gabebalazs wrote in post #17235619
Indeed, the D750 is really good, I'd say one of the best. But in fairness, its RAW files are not exactly the same pure RAW files as most other cameras', including Nikon's own FF bodies.
Nikon uses some clever tone curve trickery along with a little bit of noise reduction in RAW to achieve the excellent results. Why is that a problem, one might pose the question. Aren't we all after better results? Yes of course. But then when we compare RAW noise levels between the D750 and other FF bodies, we need to keep that in mind. It's not that the sensor has gone through a revolutionary redesign, it's just that Nikon started to slightly "cook" the D750 RAW files

But the bottom line is they do look good.
On the D750 home page, Nikon stated that they increased the pixel pitch on the D750's sensor: "...By making the pitch of each individual pixel on the new image sensor larger, a broad dynamic range is preserved, and superior high-sensitivity performance that enables rich and smooth expression of tones with very little noise has been achieved." So it is NOT the same sensor that is in the D600/D610. This increase in the pixel pitch probably accounts for the improvement in high ISO noise reduction more than anything else.
Of course when Canon or Nikon produce a new sensor, it enables them to write improved programming to take advantage of this new sensor. In this case, Nikon also stated on the D750 home page that; ..."In addition, adoption of new algorithms with EXPEED 4 achieves faithful color reproduction and minimizes noise at high sensitivities."
Canon and Nikon must write programming language, or as you say, "cooking", for their camera's to process all those 0's and 1's; light travels through the lens, hits the sensor, that becomes digital data and then becomes a RAW file. This is as I understand the process, I am obviously not an engineer.
I think the difference is that Nikon's programming engineers have a better sensor to work with than Canon engineers do. By this time next year, Canon may have a sensor that equals or exceeds the Nikon sensor, who knows.