Intel accused of foul play in 3DMark

Futuremark's test suite 3DMark have been the tool for measuring graphical performance for many years. While it gives an interesting guide line for the theoretic performance of a GPU it has become a status symbol among manufacturers to end up high in the ranking, even if it may not reflect the true performance of the chips. AMD has now reported Intel to Futuremark where it claims it has optimized the latest drivers for its integrated graphics circuits in foul ways.

At TechReport they have published an interesting article where they tested Intel's G41 chipset in 3DMark Vantage, which is the test AMD refers to. Using Intel's latest driver, version 15.15.4.1872, the system managed to score 2931 point.

When they changed the name of 3DMarkVantage.exe to 3DMarkVintage.exe performance dove 37%, to 2132 points. This does prove that Intel has changed the chipset behavior in some way to react to the executed file name. Something AMD claims violates Futuremark's rules.

Posted in: Intel