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Half-Life 2, ATI, NVIDIA, and a Sack of Cash

Posted by michael on from the in-the-library-with-the-candlestick dept.

Latent IT writes "If you're into games, and unless you've been living under a rock for the past few days, you've heard a bit of a rumble from Valve on the relative quality of ATI vs. NVIDIA cards. Starting with articles like this one (previously reported), Valve told the world that the ATI 9800 Pro was nearly three times faster in some cases than the formerly competitive NVIDIA offering, the 5900 Ultra. Curiously, this happened at an ATI sponsored event, "Shader Day". But the story hasn't stopped there. NVidia released this response, essentially claiming that their new drivers, that were available to Valve at the time of their press conference, would make for vast, legitimate performance improvements. An interview with Massive, the creators of the Aquamark 3d benchmark, seems to confirm this opinion - that the NV3x chipset wasn't designed around any certain API very well, and the drivers are critical in achieving good performance. Anandtech writes here about the restrictions Valve placed on what benchmarks could be run. However, the key to this whole story may be this: an article, which I haven't seen get much coverage in all this, seems to make everything a little clearer - Valve stated that their OEM bundling deal with ATI came from the fact that ATI's cards were so superior, and that they were "performance enthusiasts". However, if the Inquirer is to be believed, the bundling deal was a result of an outright auction, on what will probably be the most popular game of the year. Which year that might be, is another issue altogether. Whatever happened to just making hardware, and making games?"

3 of 412 comments (clear)

  1. 3dfx by michaeltoe · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    the 3dfx logo was rather sexy, don't criticize things which are superficially beautiful!

  2. Re:gaming is big business now... by whereiswaldo · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    If you're into games, and unless you've been living under a rock for the past few days...

    Whatever happened to just making hardware, and making games?

    Speaking of living under a rock for a few decades. What an idealist, the poor soul.

  3. Dear Slashdot.. by Lord+Bitman · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    please stop linking to The Inquirer.
    Thank you.

    --
    -- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All