

Inquirer, thank you for stooping even lower than i already thought was possible.


By Justin Case on 7/20/2006 7:46:31 PM , Rating: 1
quote:
I'm fairly positive "Justin Case," who just registered after this article was published [...]


I registered over one year ago, wiseguy. Check Anandtech's forums (it's the same user DB). It seems that your tendency to jump to conclusions without knowing the facts is genetic...



By The Cheeba on 7/21/2006 5:40:02 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
I registered over one year ago, wiseguy. Check Anandtech's forums (it's the same user DB). It seems that your tendency to jump to conclusions without knowing the facts is genetic...

So you've registered a year ago, but only made 11 comments in the past year on Dailytech, all of which were in an article about the inquirer religiously and blindly defending it. If you arne't mike magee you work for him -- but I would expect nothing less than the immaculate journalistic integrity of the inquirer.


By Justin Case on 7/20/2006 8:06:45 PM , Rating: 1
Pixel shaders, as the name implies, operate on pixels. Specifically, when applying a pixel shader to selected areas of a pre-rendered image, the shader will affect the areas defined by the mask. That mask can be based on the original material IDs, on a mathematically defined shape, or it can be a simple grayscale mask created using... a brush in a paint program.

If the benchmark author was claiming that the whole water effect was the direct product of a pixel shader, applied to a 3D scene, I'd say "bullshit". But he isn't. For all you or I know, the "pixel shader" might be running on a pre-rendered image (a 2D bitmap), based on a hand-drawn mask.

Do I think the images in question came straight out of a 3D engine? No. In fact, I'm 99.9% sure they didn't. But, AFAIK, the benchmark author never claimed that they had.

Maybe the pixel shader in question is a lot like a sharpen filter (pixel shaders can and do run on screen data, not just mapped textures), and maybe the benchmark author simply drew a basic mask to define where the shader would run.

Without more information about what the benchmark is doing (or what it's supposed to be doing), there's simply no way to tell.

Like several people have pointed out, even a five year old can follow the water's outline better than whoever drew that mask over the image (hell, Photoshop's magnetic lasso will do it automatically for you). So I think it's perfectly possible that what we're seeing as signs of a "fake" are simply signs that the "shader" was something applied to a bitmap, with a quickly-drawn mask, and not to textures mapped onto polygons on a 3D scene.

Until the benchmark author makes it clear what that image is supposed to be, both possibilities remain valid.

And none of this has anything to do with the fundamental issue of the pipeline precision. Even if the images turn out to be mock-ups made by a 4 year old, that still doesn't prove anything about the shader precision, one way or the other.



RE: wow
By CrystalBay on 7/19/2006 3:40:17 PM , Rating: 2
http://www.candellasoftware.com/index.htm


Here's the developer supposedly respocible for the Rydermark

thanks DW...


RE: wow
By dwalton on 7/19/2006 6:11:08 PM , Rating: 3
thats not even a 3d image. Look at the fence that runs along the buildings in the background. Follow that fence with your eyes from left to right until you get to the right edge of the image. It runs in front of the building that is in the foreground.

Look at the people in the lower right hand of the image. The sun is setting on the left side of the image, but the people are highlighted by the sun from the right and casting shadows to their left. Then you notice the last guy and half of his body is cut off by the water texture.



Big Differences in File Size
By EarthsDM on 7/19/2006 8:29:46 AM , Rating: 2
When the story broke yesterday I examined the pictures that the INQ posted. I'm not an expert on photo analysis, but I could help but notice that the NVIDIA pic was 150 kb and the ATI pic was 170 kb. The story tasted sour pretty quickly.




its INQ, expect anything less?
By michal1980 on 7/19/06, Rating: -1
By masher2 (blog) on 7/19/2006 9:11:28 AM , Rating: 2
> "INQ is a shot gun tech news pub. Have enough monkies write enough crap and some of it will turn out right"

A very apt analysis, I agree.

> "The are like the 'news' paper at the check out lane which always claim to have found the devil or good, or know when the earth ends."

My favorite headline is still, "666 Baby Hitlers Found on Dark Side of Moon".


