Quote:
Pick a card, either card
<I>Greg Shortall, Game Guru
Rogers Communications</I>
Valve, the developer of this year's most highly anticipated PC game, Half-Life 2, announced on the game's official site, that gamers with computers equipped with Nvidia graphics cards can expect some serious problems running the game when it's released later this year. Valve added that there will be "practically no workaround" for those running Nvidia GeForce and GeForce FX-series graphics cards on their PCs.
When the story broke there were many industry analysts who believed the news was nothing short of scandalous. Has Valve picked sides in the graphics chip war between ATI and Nvidia? Why would they do that? Well, it's possible Valve might want to throw their weight behind ATI because if their chips become the de facto standard, Valve could potentially lower their development costs, only having to test on one graphics chip. It is possible, but doubtful. One developer is unlikely to tip the balance in the graphics chip war, even if their game is the hottest title of the year. On the contrary, Valve is likely working overtime to get their game to run properly on Nvidia's chips — not everyone is going to be anxious to replace their graphic chip just to play Half-Life 2 (though many ardent gamers doubtlessly will). My guess is Valve or Nvidia will come up with a way to circumvent the problem before the game's release, or Nvidia will release a new chip compatible with Half-Life 2 after the game's release. The latter would provide little solace to gamers currently running Nvidia chips — they'll have to replace them anyways.
Funny, considering a few months back Nvidia was boasting that the game would run exclusively on their graphics card. Could this have ticked off someone at Valve? Maybe the scandal-mongers are on to something...
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I got a pre-order down at the local EB the other day, and all I have to say is thank God I have an ATI Radeon. I feel for all of those that have to deal with NVidia chips. I really do hope that either Valve or NVidia come up with a solution before the release date, because this game promises to be one of the best FPS games since Metroid Prime (sorry Halo lovers, that's my humble opinion) :P
To me, this is nothing more than a big 'oops' that was thankfully caught early on. To suggest that Valve has 'picked sides', and is trying to mold the market is laughable at best. While NVidia did kind of stick its foot in its mouth by claiming that HL2 would be an NVidia exclusive, that just wouldn't be enough to convince me that Valve is doing this out of spite. NVidia still owns a fair share of the market, and no red-blooded corporate capitalist would dare think of shrugging off such a large and lucrative portion of the market simply because they wanted to 'settle a score'.
All in all, I don't think NVidia owners have anything to worry about yet. I'm thinking either Valve will fix the problem, or NVidia will come out with a new driver just in time for release, but at this stage, only time will tell.
Edit: Incidentally, <a href="http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/video/display/20030718155730.html" target="_blank">here's</a> a link to another article with a few more details.