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ATI Drivers Geared For Quake 3?

alrz1 writes: "HardOCP has posted an article wherein they accuse ATI of writing drivers that are optimized for Quake 3, just Quake 3, and only Quake 3. Apparently, using a program called quackifier, which modifies the Quake3 executable by changing every "Quake" reference to "Quack" and then creating a new executable called "Quack3", they have demonstrated to some extent that the Quack3.exe benchmarks are around 15% slower than with the original Quake3.exe (same box, os, drivers, etc). The slant seems to be that there is something inherently wrong about writing game-specific optimizations into drivers, if in fact this is what ATI has done. I think this is perfectly acceptable: Quake 3 is the biggest game out there on Windows, and if ATI has invested a little extra time into pumping a few extra (meaningless) frames out of your Radeon 8500, is this really an act of treachery?"

2 of 511 comments (clear)

  1. Wallh4x0r by Mr.+Eradicator · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    I'm sure you've heard about the "wallhacks" for Half-Life Counter-Strike using modified Asus drivers. Hell, I've got a Voodoo 5 and I got accused of using those drivers. I bet this will cause similar "controversy". Obviously it's not the same as blatantly cheating, but it's an advantage based on circumstances not controlled by the game.

    --

    That's Mr. Eradicator to you.

    trance-port
  2. Re:Wha?? by volsung · · Score: 0, Offtopic
    What you say !!

    All your graphics card are belong to us !!