If by "a few years back" you mean 14 years ago with the quake/quack thing. But nobody is saying this is the cheating-style "optimizing" which has been judged a

If by "a few years back" you mean 14 years ago with the quake/quack thing. But nobody is saying this is the cheating-style "optimizing" which has been judged as invalid. Both Nvidia and ATI do heavy amounts of game-specific optimizations in drivers and so long as there is no visual difference this is perceived to be fair and valid optimization.