KalNet Message Board

Check out the following sites:

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).

Interesting indeed.

Nvidia releases a new driver that improves their scores.

Preliminary results show that the IQ is less than desirable in Aquamark3:

http://www.driverheaven.net/articles/aq ... index3.htm

No results for HL2 yet with these drivers.

Looks to be Futuremark aaaaalll over again. NOT cool.

Again, it appears the IQ has been lowered across the board:

http://www.gamersdepot.com/hardware/vid ... 50/001.htm

Pics of Halo PC and Tomb Raider show less than desirable results.

Well, so much for their claims of cleaning up their act.... Its to be expected though, what with the flop of the FX and ATI's continuing lead. Its no wonder Nvidia is getting desperate.

"It has come to the attention of Eidos that an unreleased patch for Tomb Raider: AOD has unfortunately been used as the basis for videocard benchmarking. While Eidos and Core appreciate the need for modern benchmarking software that utilizes the advanced shading capabilities of modern graphics hardware, Tomb Raider: AOD Patch 49 was never intended for public release and is not a basis for valid benchmarking comparisons. Core and Eidos believe that Tomb Raider: AOD performs exceptionally well on NVIDIA hardware." - Paul Baldwin, Eidos

Well, at least Nvidia can put their money to good use. I mean, what does the last statement have to do with anything patch-wise?