Video games and Graphics Cards

[Pressure]

Is it me or is the whole deal with one company, mainly ATi and Nvidia, making a contract with a certain video game company going a little to far. When I start up a game and I see a "Nvidia - Thats the way its meant to be played" logo I shutter because I know that I might not run the game as well or have some problems because I own an ATi card. So far I haven't had any problems with any games but I've looked over some help topics on other game forums with users asking why somethings wrong. The reply is most often "Do you have a ATi/Nvidia card? Oh thats why. It probably won't run well on your machine." I think its ridiculous that I pay $350+ for a top of the line graphics card then I'm told it'll only work best with certain games. If you're going to make a game make it so both brands are equally compatable. Half Life 2 is also taking part in this mayhem. Its being made for ATi cards. I recall a while back they said the game ran perfectly on an ATi card but it didn't work at all on an Nvidia and all the people with Nvidia cards started to yell and scream. They fixed the problem but I still feel people playing with Nvidias won't be able to run the game as good with as few problems as the people using the ATi's. Does anyone else feel that this is going a bit too far or is it just me?

 

[crabcakes66]

well....im gonna say nvidia slapping there logo on everything is all about advertising and money.....as far as optimising for those games....i doubt much of that is true.

with the ATI/valve pair up...its about money also, but if HL2 had released last september, ATIs cards would run the game like it was meant to be played(no pun intended)... so valve had good reason to go with ATI......and optimising for ATI wasnt part of the deal becuase it wasnt necessary

 

[OCybrManO]

I agree that card companies shouldn't bribe game developers to make a game work better on their card. However, that was never the case with HL2. HL2 wasn't developed to run best on ATI cards. At the time of the Valve/ATI deal nVidia's cards had already taken 5 times the work to get decent shader performance (which was still much slower than ATI's performance)... and it's not just HL2 that had this problem. Halo showed these results. That crappy Tomb Raider game showed these results. Even John Carmack, the game engine god himself, says he had this problem in Doom 3. Since then nVidia has included various hacks in their drivers to increase performance at the cost of a little image quality. Problem solved (mostly).

I don't mind a developer saying "ATI cards have performed much better in our testing" in a presentation or an interview (as long as it is the truth), but I hate seeing a huge "The way it's meant to be played" logo/animation every time I start up a game (UT2003, for example)... especially when I already have a good video card (or else I WOULDN'T BE PLAYING THE GAME).

If nVidia payed attention to the DX9 specifications and went with 24-bit shaders instead of 32-bit shaders we probably wouldn't be having this discussion... because HL2 would have probably been just another "The way it's meant to be played" game and no one would have said anything about it.

Honestly, I'm glad nVidia got beaten by ATI in the current round of the video card wars... it will make them work harder on their next card. ATI knows that, so they will work hard on theirs, too. I can't wait to see what both companies come up with next.

 

[Axyon]

There's no performance boost on games that brandish the nVidia logo, it's just there to say that nVidia managed to get their grubby sodding hands on it. Actually, in a few recent 'nVidia optimized' games, ATi cards have run better on them. Heh.

 

[dawdler]

Yeah, the logo is just for show, it has nothing to do with performance...

I remember a while ago when I picked up a US PCGamer (usually reads the swedish version), and was appalled by the fact there was DOZENS of Nvidia logo's in the magazine! Hell even real ads for Nvidia (as always claiming they are the fastest in gaming, no matter how wrong they are)!!! Its no wonder people choose to add the logo to their game. They can show it off in ads, and it probably *seems* cooler for the average gamer, since every other game has it.

But in general, you might see it like old game ads: Everyone are saying they have the best game ever.

Daikatana - "John Romero is about to make you his bitch"
The Tone Rebellion - "Real-time strategy adventure that is more than a revolution... Its a revelation" (never even heard of it)
Myth II - "Where "realism" take on a terrible new significance"
Sin - "Hyper-Interactive Enviroments"
Heavy Gear - "Truly 3D worlds with sand dunes, canyons and buildings" (*gasp!*)

I mean, its just a big load

 

[Farrowlesparrow]

Perhaps its not too much of a problem beyond advertisting, but what foundations do these deals lay for the future of video gaming?[/dramatic]

Really though, at the moment it may be advertisting but its not hard to imagine a time when games not only have to be windows compatible, but also nVidia, or ATi compatible. Perhaps that may be far fetched but stranger things have happened.

 

[Brian Damage]

I thought that that had already happened (3DFX) and we were past it...

 

[dawdler]

Perhaps its not too much of a problem beyond advertisting, but what foundations do these deals lay for the future of video gaming?[/dramatic]

Really though, at the moment it may be advertisting but its not hard to imagine a time when games not only have to be windows compatible, but also nVidia, or ATi compatible. Perhaps that may be far fetched but stranger things have happened.

Then it comes down to a matter of speed. Even if Nvidia takes us by storm the next generation, the next ATI card is apparently already proven to be 2-3 times faster than current in Colin McRae 4 or whatever it was (DX9 game). As long as ATI (or any other company) can *keep up* or as it is currently, *go past* Nvidia in performance, it wont ever happen. We are at a stage where we have standard OpenGL and standard D3D in very good implementations, when 3DFX happened none of them where able to compete really. Any company choosing a certain card, will loose BIGTIME in income, and will spend ALOT more time tuning for the Geforce (since it wouldnt be much use for the R3x0, lol). Coding in standard DX9 or OpenGL is cheap (cant get any cheaper) and it makes it usable on *any* card, thus you make more money.

 

[[MLB]Loser]

I read on either anandtech.com or tomshardware.com, can't remember which but it was several months ago, that the reason ATI runs a lot of DX9 based games better than NVidia is because ATI actually kept working directly with Microsoft during the development of DX9 while NVidia decided to run off and do their own thing part way through.

 

[Asus]

Somewhat.
They had an issue with MS so they left.
They were in the dark about DX9 then. That is why they use 16bit and 32bit to be ready for whatever the DX9 spec called for. They did OK but it still screwed them up.

I don't care for the logo but for the most part I know ATI's cards can run it as well or better.
I don't like how Intel does that with optimizations either. Actually worse.
But I know they need it to get better performance since they don't have an efficent design out of the box.