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Faking Benchmarks, The Good Benchmark List, How To Spot Cheats and More...
This post has a few purposes.
1. to show people that even the most reliable cheat free benchmarks, aren't perfect, or cheat free.
2. to create a list of known benchmarks that are either cheat free, or extremely tough to cheat on.
3. to expose Cheat methods, and to expose methods to stump a faker.
What is not to be talked about her, is HOW to fake a benchmark.
Links to programs that allow you to fake benchmarks.
Any Method, or Hint at how to fake a benchmark.
XS is not a Place for trading cheat secrets or a place that will allow free information about how to fake a benchmark.
If you know of any method for Cheating on a benchmark... Then Please, PM me, Saaya, Karnivore or another Mod here.
We are trying to create a definate way to verify Overclocks, Benchmarks, and other things that would be benificial to overclockers in General.
Any Person Talking, or Attempting To Share Cheat Programs, Or Information On How To Cheat On a Benchmark, will have thier Post Deleted immediatly, with a warning from me, or any other mod, that sees the post first.
No Mod of XS likes to hand out warnings or anything more, unless absolutly necessary, but given the nature of this Post, we must be strong on this.
You can say "well I have freedom of speech..."
I will argue with you...
one cannot walk into a movie theater, scream "FIRE", then walk out and claim freedom of speech.
so don't argue on this, you wanna cheat on benchmark... go somewhere else.
we are here to try an inform any and all members willing to listen, on ways to spot fake benchmarks, to bust cheat programs and methods, and to try to create a list of Benchmarks, CPU programs, or anything else that can be used as a tool for overclockers....
Current Methods I know of cheating on benchmarks.
PSNulling.
Wire Frame Hacks.
Pause Programs.
Windows Slow Motion Programs.
Bios Cheating.
PS-Nulling seems to be limited to a few Nvidia Drivers, and are easy to spot usually, cause they give unusually high results, by lowing the pixel shaders to the lowest possible.
Unfortunatly-one can install a PS null driver, uninstall it, install a driver over it, then still have the PS Null on by default.
So driver versions, mean little to nothing for verifying a PS-Nulled Cheat Benchmark.
fortunatly, overclockers seem to be extremely adept at spotting PSNull cheated benchmarks, and its barely a issue here at XS.
Wire frame hacks are exactly as it sounds....
they make 3d benchmarks run with not graphics, just a wire frame of what they should be.
these benchmarks are usually limited to very old videocards, and if used on a modern card, the results are so ridiculous, that you'd have to a fool to not be able to spot them.
These are of little to no risk to XS and Benchmarks just cause they are so damn hard to fake in a reasonable way. unless you wanna be the first person to try and pass a 1,000,000 point 3dmark score as legit... :rolleyes:
Pause Programs...
these are the first of a new gen of cheat programs.
I know 2 so far.
1 seems to have been removed from google.
the other is aparantly old, and meant for something completly different.
(DO NOT TRY TO FIND IT< OR LINK TO IT HERE)
these programs, are exactly as they sound...
they allow you to "pause" windows doing anything you want.
which for a benchmark like 3dmark, it mean you can just pause, and watch your frames go as high as you want, unpause it... and then get what looks like a real score.
these are fairly easy to spot so far.
they look like super bugged scores for 3dmark2003 and 2005.
it doesn't work on 3dmark2001se.
I will explain why soon...
on aquamark 3. these cheat programs, look completly undetectable.
thats not a good thing....
they are also completly useless for sisoftsandra, pi benchmarks and such.
it's biggest advantage comes from if you looking for super bugged scores.
This next cheat method, is by far the worst of the lot.
it effects 90% of benchmarks I know of, and CPUZ, WCPUID, Sisoft sandra, and all forms of 3d benchmarks are vulnerable to it... except 3dmark2001se... again, I will explain that soon.
this Cheat method, works by slowing windows down to "slow motion".
meaning everything, runs in slow motion.
all game benchmarks-every single game benchmark you can name, is vulernable to this. from Quake3 to Doom3... they can all be cheated on with this cheat method to give nice high faked benchmarks.
Super PI is extremely vulnerable to slow motion cheating, in which you can get world records in a second if you want.
CPUZ, WCPUID, CBI and Crystal CPUID are all extremly vulnerable to these cheat methods, and can be used to fake any OC... even fooling the Checksum in CPUZ to look 100% legit.
Aquamark3 is completly vulnerable to this benchmark.
Aquamark3 seems to run, by counting the amount of time it takes your computer to render the 5203 frames of the benchmark, then divides it by the time it took, or something like this.
by slowing down windows, it makes the benchmark think the benchmark took alot less time then it really did to complete. so it's extremely easy to fake a benchmark with this cheat method.
I know of no way to fix this...