RE: its INQ, expect anything less?
By Spoonbender on 7/19/2006 9:54:48 AM , Rating: 2
Don't forget the "reverse hyperthreading" story they started, and then later post another story saying it's nonsense. (Which it obviously is, but that didn't stop them from starting the rumour in the first place)

They are good at digging up information though. Yes, a lot of it turns out to be false, but occasionally they get hold of some factual information before anyone else.



RE: its INQ, expect anything less?
By kongo2k6 on 7/19/2006 11:58:26 AM , Rating: 2
The reverse hyperthreading rumour was started by x86-Secret, the French hardware site, and not The Inquirer. Might be a good idea to check out "facts" before commenting on certain subjects.


RE: its INQ, expect anything less?
By Wwhat on 7/19/2006 6:07:45 PM , Rating: 2
They started it out in the english speaking world though, in fact they got it out of the confines of that french site where it would probably have stayed.
That's the strength and weakness of the inq, they aren't afraid to speak out, and they don't sign NDA's, and they are the only ones that don't AFAIK.
So if you keep a grip on your senses and check the stories they bring out yourself then you have a fine site to read and feed your curiosity.




RE: its INQ, expect anything less?
By kongo2k6 on 7/19/2006 6:51:53 PM , Rating: 2
True, they dug it up, but the origin of the rumour is still x86-Secret.

I generally find The Inquirer to be very good at reporting news and rumours and not stating things as absolute fact if they don't have confirmation for it from sources. The no-NDA policy is something I applaud. A lot of people also state that The Inquirer is wrong in more cases than they are right, yet no one provides numbers or facts showing just that. (I can agree with the lack of spell checks, though, that even irks me, and my native tongue is Swedish.)

Although in this case, the look of the screenshots doesn't leave much to the imagination. It's pretty evident that there's something funny going on. Hopefully it'll be rectified as soon as possible.


RE: its INQ, expect anything less?
By Hipster on 7/19/2006 10:31:01 PM , Rating: 2
X86-Secret clearly stated that the technology of "Reverse HT" is planned for K10 and considering that they were talking to an AMD engineer when they obtained that info, I would say that it's better than just a rumour. Also note that the idea behind "Reverse HT" is not new as both AMD and Intel have been talking about the possibility of this well before all those recent stories appeared - you can find a lot on it in their long-term roadmaps and their technology research section - note that "Reverse HT" or "Anti HT" are just "make-up" terms; look for speculative threading or cluster multithreading instead.

The Inquirer, OTOH, pushed the "Reverse HT" as something already found in K8 and even managed to get some estimates of the performance too. How did they do that? I wonder. This has all been proven to be false by X-bit labs and the Inquirer, themselves.


RE: its INQ, expect anything less?
By KristopherKubicki (blog) on 7/20/2006 1:52:40 AM , Rating: 2
quote:
they aren't afraid to speak out, and they don't sign NDA's, and they are the only ones that don't AFAIK.

DailyTech does not sign NDAs.


RE: its INQ, expect anything less?
By Justin Case on 7/20/2006 8:12:28 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
DailyTech does not sign NDAs.


So if you have access to some information through Anandtech (covered by an NDA), you can post it on Dailytech?

Didn't think so.



By KristopherKubicki (blog) on 7/21/2006 12:32:10 AM , Rating: 2
quote:
So if you have access to some information through Anandtech (covered by an NDA), you can post it on Dailytech?

DailyTech and AnandTech are two separate companies. We do not share information, or anything else for that matter.


RE: Big Differences in File Size
By Justin Case on 7/20/2006 2:02:19 PM , Rating: 2
You're right. You're no expert on photo analysis. Otherwise you'de know that:

a) JPEG files use lossy compression, therefore the file size is highly variable, even between visually identical images.

and

b) If one image has more detail than the other (as is the case) and both are saved with the same compression level (as is the case), then the one with more detail will produce a bigger file (as is the case).

In other words, you are looking at an inevitable technical consequence of the JPEG compression algorithm and using it to draw conclusions about the source of the original, uncompressed image.

Which makes absolutely no sense.



RE: Big Differences in File Size
By glennpratt on 7/20/2006 5:01:59 PM , Rating: 2
Maybe you should read up a little more. Ofcourse JPEG is a lossy format, but it does not produce loss in the pattern you see in those images. It's plainly obvious, you're just being obtuse.


