Futuremark have just release (Nov 11th) patch 340, and was officially said that this is now the "Official" benchmarking patch.
Although alot of people have placed a recent talks with nvidia and futuremark to this patch claiming of renewed conflict about driver enhancements.
However early benchmark indications actually would show this patch is there to combat DirectX optimisations.
The new patch doesn't appear on the surface to bring much new to the table ... however what it does is run using Default DirectX 9.00 settings and refferences.
It also has alot of hardware unspecific enhancements, meaning even though cards are capable of more; Mark03 not longer tests these extensions as well making the tests now a perfectly level playing field.
There is also a new overclocking checker, which finds out exactly what your cards defaults should be and what your running your system at. Another bid against people overclocking thier cards and trying to claim that the performance is default.
Basically what this new patch does is makes your graphics cards run in thier default factory settings on factory settings DirectX9.
After a week of benchmarking for a new DirectX based engine, it has become clear which cards on the market are clearly using Hardware performance over Software optimisation.
Futuremark have no doubt learn from the whole escapade of this generations cards and 3DMark 2004 will no doubt take this into account for the next generation of cards.
Overall i'm quite pleased on how my own GeForce based systems faired in the tests.
To Survive You Must Evolve... This Time Van Will Not Escape His Fate!
900mhz | 256mb | FX5200Ti 52.16 | Dx9 | WXP-Pro 