When Nvidia briefed me on the nForce3 250Gb, the company claimed the chipset would perform better with GeForce FX graphics. The insinuation was not that the GeForce FX was necessarily faster than its graphics competition, but that NVIDIA had specifically optimized nForce3 and GeForce FX ForceWare drivers to work better together than apart. NVIDIA was quick to reassure me that they hadn't done anything to make competing graphics cards run slower on nForce3. They'd simply taken advantage of an opportunity to make their graphics cards run faster.

Questionable optimizations have certainly landed NVIDIA in a lot of trouble over the past year, and I was a little shocked that the company was so forthcoming about the fact that it had optimized its drivers yet again. Clearly, NVIDIA isn't worried about these optimizations being labeled cheats, but do they actually work? Let's find out.