Clever
By Spoonbender on 7/19/2006 6:43:34 AM , Rating: 2
I'd arrived at the same conclusion, although only through guessing.
Just seemed unlikely that NVidia, who made a big fuss of the Geforce 6 (or was it 5?) ran 32 bit internally, would ditch that and go 16-bit only on Geforce 7.
Moreover, it seemed fishy that it'd taken so long before someone spotted it. I mean, it should be relatively easy for developers to spot. They'd run into *a lot* more precision issues if it ran 16 bit, which should be easily noticeable.




RE: Clever
By defter on 7/19/2006 6:55:48 AM , Rating: 2
All desktop cards output image at 8bit per color precision (some workstation cards use 10bit precision). There is no general purpose display that can display 16bits, let alone 32bits, per color.


RE: Clever
By The Cheeba on 7/19/2006 7:02:48 AM , Rating: 2
Just FYI, that's 8-bits per subpixel. You get 256 shades per subpixel, which corellates to 256^3 colors on better displays.


RE: Clever
By Sunday Ironfoot on 7/19/2006 9:07:29 AM , Rating: 2
It's 8 bits for each of the three main colours, Red, Green and Blue, or 256 shades per colour. Hence 24bit colour, or 16.7 million colours.


RE: Clever
By Ecmaster76 on 7/19/2006 10:18:46 AM , Rating: 2
Its not the colors, its the data precision.

They are still running 32 bit color or whatever you pick. This is completely different from the ALU precision, which is the issue at hand. 16 bit calculations are pretty innacurate and can lead to noticeable geometry distortios (like old Quake engine games had with MD2, though thats more of an engine problem).


RE: Clever
By Gooberslot on 7/19/2006 6:03:37 PM , Rating: 2
Actually, a CRT can output an unlimited number of colors, it's only limited by what the video card can produce.



Why?
By Goty on 7/19/2006 7:36:57 AM , Rating: 2
Yet the question remains, why would the company make such a claim if it wasn't true?




RE: Why?
By shadowzz on 7/19/2006 7:39:33 AM , Rating: 2
I think it's pretty aparent that the company does not exist. It doesn't help that Fudo is an ardent ATI fanboy either.


RE: Why?
By defter on 7/19/2006 8:33:54 AM , Rating: 2
Yes, if you Google for "Rydermark" you will get only references to Inquirer articles...


RE: Why?
By Spoonbender on 7/19/2006 9:51:42 AM , Rating: 2
Nah, more like he's just an ignorant fool. Fits in very well with the rest of the inq crew...


RE: Why?
By Wwhat on 7/19/2006 6:03:13 PM , Rating: 2
I agree, he is a bit of a fool, there's many of those on many even reputable sites though.


Quite Obvious
By Sunday Ironfoot on 7/19/2006 9:12:40 AM , Rating: 3
If you look closely at the two pictures and quickly flip between them you can quite obviously tell the ATI one has had a Photoshop Sharpening brush effect applied to it, where the person has applied it by dragging a mouse over the water area.

You can tell this coz there's a small area where they accidently slipped and ended up sharpening a guys feet standing in the distance, outside the water. And the sharpen effect doesn't smoothly follow the waters edge, but bobs in and out, if though some old guy with Arthritis did it.




RE: Quite Obvious
By shamgar03 on 7/19/2006 10:45:31 AM , Rating: 2
LOL, your totally right. Once you flip between them you can literally see the line of where the sharpening was done. Thats freaken hilarious.


RE: Quite Obvious
By Master Kenobi (blog) on 7/19/2006 12:20:10 PM , Rating: 2
Indeed, if it could be more blatantly obvious I don't know how.


RE: Quite Obvious
By johnsonx on 7/19/2006 4:38:18 PM , Rating: 2
Wow, that is pretty blatant. Load both images, flip back and forth and you can see exactly what was done. Looks like someone did it in about 30 seconds... you'd think if you're trying to pull off a hoax you'd spend maybe 10 to 15 minutes following the water line as exactly as possible.

This whole story is quite bizarre.