3dmark2003 and 2005, are both EXTREMELY Vulnerable to this cheat method as well, and appear to have No Protection for this kinda cheating.
what happens in 3dmark 2003 and 2005, is your videocard still renders the same amount of frames per second, just like normal, but the benchmark takes much longer to complete.
so if you card is doing say 30 frames per second, and the benchmark is 1 minute long... thats 108,000 frames a minute.
by slowing down windows to say half speed.
it will still render 30 frames per second, but with the benchmark going in slow motion, or in this case, half motion, it will then render 216,000 frames, in that same slowed down 1 minute.
neither 3dmark 2003 or 2005 have any sort of protection against this kinda cheating.
oddly enough, only 3dmark2001se has any sort of protection against this kinda cheating... again, I will explain soon, when I get to my part about programs and benchmarks that can still be considerd atleast mostly reliable or cheat free.
lastly are Bios Cheats.
Bios Cheats are something I only heard of recently....
kinda pathetic cheat method really.
but still didn't bring a smile to my face when I heard about it.
bios cheats are cheats, where say you want to take the ti 4200 record.
some people resort to buying ti-4600's. erasing the bios, and installing a Ti 4200 bios on it.
it gives a severe unfair advantage to the cheats, and is basically for only someone really desperate to take a record in some catagory.
I know of no way we or anyone could verify a cards bios...
so basically-theres nothing we can do about it.
it's just something you gotta live with, when competing in odd catagories.
below I am gonna show you a series of benchmarks I have been able to cheat on with the various cheat methods I have learned recently.
every single one of these are faked.
not real in any sense.
but theres no photoshop used to alter the results.
the pictures have a big "FAKE" written on them, and are edited alittle to remove any trace as to the program used....cause like I said, this post isn't about showing you how to cheat.
just to show you... it can be done.
then to show you programs that are still good and solid for being cheatfree... atleast for the moment.
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Heres a few More Faked Shots.
Every Benchmark Here is Fake.
Benchmarks that are Useless for Verifying OC's.
This is a list of Benchmarks that cannot be considerd 100% cheat free.
Sisoft Sandra.
Vulnerable to programs that allow you to run benchmarks in slow motion.
easily manipulated to show fake shots of any MHZ, any Mips, Any bandwidth.
can easily be passed for real, if someone doesn't get greedy.
hard to spot the fakes, unless just obviously faked (dude check out my 1 ghz ram at cas 2-2-2-5)
Super Pi.
This benchmark is easily manipluated, with slow motion cheat programs.
it seems to run on the windows clock timer. so if you slow the clock, the benchmark can still take the normal amount of time it should, but since the windows clock can't register the real time, it gives artificial results.
easy to pass off as real, cause it's impossible to check a faked Super Pi shot.
3DMark2003 and 2005.
Both are extremely Susceptable to Slow Motion Cheats.
cause it renders frames by the second, but the benchmark runs in slow motion.
easy to pass off as real, if your not a greedy faker.
no way I know to detect a fake, slow motion ran benchmark in either 3dmark 2003 or 2005 yet. But the solution may lie in 3dmark2001se...
Aquamark3.
easy, easy, easy benchmark to fake results on.
vulnerable to PSNulling, forcing Antialiasing off, Forcing Aniostropic filtering off, via the Driver on Nvidia cards.
Extremely Vulnerable to Cheating with Slow motion Programs.
Extremely Vulnerable to Pausing programs.
No way I know of to detect a cheated, or even bugged score on Aquamark.
Aquamark is by far my favorite benchmark, but definatly the least reliable from what I have seen in the last week.
very very easy to cheat on, with any card you can name.
especially Nvidia based cards.
CPUZ, WCPUID, Crystal CPUID, Central Brain Identifier.
versions 1.25 of CPUZ and less, aren't considerd solid or cheat free.
each of these programs can be used to fake a OC.
each one are extremely easy to fake the MHZ readout, with no need from Paintshop or anything else.
Even CPUZ's Checksum isn't able to bypass these.
Windows slow motion cheats change the mhz readout.
you can do anything, from get unbelievable 400 mhz, cas 2-2-2-5 shots.
to get somewhat believable OCs and claim it was done with Liquid Nitrogen if you wanted...
(More to the Story on this in the next part- CPUZ may be the leader in the Anti Cheating area, then any other program I know)
CPUmark99
This Program isn't cheat free.
it's susceptable to the slow motion cheat, and theres no way to spot the cheat, if used on this program.
sad day, this was one of my favorite benchmarks ever.
simple and easy to use.
unfortunatly, with nothing to indicate if its been cheated on, it's nothing you can use to verify a overclock.
RightMark CPU Clock Utility V1.3 or less.
in short, this is the worst CPU utility I seen.
even with no cheat programs, or cheat methods enabled.
the moment you enable it, it jumps all over the map for about 30 seconds, before it finally reads the proper CPU speed.
even when you try to wait for it to work, it barely worked, and read half the information of my PC wrong.
including on my laptop.
but when you try CPU cheat methods like windows slow motion cheats, it is extremely easy to mess with this program, but has the tendancy to set your CPU load to 100% when faking CPU speeds...
so atleast it's partially possible to detect a cheat when using this program.
Fast Floating Fractal Fun
by far one of the best benchmarks I ever played with.
it's a beautiful benchmark in it's simplicity, but unfortunatly easy to cheat on.
this program is vulnerable to both windows slow motion cheating, and usual manual cheating methods.
this program gets a definate thumbs up for design, and usefulness on a non cheated benchmark, but cannot be considerd cheat free, or even hard to cheat with. Great program though...
