They are already self-proclaiming themselves as an AI company. They will absolutely not give up the gaming market nor should they when they control 80+% of the market and is a market leader.

I have been supporting the "little guy" since 2008 when I switched from NVIDIA to AMD. First got the HD 4870 which was basically $100 cheaper than the GTX 260 and due to it using the World's First DDR5 memory it was getting like 70-75% performance of the GTX 280 at half the price when the GTX 280 was costing over $600!

I think that was the turnaround story for AMD after the mediocre HD 2900XT and slightly better HD 3800 series, that is when they gained market share of up to 40% for Discrete graphics and even close to 50% in the Laptop Gaming space because they had superior price/performance/power especially with the HD 5800 series which was faster than Thermi I mean Fermi...lol. Gaming Laptop makers didn't want to stick that nuclear power reactor inside Gaming Laptops and went with the HD 5800 series for Gaming laptops and that got AMD to almost 50% market share which is insane when you think about it given how AMD was struggling with finance and R&D money with their crap CPUs.

Next up I got the HD 6950 BIOS flashed to HD 6970 and that is what I had my AMD Radeon avatar 10+ years ago..lol. I basically saved $100 and close to $150+ when you consider the HD 6970 got close the GTX 570. I skipped HD 7970 and got the updated Hawaii GPU with XFX R9 390X Double Dissipation which was a fantastic graphics card before switching to GTX 1060 6GB.

I even had a 17" Gaming Laptop with a Mobility Radeon HD 3650 after my previous GeForce Go 7600 died due to defective die packaging from nVidia for which they got sued for and lost. Unfortunately my Laptop maker wasn't on the list of Laptop makers on the list to get compensated which I am still mad about.

So, as you can see I have been supporting the "little guy" to close to a decade in the Desktop and Laptop space. Only switched when nvidia matched the price/power/performance of AMD or was better with the GTX 1060 6GB and had no other option to go with the RTX 3090 since I wanted to game at 4K and play Cyberpunk 2077 at 4K with max setting and Ray Tracing with DLSS Quality. Something that AMD neither had mid-last year when I finished Cyberpunk because HD 6900XT does bad at Ray Tracing at 4K, although they have improved with FRS3 but NVIDIA still has an advantage.

So...my option wasn't because I love nVIDIA, I mean I admire them as a company since my first GPU was a GeForce 4 64MB DDR but it was the lack of options and features that AMD didn't have for my needs.

AMD needs to cater to other people's needs especially at the high end when I want to game at 4K among many other features that they are lacking as mentioned in the thread.

Good news is AMD apparently is working on ML/AI for image upscaling. If AMD can match the image quality then I will jump back in a heartbeat to game at 4K. I used to get called an AMD fanboy when I was defending AMD back 7+ years ago, it wasn't that I was an AMD fanboy it's just AMD had better price/performance back then for my needs. Right now AMD hasn't met my needs at the moment.

It barely beat it in certain cases and it was MORE expensive and had less Memory. 3GB in 2013 is lame considering in 2011 HD 7970 had 3GB.

It did beat it in many cases. And for half the price. I don't see why would any get the original Titan unless you are doing professional level work, etc. What does the GTX 1070 have to do with the Titan Black that came 3 years after the R9 290X?

What's your budget? What are the rest of your PC specs?

@uninspiredcup said:

Another year, another Christmas. Steam game prices go higher, Steam sales always go lower. A cynical loop of corporate greed clinically eroding value for it's own unsated greed.

Have you bought any garbage this year?

---

Limiting spending to £40. Buying £10-20 games only/.

These are auto-buys. ( Nightdive trust)

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1678430/PowerSlave_Exhumed/?curator_clanid=5644295

https://store.steampowered.com/app/668980/Forsaken_Remastered/?curator_clanid=5644295

Won't regret Forsaken. One of the best 360 degree games ever made. I played the fan modded (X Project) around this time 9 years ago which supports HD resolution. Honestly, I don't why they call it just a "Descent clone" while it is like Descent but in many ways it's so much better. I think the controls the environments and the flashy graphics overall make it a better game.

Too bad Probe Entertainment went bust 20+ years ago and they no longer make many good 360 degree games.

What can I say about 1998. The greatest year in Gaming over that past 25 years. Some years come close (ie 2004, 2007). But 1998 was a year that from which games I am still playing today (recently Heretic 2, with 25th Anniversary game mods to improve the game with better graphics and other fixes). And recently of course the Quake 2 remaster which had the two expansions that came out in 1998.

Anyways, my favorite would be breaking it down into what I have played from 1998 and may play in the future:

Played:

Unreal: The Crysis of 1998. The 3D GPU benchmark of 1998 which was used to bench all the latest graphics card at the time. My jaws dropped to the floor with the graphics. Coming out the crashed space ship and into the vast amazing world was nothing short of stunning. The beautiful waterfalls, the lens flare, it all had a woo ahh moment. The Castle walk through in the main menu with reflective lighting on the castle bridge was stunning. One of the first if not the first Open World First Person shooter.

Forsaken: Beautiful graphics, another popular 3D graphics benchmark. A good Descent clome but I would argue it's better in some ways at least with the controls.

Half-Life: Revolutionary FPS. From the beginning of the tram ride to it's scripted sequence, to it's AI, to teleporting you to another dimension. Revolution stuff, probably the best FPS form the 90s.