Wth?
By Knish on 7/21/2006 9:17:18 AM , Rating: 2
I was just re-reading this thread and I noticed somethign. The inquirer changed the story they posted. The original story (Google Cache http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:_2-cHr5b9G4J:w... ) changed this text from:
quote:
We are working hard with the developer to present more proof to our eager audience of millions and we may even have a video to show you, but this thing could take a few days. We don't want do give the story up as we know that Nvidia's multi billion PR is heavily behind it, somewhere. Maybe I would be too, if I was in its shoes.
to:
quote:
We are working hard with the developer to present more proof to our eager audience of millions and we may even have a video to show you, but this thing could take a few days. We don't want do give the story up.
And also, the word "Barbers" was removed from the story too. What is barbers? Is that just the Inq's word for Dailytech in some sort of behind-the-scenes slang again?




RE: Wth?
By Scorpion on 7/25/2006 1:38:57 PM , Rating: 2
So has this been forgotten? The evidence against the INQ and the validity of this benchmark are OVERHWELMING. I wont let this rest until I see the INQ post a retraction and admit their fault. How can they not at this point?

I guess they are still waiting on those "undisputable" videos...


RE: Wth?
By Johnmcl7 on 7/30/2006 6:57:41 AM , Rating: 2
I'm surprised to see it's gone so quiet over this as well


Easy
By creathir on 7/19/2006 12:20:33 PM , Rating: 3
Though I did not spend much time on it, but this was an EASY fake...

http://www.teenfellowship.net/images/2112_large_ns...

What a joke the INQ is...

- Creathir




This is such a bad photochop...
By Belegost on 7/19/2006 2:55:32 PM , Rating: 3
I've photoshopped my fair share of images, and I'd be embarrassed to release anything this poor. Even the hacks on fark can pull off better work than this half the time.

The work is especially bad on the lower right side of the image, note how the water is actually overlapping the arm of the man furthest back in the line of people. I also like how there are join seams in the middle of the river where the guy duplicated the water texture he had but didn't soften the transitions. The blue edge around the pointy tower on the left side (left over from using an image that had blue sky background) is really amateur.

Of course, then you look at the "ATi" image, and can note the edge of the region he used the sharpen brush on. He even got sloppy, look above and left of the boat where the water edge is right under the man -oops- let that sharpen brush get out of the water there.

This is really poor photochopping, the type you see done by little kids with too much time, and not enough skill.




The worst thing is...
By masher2 (blog) on 7/19/2006 10:39:12 AM , Rating: 2
...they'll probably get more fans and webiste hits from this event.




With a name like that...
By Trisped on 7/19/2006 1:19:44 PM , Rating: 2
With a name like, "The Inquirer" I expect something closer to tabloid and fantastic then informative and correct. Reminds me of the time in high school where my friend brought one in where the worlds fattest man had disappeared. It was funny because every picture of him showed him a different size and shape. Then the guy who was suppose to be so fat he made my couch look like a chair just disappears? Rriigghhttt....

How does that song from Weird All go, "Oh Midnight Star, I want to know, I want to know..."




Let's keep focused
By InternetGeek on 7/20/2006 11:15:39 AM , Rating: 2
Please, let's not turn this into a bias discussion and let's focus in on the problem at hand.

Are there any tests we can run to certify each piece of hardware runs the way it should?.

If nVidia was forcing developers to use 16bit shading there would be an outcry from the whole gaming industry. No one would stay quiet for that.

Using Photoshop seems to me a good way to test/compare grpahical results of rendering, because it provides an unbiased/objective framework to test. And anyone in this forum can replicate the tests themselves.









Ad hominem...
By Justin Case on 7/19/06, Rating: -1
RE: Ad hominem...
By Wwhat on 7/19/2006 6:14:59 PM , Rating: 2
Uhm, dailytech is a news-blurps site, of course they don't do a test, that's what anad should be doing.
But of course the 16bit and 24bit and 32bit is no secret, the whole development and limits of both ATI and Nvidia is well known, they both have limitations and do things differently and strengths and weaknesses.


RE: Ad hominem...
By Justin Case on 7/19/2006 8:29:15 PM , Rating: 2
My definition of "news" is what sites like the Register or the Inquirer do (you know, investigate and report on something that is actually new, and that the corporations in question probably don't want the public to know).

DailyTech just propagates links from other sites, and posts press releases to fill the space between the ads. Sort of like american TV networks. To call DT a news site is to set the standard very low.

A news aggregator maybe. And, even then, one that seems to worry mainly about keeping its corporate sponsors happy.


