GPU discounts in games

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skritch

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A few weeks ago, I recall a small brouhaha here over the Half-Life 2 bundling promotion that Valve and ATi engaged in, with some accusing Valve of "promoting ATi" because of the inclusion of an ATi ad/discount offer in the box.

Well, I just opened my brand-new copy of World of Warcraft. Anyone care to guess what I found?



That's right: Ad ad/discount for BFG 6800 cards, and an ad for the Intel 925X chipset and the P4.

So, where's all the hue and cry over Blizzard "promoting nVidia and Intel"? There were so many who were so very upset with Valve.
 
Good question. Tons of games I play have NV splash screens. It's annoying, but I certainly didn't get up in arms about it, it's marketting.

Apparently ATI and Valve are evil for doing so. I have 0 games with ATI splash screens, and probably 5+ with NV splash screens each time I play. *shrugs*
 
the controversy was that ati by paying valve was screwing over nvidia card users....

its a long thread.. if your curious go read it.
 
Uh, the controversy was around before we had any HL2 benchmarks, or before the game was released. People started complaining long before release day about the partnership.
 
The difference is that there's not press releases saying "WoW is designed from the ground up to utilize nVidia technology - buy nVidia or be left behind" before they've even got anything playable. You don't have them issuing press releases saying "we know you're buying an nVidia card to play WoW, so we'll issue coupons for a free copy of WoW when it comes out" and then take so long to release the game that there's a whole new generation of high-end cards available.


And don't forget that ATI is a Canadian company. ;)
 
joecuddles said:
Apparently ATI and Valve are evil for doing so. I have 0 games with ATI splash screens, and probably 5+ with NV splash screens each time I play. *shrugs*
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Tribes Vengeance has an ATI splash screen
 
EverQuest 2 has an nVidia splash screen, Dell splash screen, and a P4 splash screen. I know of atleast 2 - 4 other games that I own that have "Plays best on nVidia" and all that other garbage stamped on there. I just choose to ignore people that raise a ruckus over something as simple as that...but I do find it ironic that my friend that has a pretty up to date Dell with an nVidia card and a P4 processor ran EverQuest 2 that has a spalsh screen for all of those things - slower than me and my other friend with AMD processors.

Anyway if people want to raise ruckus let them raise ruckus, I say just enjoy your game on your choice of hardware whether or not somebody else approves of it.
 
Ducay said:
Tribes Vengeance has an ATI splash screen
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There's like 5 games that are like that as opposed to 100 :)

As for the ATi deal (really hate we are going back into this...but I'm bored) ATI paid for advertisment space, when the game came closer to being finished it was still the 9xxx vs the 5xxx series and yes the card of choice was the ATI brand.

Much like before Doom3 was out, little stickers on nvidia based cards saying ID recommends this card for Doom3 before the game even came out.
 
From a quick 2 sec. googling here is why there is a difference:

http://www.megagames.com/news/html/pc/atibuysh-l2bundlingrightsforusd6million.shtml
"ATI Buys H-L 2 Bundling Rights for USD 6 Million"

vs:

http://www.gamershell.com/news/17201.html
"World of Warcraft will undergo extensive compatibility testing to ensure a "no hassles" install-and-play experience for gamers equipped with NVIDIA GPUs"

Hmm, lets see:
ATI pays millions of dollars to game company to be exclusive.
Nvidia (at their cost) helps game company be compatable.

See a difference?

==>Lazn
 
Lazn_Work said:
Hmm, lets see:
ATI pays millions of dollars to game company to be exclusive.
Nvidia (at their cost) helps game company be compatable.

See a difference?

==>Lazn
Click to expand...

Yes. Yes I do:

ATi pays millions of dollars in a well-publicized auction run by Valve to buy certain well-disclosed rights Valve offers to the highest bidder. ATi outbids nVidia.
nVidia pays an unknown sum in a private deal with Blizzard to get unknown benefits, including in-box advertising.

I'd rather see Valve's approach any day. It was fair, it was above-board, and it could have just as easily been nVidia, had they coughed up more than ATi.

What deal was cut between Blizzard and nVidia? We don't know.
 
The bottom line is that marketing partnerships are commonplace. The thought that a company would deliberately and intentionally hurt their own customers based on a marketing partnership is a little far fetched for some, and yet seems like a self-evident truth to others.

If technology wasn't such a religion I don't think we'd be having these discussions. Bottom line is that ATI and Nvidia have different architectures across their different generations of cards. One should expect that the marketing partner for a particular game will likely have the highest degree of performance/IQ/compatibility. In fact, it's more surprising and humorous when that's not the case (TR:AOD + FX5800 anyone?)

Personally, I had been playing a whole lot of games with Nvidia splash screens on my ATI cards, and now I'm playing a decidedly ATI-biased game (HL2) on my new Nvidia card. Never bothered me before, and doesn't bother me now.

Please note: I'm not trying to rehash the other argument, so if you want to take up the "Valve Sucks" topic again, let's do it on the other thread.. This is simply my opinion on the marketing practices of both ATI and Nvidia.
 
I'm not complaining about the $20 ATI rebate in the HL2 box. I used that sucker on a x700 Pro 256MB. :p
 
Are you really suprised that these hardware companies are in bed with companies that drive people to buy their products.. WHAT A CONCEPT!!!
 
