Extremetech, Anandtech, Tech-Report, Shacknews, [H]ardOCP, Firingsquad, Beyond3D and Tomshardware.
Most are showing off benchmarks that place Ati well ahead of Nvidia for running HL2. Not official, but it looks promising.
Things that were interesting:
-Valve take serious issue with "optimizations" from NVIDIA as of late
-In no certain words, Valve is highly disappointed with current NV3x hardware as a high-performance DX9 accelerator
-Valve will have Half-Life 2 treat NV3x hardware as DX8.1 hardware for the default settings
-these benchmarks aren't a result of their partnering with Ati. In fact, Valve partnered with Ati after they saw the benchmarks of their betas
Nvidia responded saying that their optimizations weren't in place and that this was bull-puckey. Note the first point listed above
However, I will Nvidia a bit o' credit. I'm not saying "yay or nay" until the game ships. Ati's benchmarks in Doom ]I[ were nothing to brag about. Although, I think these HL2 benchies are more on account of lacking hardware than immature drivers. I don't think that's the case with Ati with Doom ]I[ (just immature drivers.........see what happened with the 9800 Pro 128mb and the 9800 Pro 256mb version in the benchmarks as to why I feel that way).
