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Quote:
No they don't. ATI's real weekness is in the quality of thier drivers. The fastest card on paper doens't do you a damn bit of good if the drivers are not stable in games. Which is why I dumped the mid range ATI card I bought a month ago in favor of a GeForce 6800 GT. ATI can suck it.
I don't agree with this at all. (And I have a full 3D QA lab at my house, including every GF and ATI card made.) I am a certified developer for both ATI and Nvidia, and ATI's drivers blow Nvidia out of the water. GF's are known for everything from screen artifacts to loss of textures, simply from driver issues. Not to mention the shader support in the ATI cards actually follows the standards, instead of inventing their own (PS/VS3.0 on the GFFX line). Plus, side by side, the ATI's consistantly outperform the GF cards (fresh machines, loaded via my central Ghost server). I am not talking about "on paper" tests, I am talking full out 3D benchmarking my entire 3D engine against multiple cards, which pinpoint exact bottlenecks in the ASM calls, directly pointing me to hardware faults. I have reported no less than 5 serious bugs with NV drivers over the past 2 years, and I have yet to find a single flaw like this in any of the ATI drivers.
E1
1999 Cougar - Supercharged 3L
1992 Talon TSi - AWD Turbo
1992 Eclipse GSX - AWD Turbo
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Originally posted by EternalOne:
I don't agree with this at all. (And I have a full 3D QA lab at my house, including every GF and ATI card made.) I am a certified developer for both ATI and Nvidia, and ATI's drivers blow Nvidia out of the water. GF's are known for everything from screen artifacts to loss of textures, simply from driver issues. Not to mention the shader support in the ATI cards actually follows the standards, instead of inventing their own (PS/VS3.0 on the GFFX line). Plus, side by side, the ATI's consistantly outperform the GF cards (fresh machines, loaded via my central Ghost server). I am not talking about "on paper" tests, I am talking full out 3D benchmarking my entire 3D engine against multiple cards, which pinpoint exact bottlenecks in the ASM calls, directly pointing me to hardware faults. I have reported no less than 5 serious bugs with NV drivers over the past 2 years, and I have yet to find a single flaw like this in any of the ATI drivers.
E1
That is great for whatever other hardware you are running, but in my experience, ATI = crashes. So far the only crashes I have had with my Nvidia card are when I was pushing it a little harder than I should have.
2000 Contour SE Sport
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Originally posted by EternalOne:
Quote:
I can get a copy of the game from a co-worker (I was entitled to an original copy anyway) but I will no longer support any ATI products.
You do realize that HL2 has MUCH better warez protection in it, right? You can't simply install your friends copy and start playing it.
Pretty easy to burn a cd, even protected ones.
98.5 SVT
91 Escort GT (almost sold)
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CEG Dragon Run - October 13-15
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"Absolut Rara."
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Originally posted by Kremithefrog:
Originally posted by EternalOne:
Quote:
I can get a copy of the game from a co-worker (I was entitled to an original copy anyway) but I will no longer support any ATI products.
You do realize that HL2 has MUCH better warez protection in it, right? You can't simply install your friends copy and start playing it.
Pretty easy to burn a cd, even protected ones.
its not the copying of the CD, its the required online registration process before you can play it that is the issue. Not saying it could never be pirated, but it is a brand new deal, and its probably going to be awhile before people can work around it.
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O ook. Didn't know bout that.
98.5 SVT
91 Escort GT (almost sold)
96 ATX Zetec (i brake to watch you swerve)
FS: SVT rear sway bar
WTB: Very cheap beater
CEG Dragon Run - October 13-15
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Quote:
Pretty easy to burn a cd, even protected ones.
HL2 requires an online verification process between a CD-Key and a user-registration before you can play. It is far more than a simple CD-Key check like your average CD-crack can prevent. Not only do you have to go online to verify your CD-Key but you must also download particular files that decrypt certain and unique files within the game before it is playable. You do not even have the entire game in a playable state on your CDs until you verify the key through the developer.