RE: Ad hominem...
By Wwhat on 7/19/2006 10:27:57 PM , Rating: 2
That's why I added 'blurbs' (typoed it but that's obvious)



RE: Ad hominem...
By shadowzz on 7/20/2006 2:19:01 AM , Rating: 2
quote:
DailyTech just propagates links from other sites, and posts press releases to fill the space between the ads. Sort of like american TV networks.

Ah, as opposed to stories that are a mix of fraudulence mixed with incompetence. I'm the first to bash dailytech when they screw up, but you literally could not pay me to read the drivel on the inquirer. If it wasn't for Charlie (the only person of any real knowledge there. Yes Theo, Fuad and Mike. Please do Charlie a favor and quit), I probably would make sure the site redirected to something else in my localhost.


RE: Ad hominem...
By Knish on 7/20/2006 1:57:47 AM , Rating: 2
quote:

Just because a benchmark was developed by someone with no Photoshop skills (or graphics skills in general), that doesn't mean the fundamental claim of the benchmark author is false.

You're right, it doesnt. But it sure doesn't help his case when the sole piece of evidence he's been flaunting for weeks is a badly photoshopped jpg that looks like someone with arthritus made while wearing a blindfold. Praising the inq for doing such thorough investigating sure speaks volumes when it took 30 websites all of about 15 minutes to call this as fake.


Dailytech are Nvidia/Apple shills anyway
By Sharky974 on 7/19/06, Rating: -1
And I'm sure Nvidia is cheating
By Sharky974 on 7/19/06, Rating: 0
RE: And I'm sure Nvidia is cheating
By Justin Case on 7/19/2006 8:44:41 PM , Rating: 2
First of all, they know 99% of tech "journalists" have zero technical knowledge. And then there's the state of media in general: big media is controlled by advertising, and small, independent media is seen as "unprofessional" by the clueless masses, who think a big site full of ads must somehow be more reliable (it's a bit like concluding that, since McDonald's makes a lot of money, their food must be the healthiest).

That's why I prefer to read sites like Dan's Data, etc., that have nothing to lose by pissing off the "big boys". No direct ad revenue, no free pre-release samples or party invitations. And he gets his hardware from a shop, so you know he's testing the same product consumers will get, not a sample carefully picked by the manufacturer to make sure it overclocks better, etc..

The Inquirer often reaches nonsensical conclusions, but they do make real investigation journalism, which is something very rare these days. They were reporting on Yamhill (EM-64T), or Sun's Opteron servers, for example, five months before anyone else (and most "IT news" sites said they were crazy).


RE: And I'm sure Nvidia is cheating
By Knish on 7/20/2006 1:55:43 AM , Rating: 3
quote:
They were reporting on Yamhill (EM-64T), or Sun's Opteron servers, for example, five months before anyone else (and most "IT news" sites said they were crazy).

They were also reporting R520 had 32 pipelines, Dell would never use AMD processors, and something about 666 hitler nazi babies or something. Sorry, I like my news real rather than first.


By Justin Case on 7/20/2006 1:54:26 PM , Rating: 2
The R520 was planned to have 24/32 pipelines. Lots of sites reported on it. Low yields made ATI change its mind, and release it with 16 pipelines (but at a higher clock speed) instead.

I never saw them state as a fact that Dell "would never use AMD processors" (and I don't see how anyone could write - or read - that as a "fact"). I did see Charlie post (in a signed editorial) that he personally didn't believe it would ever happen, and saying that he'd dress up as a bunny if it did (a bet with Rahul Sood). Rahul's position was in fact mentioned in the same article, so they were giving you both sides of the "story" (which was, in both cases, simply opinion, not the result of any investigation or interview with a Dell "mole").

I can't seem to find any references to the Hitler nazi babies, but maybe I still need a few drinks to catch up with you.

But on one thing we agree: I too like my news real (i.e., something that is new, and that didn't come out of a mega-corporation's PR department). The fact that they usually get them first is simply a bonus.



RE: Dailytech are Nvidia/Apple shills anyway
By Knish on 7/20/2006 1:48:44 AM , Rating: 3
quote:
Microsoft is stupid, The RIIA is stupid, ATI is stupid, Apple is great, Nvidia is great

Do you only hear what you want to hear?

