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I recall the Radeon 9800 Pro was being sold for about US$300 and came with Half-Life 2, which was designed for it. Doom 3 was out at the same time and was opti
by samplatt 5y ago
I recall the Radeon 9800 Pro was being sold for about US$300 and came with Half-Life 2, which was designed for it.
Doom 3 was out at the same time and was optimised for NVidia cards. It was a sort of "battle of the graphics platforms", both hardware-wise and software-wise.
And now two short decades later we're paying 10x the amount for top-tier cards, and HL3 still isn't out.
- gattilorenz 5y ago> came with Half-Life 2 I think mine came with Vietcong, which was... underwhelming.
- bayindirh 5y agoNope, I got a 9600XT, and it came with a serial number for HL2. I added a Zalman cooler on top of that card, and it was both silent and stable.
- gattilorenz 5y agoI guess it depends on who made the card? Probably Sapphire and MSI and others had different bundled stuff (maybe also different by country, and I'm in EU)
- poglet 5y agoI got the 9600XT for Half-Life 2 which was kinda silly in the end since HL2 took so long to come out that I could have gotten a newer card. However I believe it also came with a copy of Counter-Strike Source Beta which I enjoyed greatly. My card had tiny LED's on it that prevented me from sleeping with my computer on. Great times.
- lovehashbrowns 5y agoIs that the game that had this in its soundtrack? https://youtu.be/fuYL-keoGvU https://youtu.be/fuYL-keoGvU I still listen to it on occasion. Don’t even remember how I found that song because I’ve never played that game, I don’t think.
- gattilorenz 5y agoYes, the soundtrack and setting was objectively the best part of that game
- ricardobayes 5y agoJust shows how big the markup was, to be able to bundle a 60$ game with a 300$ card.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- bayindirh 5y agoDon't forget that Valve later rendered HDR on ATI 9600 series card with no perceivable performance penalty, and showed that elbow grease and ingenuity can remove theoretical hardware limitations. Also, I remember that quote (from Gabe himself, I think): "We may have polished graphics further, but that game won't be Half Life anymore.", a direct stab taken at linearity of Doom of that time.
- qwery 5y ago> elbow grease and ingenuity can remove theoretical hardware limitations Of course, 'theoretical' hardware limitations aren't hard limits -- they're soft[ware] ones. However, if you find yourself battling concrete hardware limitations, what you need is to put your back into it and a little know-how.
- bayindirh 5y agoThe thing is, HDR is considered too expensive and impossible on these cards without specific hardware capabilities and relevant API support. Valve said "Ha, let's see!" and implemented great HDR visuals with integers only. So it's not just let's hack together and see how it goes. IIRC, it took three re-implementations to get it right and performant. Similarly, I'm not a stranger when it comes to hardware and its limits, but what deemed impossible by many, even knowledgeable people, doesn't mean it's a hard, cold truth (e.g. demoscene and PoC||GTFO).
- filmor 5y agoThe Radeon cards came with coupons for HL2 a while before the game was released. My brother bought one from someone in school, there was quite a bit of trading going on :)
- Daneel_ 5y agoI still have mine - it came with my 9800 XT. The last AGP card I ever owned.