While it is possible for someone to share their CD-Key and login information only one of you will be able to play at once, and if the same key is used on a suspicious number of machines of significantly different hardware configurations (more than your average person would be upgrading) the game will be unplayable. And even if shared with one or two people online one may play at once -- not just online, but period. While the game does play offline, if your internet is active, it will communicate to Valve that you are playing even just single-player and Valve can see if someone else is playing single-player at the same time -- unless the two of your are playing with your internet unplugged.
2003 Mazda6s 3.0L MTX
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That is great for whatever other hardware you are running, but in my experience, ATI = crashes. So far the only crashes I have had with my Nvidia card are when I was pushing it a little harder than I should have.
Right, but what I was pointing out is that I have multiple hardware platforms, and almost every video card made by the two companies, and I have far more problems with Nvidia than ATI. Just like you said, you're experience could be more to do with your hardware than anything, where-as I have tested across no less than 10 different machines, and I'm able to consistantly see Nvidia driver defects, and I can directly attribute the crashes to the driver, where-as you are simply speculating as to the problem.
On the HL2 protection, I am sure there will be a crack made available, as they've even managed to crack XP's protection which is along these lines, but it won't be easy. They have already rewritten most of it since the source code leak (that was the biggest headache for them when the code leaked), but it doesn't take long to plug in a network sniffer and see what is getting reported. Then write a simple TCP (or UDP, whichever it uses) server that replies with "CD-KEY OK" no matter what key its given, then change the hosts file for auth.valve.com (or whatever the host is) to 127.0.0.1 and volia.  Of course, they will go about it the hard way and actually edit the ASM... Damn crackers... :P
E1
1999 Cougar - Supercharged 3L
1992 Talon TSi - AWD Turbo
1992 Eclipse GSX - AWD Turbo
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So what ya'll are basically saying is that in the future, I will not have to pay for this game, just like all my other games?   Joking of course, I pay. I just don't buy games when they're new and expensive.
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91 Escort GT (almost sold)
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*Sigh* I'll have to wait a bit since I'm a Linux user. A few people have got the game running in Linux, but I heard it's slower than s**t. *UPDATE: As I was typing this, I came across this announcement from Transgaming.com: http://www.transgaming.com/news.php?newsid=135"Linux gamers can experience the new interactive world of Half-Life 2 with TransGaming's release of Cedega 4.2, scheduled for December 7th."  That is the news I wanted, though I would prefer a native Linux client built by Valve.
'95 'stiqueLS 2.5L ATX
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Originally posted by Beowulf:
Originally posted by EternalOne:
I don't agree with this at all. (And I have a full 3D QA lab at my house, including every GF and ATI card made.) I am a certified developer for both ATI and Nvidia, and ATI's drivers blow Nvidia out of the water. GF's are known for everything from screen artifacts to loss of textures, simply from driver issues. Not to mention the shader support in the ATI cards actually follows the standards, instead of inventing their own (PS/VS3.0 on the GFFX line). Plus, side by side, the ATI's consistantly outperform the GF cards (fresh machines, loaded via my central Ghost server). I am not talking about "on paper" tests, I am talking full out 3D benchmarking my entire 3D engine against multiple cards, which pinpoint exact bottlenecks in the ASM calls, directly pointing me to hardware faults. I have reported no less than 5 serious bugs with NV drivers over the past 2 years, and I have yet to find a single flaw like this in any of the ATI drivers.
E1
That is great for whatever other hardware you are running, but in my experience, ATI = crashes. So far the only crashes I have had with my Nvidia card are when I was pushing it a little harder than I should have.
I would have to agree, i have also owned 4 ati cards in the past 3-4 years, 2 all-in-wonders, I have had so many problems with them its not even funny. You try over clocking them and half the time even at small overclocks things would just scramble in games. I have my card overclocked 30% on my nbox 5900u. no problems what so ever, and I run everything I do at top resolutions and have yet to have any problems with my nvidia card. Been running it for almost a year now.
A good alternative to ati and nvidia drivers are omega drivers.
95 SES Sold
99 SE Sport Sold
99 SVT T-Red Tan Interior. K&N, Magnecors, 19' Theorys, And some audio stuff.
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