Get into Lloyd's DAP to see with your own eyes if the resolution at ISO 1600 is the same. Of course there are tons of ways to make them the same (handhold, not top notch optics, out of focus, motion, etc.) where only one way, called the right methodology, to demonstrate the big differences. If someone tells you D3x does not record any more details than the D3 at 1600 ISO, what it tells is only that you were listening to an incompetent tester, even he or she actually has the means to own the equipment.
Whatever, I've read your
nonsense and it doesn't carry any weight with me. Lots of "scientists" also dispute evolution or the role of people in global warming and just about any other quackery you can imagine.
In the real world you turn up ISO when you have to cope with no tripod, bad light, using the camera's AF, and subject motion. What you, Lloyd Chambers, and others are saying is that in a studio where you eliminate all these considerations that you can get better results with the D3x than the D3 -- that makes sense since the D3x was designed as a studio camera. Try putting a D3x in the real world and see how it does under poor artificial lighting; that's when things start breaking in favor of the D3.
My client asks for this shot, taken with my D300 at 14mm, f/6.3, 1/250s, and ISO 1000. Now I could buy a D3x (I will buy a "D700x" instead when it is available) and take this image two ways: DX mode at 10 MP with all the same settings I used; or FX mode at 24 MP, 21mm, f/9, f/250s and ISO 2000. Now I go to Imaging Resource which is a site I don't care for, but I download their D3x ISO 1600 studio shot with NR turned off, and everywhere I look my D300 shot above has far less noise even after resizing the D3x images. Looks like the client who has more than enough resolution at 10 MP would rather I shot at ISO 1000 than ISO 2000 with 2.4 times as many pixels -- that's because in the real world where format, DOF, shutter speed, and ISO matter you will trade noise for resolution and at some point that noise will eat up the resolution (especially when you prepare images for final output which raises the thorny issues of conversion, post processing, and what the print is capable of showing).
Show me the images. Describe the methodology.
Thom will be publishing a review of the D3x, which he is working on now. He has been using both the D3x and the D3 in a basketball gym (just like a "real" photographer would) and that's what he has based his preliminary evaluations on. As for Thom and Iliah showing you their methodology; why don't you show us yours? Only problem is that you have none to offer because you don't have either camera.
Really looking forward to see the analysis of the D3X sensor on the DxO-mark site, BTW.
As if that were the last word.