The reason why these drivers improve speed for the FX series, is because they don't properly implement trilinear filtering for any mode at all. It still works. Kind of. But the image quality for trilinear filtering is not quite as good. It looks almost the same...so I would still use them, but...
Dude..."if people want to download the game, then let them" is not a good strategy for VALVe to do well, and thus support their game, and ensure that it comes out on time.
Additionally, hackers can reverse engineer the code, and since the code was mostly dealing with net stuff (I hear), hackers could also gain control of computers through holes, and exploits.
It's not just cheating VALVe is worried about, methinks. It's also security.
In which case, the...
Damn. Thanks for the interview transcript, Sirrah.
However...eh...nothing new.
They should have brought SpitCodFry with them. At least he knows how to gather information.
HUGE difference in 4 and 8 pipe.
Go for the XT, it's the same price as the 9800 Pro 256 MB, but better.
(If you can afford it.)
If not, go fo the bundled 9600 XT.