Beyond3D have barfed up an article covering the latest 3D Mark 2003 patch & how NVIDIA & ATi (&, errm, Matrox Parhelia) are affected performance/visual quality wise by it - if their Drivers are rendering as intended (With their application specific optimisations removed) then there should be no difference, right?

From the gist of the conversation it seems that NVIDIA feels that it is their right to optimise specifically for applications as long as it doesn't interfere with image quality - which is fine if it is benefiting games as it will benefit the end user, however in this case the image quality can be argued as there are differences in the image produce with the optimisations that NVIDIA have used in the 52.16 drivers for the 3.3.0 patch. Derek Perez went on to suggest that they may well end up chasing each patch release & re-optimising as Futuremark puts a patch that defeats previous detections!

Would you like to know more?

UPDATE: Addition by Per, Nordichardware did a similar test, no IQ tests though but their tests speak for themselves...