Praise for Microsoft:
http://dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=3275

Praise for british RIAA:
http://dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=2792

Praise for ATI:
http://dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=3016

Apple slammed:
http://dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=3301

NVIDIA slammed:
http://dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=2424
(honestly, how could you even suggest this is an NVIDIA friendly place after that)

Yep, NVIDIA is sure paying for Dailytech to run around and trash its products, leak the roadmaps and banter with the product managers.

quote:
The Inq may actually have the balls to do something Dailytech, and virtually every other politically correct PC hardware website on the web today, wouldn't dare, and that is, call out Nvidia.

http://dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=207

Sharky, what little bit of dignity you had left just went out the window. Tell Fudo I say hi when you see him at work.


RE: Dailytech are Nvidia/Apple shills anyway
By Sharky974 on 7/20/2006 5:42:10 AM , Rating: 1
Uhh, the ATI and MS stories you listed are hardly glowing praise, they're simply reporting. I suspect many of the rest of your links are the same. I'll give you they scorned Nvidia there, but there's still no doubt in my mind Kubicki is a big time NV fanboy. Example, I'll bet big money he has NV in his personal rig. How would I know that if I wasn't pretty sure of myself.

Meanwhile you ignore Dailytech's daily politically correct bashing of MS, RIAA, and ATI. While heaping praise on Nvidia, Apple, etc.

The funny thing is Anand himself is not very biased. He treats ATI, AMD, NVIDIA, and INTEL, as well as APPLE, fairly. It's his sub-editors that write many CPU and GPU reviews, and especially the dailytech editors and Kubicki that seem to be the worse. I understand not a lot can be done about this, Anand cannot write everything on the site, but it's still a bit obnoxious, especially the consistently slanted dailytech headlines on the sidebar.


By KristopherKubicki (blog) on 7/20/2006 6:14:35 AM , Rating: 2
Neither ATI nor NVIDIA are on speaking relations with DailyTech, and I can pretty much assure you there is no fanboyism for either camp here.


RE: Dailytech are Nvidia/Apple shills anyway
By Frumious1 on 7/20/2006 4:27:52 PM , Rating: 2
Read the "quite obvious" thread above and then try to tell us you think the images are real again. You don't even need to be a "graphics expert" to spot the errors. Seriously, there is no way to get that effect without some seriously stupid Photochopping.

Pixel shaders work on textures and polygons (like water), not on portions of some of the water and not other portions, plus parts of the railing and feet. Ugh. I'm guessing if we could see the real identities of Sharky and Justin Case that they would be Inq staffers. Thanks for coming over here to promote your lies, guys.


By Scorpion on 7/20/2006 7:32:09 PM , Rating: 2
Here's another good discussion about the images, which follow along my own initial thoughts.

http://www.modtheater.com/forum/showthread.php?p=2...

The whole rendering looks like it was constructed using 2D images of the building faces, and most obvious, the people. They completely look like sprites to me. Some people in that thread even found openly available images that look extremely likely to be the source for the "render".

There is an even an analysis of this Rydermark's previously released screenshot, where there is clearly something not right about the reflection in the water.

The sharpening brush is PLAINLY obvious, and now the entire benchmark is suspect at even stressing any 3D capability whatsoever with what looks to be mostly "3D" appearing 2D textures.

I hardly read the Inquirer, but my god, this is the worst journalism I've ever seen. Not to mention the response attack from the Inq. Inq has no credability with me at all, and this Fuad guy should clearly not be a journalist. Funny how this all happened the day after I watched the movie "Shattered Glass".


By Justin Case on 7/20/2006 8:19:11 PM , Rating: 1
quote:
Pixel shaders work on textures and polygons


Wrong. You are confusing pixel shaders with multitexturing. Pixel shaders are small programs that modify pixel data. The output can then be used as a texture, but there is no reason why pixel shaders can't run on 2D screen space (Windows Vista does this a lot, for example, and so do modern video editing and compositing programs).

In fact, most Photoshop filters and brushes can be implemented as pixel shaders (the reason why they're not is that different graphics cards produce slightly different results, and professional software needs to be consistent).

And no, I don't work for the Inquirer or any other news site or hardware manufacturer. Maybe that's why I don't have to worry about posting hollow "articles" to defend my sponsors.


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