More to be added to this list as I find programs that aren't 100% reliable.
this list is just to show what programs aren't entirely reliable, good to show results from honest members with real OCs. but shouldn't be considerd 100% real if the results are questionable.
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Tools And Benchmarks That Can Still Be Called "Reliable"
This is a list of benchmarks, or programs that I have had ZERO Luck fooling, or Faking benchmarks with.
CPUMathMark. V3
This program isn't perfect.
the CPU speed reported with this program can easily be manipulated.
but it has 1 strong point.
you can't alter the results, with Windows Slow motion cheating.
so if your at stock, or a faked 1,000 ghz OC, it still will report the same speed everytime.
Good program, considering it's the only math program I know thats fairly cheat free, or atleast, hard to cheat one.
CPUZ Version 1.26 and Up.
this CPU reading utility can be considerd cheat free at the moment, assuming its version 1.26 or higher.
lower versions of CPUZ can be cheated on very easily, this is why this program is on both the good and the bad list, according to version.
this is the only CPU reading program that is cheater free at the moment.
hopefully this lasts...
CPUMark2.
This is a relativly new benchmark I think.
it's not too common, but I highly encourage members to atleast try this program.
this program is a benchmark that tests your CPU in 3 ways.
its seems to be almost invincible.
I mean nothing I did would vary this benchmark even by 1/10th of a point.
it did the same points every single time I ran the benchmark.
to top it off....
IT DETECTED MY CHEAT PROGRAM :toast:
see, you can submit results online.
when I tried, it detected my cheat program I was testing, and basically gave me the finger, and wouldn't let me submit my results, haha...
it instantly became a new favorite program when I saw that.
I can also say, this program never varied its CPU Speed reading, it always detected the real CPU Speed, no matter what cheat method I tried to fool it with.
This program can be used to verify a OC, atleast to some degree.
I can't claim it's 100% cheat free, as I am still testing it, but so far, it passes every test I can throw at it.
Windows Properties.
not a benchmark, or anything too interesting.
easily cheated in painshop.
but windows gets its CPU speed from the Bios.
it won't change on the fly, so it won't report anything, other then the boot up speed. but it's atleast a method of helping to verify a overclock.
should not be considerd 100% reliable, but a means to help verify a OC atleast.
Super PI Cheat Free Version.
theres a few versions of Super PI out there.
some allow cheating, some have some questionable patchs...
some are just inacurate using false timers.
this version here, is one a member here, named SNQ modded himself, and I can verify that its just as accurate as the normal version of super pi, but it does implement the best Anti Cheating efforts I know of.
this is the only PI program that should be used for anti cheating.
Here
Clockgen.
Probably the most suprising of the lot.
Clockgen seems to be completly immune to reading faked CPU Speeds.
Clockgen gets its CPU Speed by reading the FSB from the PLL on the motherboard, and the multiplier from the bios itself.
it then does alittle math, and reports the CPU Speed.
I know of no method to alter the readings, as the readings are hardware based, and have nothing to do with windows itself, other then it runs in windows.
should not be considerd 100% fool proof, but atleast highly reliable still.
A little new ABout CPUZ, Clockgen and Overclocking.
Frank, the Author of CPUZ, is by far, the best advocate I know from the programming community, that is on board with finding ways to bust cheat programs, and find ways to keep thier programs cheat free.
I have been talking with frank a few times a day, beta testing various new CPUz's sharing ideas, and trying to find ways to get a better CPUZ to everyone.
while CPUZ at the moment is not cheat free, it's still the best CPU program I know of, especially, when mixed with the checksum, and clockgen readings.
till then, we are working fast to get a better CPU Check program out to everyone :D
Lastly.
3dmark2001se.
you might be sick of it.
you might call it old.
you might say it's synthetic.
you may just hate it.
but plain old fact is...
I just can't cheat this benchmark, in the same ways I can with 3dmark2003 and 2005.
3dmark2001se, seems to have a built in timer.
if the benchmark should take 5 minutes, and takes 10 minutes cause of a slow motion cheat... the benchmark errors out, and gives you a "timer insanity" error.
its interesting to see this, cause it gave me a idea.
I recommended to futuremark that they should include some sort of timer on thier 3dmark2003, and 2005 programs, as well as PCmark, just like 3dmark200se has.
it's not a perfect protection against cheating, but its alot better then the no cheat protection that both 3dmark 2003 and 2005 have at the moment, and can easily be updated with some sort of timer, with a Patch.
I have since recieved a reply from someone at futuremark, who said they will look into it.
but honestly... I don't see anything happening soon, if they don't take me serious.
fortunatly, we have a few connections here, to people at futuremark, who are investigating the cheat program, and ways to bust these cheats.
so, hopefully, me bugging the hell out of them+ the people here working on it, will speed up futuremark to incorperate some sort of cheat protection in thier next patch.
This list will be updated, as I find and test more programs that I feel I cannot cheat on, with any methods I know.
Again, this list shouldn't be considerd a list of infallible programs, but it's atleast better then nothing.