Mayfield said:
Are you really suprised that these hardware companies are in bed with companies that drive people to buy their products.. WHAT A CONCEPT!!!
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No, I'm surprised that everyone wants to make it a huge issue when ATi does it, yet every time nVidia does it, it goes unnoticed and uncommented.
 
skritch said:
No, I'm surprised that everyone wants to make it a huge issue when ATi does it, yet every time nVidia does it, it goes unnoticed and uncommented.
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I almost forgot about this, but when you pre-ordered Doom3 before it came out, it contained coupons for nvidia chipset cards too (5700s I believe)
 
skritch said:
ATi pays millions of dollars in a well-publicized auction run by Valve to buy certain well-disclosed rights...
Click to expand...
Were the terms of this deal well publicized? Do we know everything ATi got? ATi wouldn't even admit that they won, they put something like "large promotional payment" in their financial statement. For all we (don't) know, HL2 could display a giant banana on-screen when you typle "ATI RULES!!!" into the console. I'm not defending either side here; as far as I'm concerned, both are being equally shady.


No, I'm surprised that everyone wants to make it a huge issue when ATi does it, yet every time nVidia does it, it goes unnoticed and uncommented.
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NOT everyone is like this. Lots of people are just as annoyed as you are... perhaps we're just tired of arguing? :rolleyes:

Things are getting worse, methinks. With earlier games you just pressed ESC and it skipped the screens; Tribes: Vengeance has you click through 5 seperate screens (Vivendi Universal Games! Sierra corp.! Irrational Games! Buy ATi! Rated T for Teen!) to get to the menu. ESC doesn't work! :mad:
 
DanK said:
Things are getting worse, methinks. With earlier games you just pressed ESC and it skipped the screens; Tribes: Vengeance has you click through 5 seperate screens (Vivendi Universal Games! Sierra corp.! Irrational Games! Buy ATi! Rated T for Teen!) to get to the menu. ESC doesn't work! :mad:
Click to expand...

Heh. Hey I hate that with DVDs too that force ya to watch trailers on movies you don't care.
 
So what? There was a movie in the 1980's called Crazy people starring Dudley Moore and it had a Sony commercial in the movie.

In Highlander, you see a guy eating a bag of Doritos. So WHAT?! It's been happening since the dawn of film and television. Does it surprise you that it happens in games now? Big deal, if Coke and Pepsi want to advertise in my games I don't care. Vending machines that have the Coke and Pepsi logos complete the look of realism. It doesn't bother me.

Games are just a new medium for advertisers. As games get more popular and more complex and development costs rise, guess what? You'd better get used to seeing this kind of stuff.

Does it bother you to see the SDDS logo or Dolby Digital logos on a DVD case? Does it bother you when you see a Chevy truck in a movie? Or a Ford Mustang in a Movie? Chances are you don't think about it too much.

You shouldn't think about it in games either. It's really not anything to get worked up about.

Now when games get optimized for certain hardware and are specifically coded to make the competitors products run like ass, that's a problem. That's something to get upset about.
 
It's not precisely the same thing. With product placement in movies, for example, one might not notice it or can choose to focus on other things taking place at the same time. With games, it's the only thing on your screen; your computer is hijacked for a brief period, its sole purpose to display advertising. People despise this on DVDs (as mentioned above), why shouldn't they feel the same about games? If anything it's worse, since games are supposed to be about active involvement; forcing an unnecessary passive experience on the player should be verboten!

Plus, think of all that extra wear and tear that's being done to my mouse when I have to click through! I paid like $50 for this thing! :p
 
Sir-Fragalot said:
Now when games get optimized for certain hardware and are specifically coded to make the competitors products run like ass, that's a problem. That's something to get upset about.
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I agree. So why is everyone up in arms about HL2? They didn't do that. It's not Valve's fault nVidia decided not to implement 24-bit whatzit.
 
skritch said:
I agree. So why is everyone up in arms about HL2? They didn't do that. It's not Valve's fault nVidia decided not to implement 24-bit whatzit.
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Let's not start the "Valve Sucks" thread all over again. 16-bit is part of the spec, too. And as shown in the other thread, in most cases FP16 is enough precision so as not to cause image quality loss. Besides, do you have any idea how difficult adding a precision path in hardware would be? FP16 is enough most of the time, and they can do FP32 when you need full precision.

ATi is just as guilty of not including features: their cards don't do 16- or 32-bit. They can only do FP24. And HL2 only does FP24. Valve dropped the mixed-mode rendering path that would have done FP16 on the FX series. Sounds a lot like "coding against a competitor's products" to me.
 
DanK said:
Let's not start the "Valve Sucks" thread all over again. 16-bit is part of the spec, too. And as shown in the other thread, in most cases FP16 is enough precision so as not to cause image quality loss. Besides, do you have any idea how difficult adding a precision path in hardware would be? FP16 is enough most of the time, and they can do FP32 when you need full precision.

ATi is just as guilty of not including features: their cards don't do 16- or 32-bit. They can only do FP24. And HL2 only does FP24. Valve dropped the mixed-mode rendering path that would have done FP16 on the FX series. Sounds a lot like "coding against a competitor's products" to me.
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Aside from your first sentence, isn't the rest of your post doing what your first sentence is telling us not to do?
 
Heh, I was just trying to sum up the allegations of the other thread so we didn't have the same questions asked twice.
 
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