ASUS Driver Cheating?

Faster is generally considered better, but when you see pronounced differences between devices that are built using the same silicon, it can make you scratch your head a bit. We encountered unexpectedly high performance in benchmark tests of a new ASUS V8200 T2 Deluxe (GeForce 3 Ti200) graphics card compared to other Ti200 boards running at a clock rate of 175/400MHz. The card achieved 7809 points in 3D Mark 2001 800x600-32 with the ASUS drivers but only 7301 points with NVIDIA reference drivers (results around 7300 are normal for Ti200 cards on that test platform). In Quake 3 we got 171 instead of 156 FPS, which is 10% higher than normal. The reason for this is an automated overclocking option in the ASUS driver (v21.81 Beta1). The card is running at the standard clock speed of 175/400Mhz while in the standard desktop or windowed mode. The driver is overclocking the card only while running in Direct3D or OpenGL full-screen mode. ASUS claims that this is no hidden benchmark cheating. They added a new option called "3D Turbo Mode" in their extended driver menu. This option enables a dynamic overclocking function in the drivers and is enabled by default (see image). The fact is that ASUS achieves better results than other NVIDIA-based cards of that class with this driver "feature." NVIDIA normally encourages board manufacturers to use the standard given clock rates. Usually, the only manufacturer who changes the standard rates by a driver option is Gainward. But the Gainward driver always asks if it should run the card with default settings or in the "enhanced performance" mode. There is no such dialog in the ASUS driver. It's also unknown yet if ASUS guarantees a stable operation of the card while overclocked, as Gainward does with their "Golden Sample" series. So far, we haven't been clued in by NVIDIA.