Recommended system spec..

[instant]

Found this for a game about to be out..

Known driver issues :
If you have one of the latest Radeon 7500/8500 cards, you have several choices :
Take it back to the store, get a refund and buy an nVidia GF2 PRO or GF3 to replace
the Radeon 8500 or buy an nVidia GF2 PRO/GTS/MX or a Hercules Kyro-II card to replace the Radeon 7500.

Put up with ATI's legendary bad driver support and a level of incompetence rivaled
only by the bleeding edge FPS that nVidia cards put out and which ATI spends their time
trying to best - at the expense of, well, notoriously bad drivers.

Want to see what you can expect? Download this file and take a look at those 4 pics.
Pics 0/1 were taken on a Radeon 8500 and 2/3 were taken on an nVidia GF3.

Yes folks, its really that simple.



hahah!

THats just priceless ;-)

[Caleb]

That game wouldnt be "War in heaven" 2 or anything would it ???

[Lestat]

Hate to break your bubble Instant, but i don't see no pics/links...

L.

[instant]

Originally posted by Lestat
Hate to break your bubble Instant, but i don't see no pics/links...

L.

Because I copied the TEXT you <censored> <censored>.

http://www.3000ad.com/temp/photo000_r200.jpg
http://www.3000ad.com/temp/photo002_gf3.jpg
http://www.3000ad.com/temp/photo001_r200.jpg
http://www.3000ad.com/temp/photo003_gf3.jpg

[Redshirt_X]

<scratches head> Judging from the last screenshot, I'd
take a wild guess at Independence War 2, but...

[instant]

Originally posted by Redshirt_X
<scratches head> Judging from the last screenshot, I'd
take a wild guess at Independence War 2, but...

BattleCruiser 3000AD v2.0 or v3.0 i believe. :-)

[Nazgul]

Ah yes, BC3000, that smash hit game that every single one of us has been playing non-stop. This Derek Smart is a real piece of work. I think I prefer the response of Brian Hook, who has a bit better track record in my opinion. He's worked for 3dfx, so he knows about hardware and drivers(hell, he was one of the original programmers for Glide iirc), he worked for id Software, so he knows about writing game code for multiple video cards. Here's his response:


I like Derek, on a personal level. I think he has a lot of admirable attributes, but I think he seriously needs to work on his presentation. To say the least =)


That said, his post -- all fifty six chapters of it -- can be condensed as follows:


"Drivers suck. ATI's drivers suck worse."


The rest of it is just general bitching and moaning, and to be honest, I don't have that much sympathy for the "we don't run well on this board so buyer beware" bit because a developer's JOB is to make sure their software runs everywhere (within reason, of course). If you have to use textured quads for sprites, then that's what you do. You can't expect new drivers to fix everything, because all too often your users have no idea what a driver is.


Consumers don't have much sympathy for games (and developers) that tell them, basically, their hardware and drivers suck. If a developer doesn't get that, he's going to be in a world of hurt unless he has a HUGE hit on his hands.


Last I checked, both UT and Q3 were outsold by Unreal and Q2 respectively. Software rendering fallbacks had a LARGE part in this.


There's running ugly, and there's not running at all. By and larger, the former is much better than the latter.


Speaking of Matrox...my main computer now uses a Matrox G550 because of its strong dualhead and rocking DACs. I wish NVidia would eventually make high quality boards for 2D work also.


Speaking of ATI...they win enough benchmarks to please the OEMs, which is what matters for sales. But I don't think they're ever going to get the enthusiast crowd until their drivers are solid. And ATI's drivers have never, ever BEEN solid, and so long as management doesn't take that seriously, it's going to always be their #1 limiting factor.

-Hook


I think he's got a great point about consumers and computer games. While the enthusiast gamer might put out the effort to get the optimal card with the best drivers to support all the games they play, the real volume of sales comes from the casual gamer who doesn't do that kind of research and will likely be running the original drivers off the install cd. That means two things. One, companies like ATI really need to have better drivers at launch time, something I think they've got a way to go yet. Second, it means that if a game programmer wants to see a lot of units, he needs to put out some serious effort to get his game to run on the hardware and drivers that are out there. If he puts on the box of his game "will only run on X, Y, and Z video cards because the other ones suck", even the diplomatic version, then the casual gamer isn't gonna go buy a new $200 video card, he's gonna buy a different $50 game. Companies like id have done so well not just because they make good games, but because they put out the effort to make sure their games run on a wide variety of hardware. Maybe not with all the eye-candy, maybe not at super-high framerates, but it runs. Hell I can run Quake3 on an ATI Rage Pro under Windows 2000(and it actually does better than you might think).




Nazgul