Intel caught with dodgy GPU drivers

AMD points the finger at its old rival. Fight, fight, fight!

AMD has accused Intel of tinkering with its GPU drivers to increase its benchmark test scores.

Futuremark's popular 3DMark benchmark testing software has strict guidelines for the graphics drivers it approves for use with 3DMark Vantage.

These explicitly forbid optimisations that specifically target the 3DMark Vantage executable.

Basically the rules say that it is prohibited for the driver to detect the launch of the 3DMark Vantage executable and to alter, replace or override any quality parameters or parts of the benchmark workload based on the detection.

However AMD claims that Intel's 15.15.4.1872 Graphics Media Accelerator drivers for Windows 7 incorporate performance optimisations that specifically target the benchmark.

Tech Report did the decent thing and checked to see if there was anything dodgy going on with the Intel drivers in question.

It ran the benchmark normally and then renamed the 3DMark executable from "3DMarkVantage.exe" to "3DMarkVintage.exe" so the GPU driver software could not detect it by name.

When the GPU drivers were able to detect that benchmarking software was running the system's overal test score jumped by 37 per cent.

The GPU score by itself jumped by a whopping 46 per cent thanks to Intel's apparent 3DMark Vantage optimization. Interestingly the CPU score dropped by 10 per cent at the same time.

We reckon that between Intel and AMD, whichever one can figure out how to detect in a general way that the GPU is a bottleneck at the same time that the CPU is underworked, and vice-versa, and divert some of either workload to the currently underutilised resource will steal an important march on its competitor.