14 DAY TRIAL // Futuremark came with a response to the accusations that Nvidia PhysX overwrites Vantage files. They decided that all the results using PhysX on a GPU should be removed from their Hall of Fame. The explanation is that they didn't mean the 3DMark Vantage to work with GPUs supporting PhysX. So, they proceeded to updating the list without the named results. Also, they changed the way the results were organized in order to facilitate comparison, they say.
A while ago, when Nvidia announced the launch of its new GeForce drivers with support for PhysX, everybody jumped on the news. Labs hurried to have the new drives tested, and they proved to beat 3DMark Vantage scores, getting the performance in one CPU tests to levels far beyond those registered by a regular physics accelerator.
Responses to the results came quickly enough, as the 3DMark Vantage was intended to work in a completely different manner. That went on with cheating accusations brought to the company's drivers, but cooled down pretty soon. All came back to light after the news that the NVIDIA PhysX installation makes changes in the 3DMark Vantage files, namely it replaces DLL files in the directories of the benchmarking application.
Still, the PhysX have not been entirely removed from the tests. Those willing to have them can still use a regular PPU card that features an Ageia PhysX processor. The scores will still be boosted this way, says Futuremark, since 3DMark Vantage was designed for these types of PhysX.
This may also come as a response to Nvidia's saying that its drivers do their jobs properly, and that the Vantage is the one that actually needs an update. Since the leading graphics cards manufacturers tend to port PhysX on their boards, as they believe that the GPU can provide more computational power than the CPU or a PPU card, we should probably expect Futuremark to make the necessary changes to its benchmarking application to keep up with the industry.