[^eMpTy^]

Am I the only one that thinks it's quite funny that, despite ATi bitching non-stop about nVidia using shader replacements, they released their new AI optimizations today and all the sudden shader replacements are a perfectly legit optimization...hahaha...

[Guden Oden]

Dude, you're obviously just out to pick a fight with this topic, I bet you were one of those defected Nvidiots who swore by ATi and cursed the GFFXes before the 6800 debuted... Anyway, this latest ATi feature/whatever has nothing to do with shader replacements.

Please engage brain before typing!

[digitalwanderer]

Yes, but it's ok when ATi does it since they're the good guys. 8)

[^eMpTy^]

Dude I'm a hardcore nvidiot...I just sold my 5900Ultra and got a GT...

And I'm not trying to pick a fight...I honestly think it's funny...here's what I was referring to:

As for the value of the speed boost, we can quote a representative of ATI Technologies who said Doom 3 enjoyed up to 25% fps rate increase due to the use of tri-linear filtering optimizations and the use of a special shader instead of texture lookup tables.

-Xbit labs

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/vid...0-games_2.html

In DOOM 3, ATI is currently implementing a mathematically correct shader replacement that has to deal with lighting. This shader replacement improves performance while maintaining the same image quality.

-[H]ardOCP

http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=NjY2LDI=

What this implies is that NVIDIA are performing “shader substitution� again. We saw them spend most of last year doing this for benchmarks, and the consequence looks like faster benchmark numbers but it’s important to understand that the NVIDIA driver isn’t running the same code as the ATI driver. The ATI driver does what it’s asked, and does it fast, and the NVIDIA driver does something that’s quite similar to what it’s asked to do – but which is only chosen because it’s faster.

-Richard Huddy, ATI's director of European developer relations

http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/viewto...&view=next

I know this comes off as a flamebait kind of topic...but seriously...they just did a 180 on the whole shader replacement thing after they bitched and bitched.

[Reverend]

I'll take the chance of being accused of "Rev doesn't want anyone to see ATI in a bad light" by locking this thread.

If you want to discuss about IHVs and their "optimizations" policies, make a new mature thread at the 3D Graphics Companies and Industry forum. And I do mean mature posts, not a flame-inducing one like the original/first post in this thread.