Sin: The last hurrah of the 90s shooters with a bit a Duke Nukem flavor. Diverse levels with great gun play and a sexy antagonist. They don't make games like this anymore. I wonder why? ;)

Playing: Heretic 2, a good overall 3rd person game. Descent graphics for a Quake 2 engine game with community mods to improve the graphics. Better than half the crap we get in 2023 with better level design and Single Player campaign. Look at the recent Call of Duty with it's crap Single Player that only lasts 3-4 hours.

Want to play (maybe in the future):

-Grim Fandango (remastered): Played the demo back in the day. Great art design, and unique story telling with great puzzles.

-Battlezone (98 redux): Remastered 98 version. First person RTS type of game. Played the demo back in the day. Great game set in the Moon (I believe). Where you fight the Soviets for control over the moon.

-Turok 2 (remastered): From what I heard maybe the pinnacle of the Turok series. Great colorful graphics where you shoot Dinosaurs.

Other notable mentions:

-The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Some say the best Legend of Zelda game.

-Need For Speed 3: Recently played it with 1080P mod. Pretty good game for it's time. First introduced the cops vs players mode. Great tracks. Although I may not recommended it today but having played it on the PC with patches and 1080P resolution. I can see why people highly rated this game back in the day.

Other Notable Mentions:

Blitz (arcade version)

Starcraft 2.

There's too many others to mention. But it should be noted that's also when Second/Third Generation of GPUs started to hit the market and we started to see huge leaps in Computer Graphics. So, in many ways 1998 left a landmark in gaming.

Nice. Was always interested in these two.

Nice Christmas 1998 story. I had fond memories of that time. While we didn't have a good enough computer to play Half-Life I do remember trying many demo versions of games on my Dad's work computer at his work place. I believe it was P2 266 with 64MB RAM an had a nVIDA Riva 128. Tried many great games like Quake 2, Forsaken, Turok, and Need For Speed Hot Pursuit. 1998 had great many games, I would say it was probably the greatest year of gaming over the past 25 years. That's also when the second generation of 3D graphics card started to come out and you really started to see what developers could do with the new tech. It was a "magical" type moment to be around. Developers were willing to take risks on trying different types of games FPS shooters, 3rd person Action/RPG game like Heretic 2 which came out around the same time. Stealth games like Thief also came out in 1998.

Now days, it's the same old same old every year, looks at Call of Duty series.

You would assume that Valve would have updated texture file size long time ago. Not 25 years later! Guess they thought Half Life Source was the "definitive" version and didn't bother with the original. Strange they only decided to update the original Half-Life instead of Half-Life Source which had a better engine and could have updated that and gave that away for free!

Yep, Quake 3 supported 512x512. That was one of the main criticism in 1999 when Voodoo 3 was coming out in that it only supported texture 256x256 while 3DFX's competitor like the Riva TNT2 from NVidia which came around that time supported the higher texture. That's when people started to move away from 3DFX and started going into NVIDIA because upcoming titles like Quake 3 was going to support the higher texture and 32-bit color whereas 3DFX only support 16 bit.

Quake 3 like many of John Carmack's engine was ahead of it's time. It was like the Unreal 3 engine of it's time which dominated the Xbox 360 generation where multiple games was using the Unreal 3 engine, and now Unreal 5 engine in this generation.

It wasn't until Unreal Tournament 2003 and Monolith's Jupiter Lithech engine which was used in No One Lives Forever 2 that came out in 2002 that when you had a better 3D engine then Quake 3's.

Texture size would depend on the engine. Quake 3 wasn't on the PS1. No way in hell would a game like that would run on the PS1. It was however on the Dreamcast which had an actual dedicated PowerVR GPU.

I noticed Opposing Force and Blue Shift is for sale too:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/50/HalfLife_Opposing_Force/

Is it worth playing in 2023-2024?

My story of Half-Life began in a magazine where it got rave reviews of the game footage Valve showed at E3 of that year (1998 I believe) and how great the AI was where, they will track you down and attack you. I remember it was all over the place with numerous "Best of E3" awards. I didn't have a good enough compute to run it back then when it war released. .

I did play Half-Life Source later in 2010 and while there were better games that came out by them. I thought it was pretty impressive for a game that came out in 1998. With the interactivity and the initial tram ride and being teleported to another dimension and the level design, definitely the best game from the 90s. I was only used to playing Quake 1 and Duke Nukem 3D on our family PC. So, I didn't have exposure to Half-Life (since didn't have good enough computer to run it). I did try other 3D games like Quake 2, Forsaken, Turok, back in 1998 on my Dad's Work PC that had a RIVA 128 GPU.

Website that lists the changes/updates made.

"Added supported for UI Sprites and Texture files larger than 256x256."

^^ I am surprised that they only added support for Texture larger than 256x256 only now. Even the nvidia TNT back in 1998 supported larger texture files. Quake 3 was doing 512x512. Only the 3DFX Voodoo 2 and Voodoo 3 was stuck at max 256x256 texture size and 16 bit color while nVidia anything past TNT+ and I believe Rage 128+ from ATI supported 32 bit color.

You would assume that Valve would have updated texture file size long time ago. Not 25 years later! Guess they thought Half Life Source was the "definitive" version and didn't bother with the original. Strange they only decided to update the original Half-Life instead of Half-Life Source which had a better engine and could have updated that and gave that away for free!