Looking Back At ATI Technologies

Lord Magus said:
It was 2004 I think, I had a 9800 Pro flashed to XT. Purchased an aftermarket cooler for it too.
Used to leave the window open during snow season to break synthetic benchmarks records...
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Those were the days. I built a custom loop with anti-freeze fill and hung the radiator out the window during the winter.

A buddy of mine had a Zalman Reserator out in his back yard.

We were soldiers once.....
 
The good ol' days of playing Far Cry (the original one!) with my trusty 9700 Pro, brings back memories.
 
Good times. I did have a long run time with a 9700pro. I had an X850 XT for just a few weeks before flipping it---- couldn't justify the $$$ over the 9700pro for what I was doing at the time.

HD 4770 was the next card I had nearly that long of a run with.
 
The 9700/9800 was really just "Boom, Headshot" of the day for sure.

I liked the Mach64 as well, because they had working OS/2 drivers. Right. Now leave me alone. It was NT before NT, but with the fantastic support and marketing of IBM.
 
I did both a 9700 and 9800 Pro as they came out... I miss those days but only a little. I think UT2K4 was new when those came out and I remember being in 'awe' of it all, if memory serves.
 
Rev. Night said:
Half life 2 was a huge killer app for the 9800xt. Geforce 5800s weren't doing shit
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You know it's funny looking back at it now but back in 2004 the general consensus on this board was that NVidia had got the much better deal by getting the preferred status with id Software for Doom 3. Half Life 2 didn't actually come out with the 9800XT in 2003, it came out a year later when it was the Radeon X800 vs GeForce 6800 series (the Radeon 9800/9600 Half Life 2 promotion actually came out a year before the game was released). By 2004, NVidia basically had ATI beat since the X800XT was basically vaporware (6800 Ultra was the default winner) and the 6800GT romped the X800 Pro. Furthermore, Half Life 2 wasn't demanding at all compared to games like Halo or Doom 3 that released over the past year and so having ATI cards optimized for Half Life 2 was basically a moot point since basically any decent card at that point was getting 100+ fps.

It's really interesting how those details aren't relevant at all now and history shows ATI wiping the floor with NVidia in part to the Half Life 2 + Steam partnership it had with Valve. I guess nobody at the time predicted just how transformative Steam would be for the industry. ATI teaming up with them at that point now looks like the industry-equivalent of the production label that first signed the Beatles. It showed brilliant foresight by ATI even though the intended fruits of the partnership were more or less void due to the late release of Half Life 2.
 
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Good points. That being said, I remember when hl2 was leaked and the dev notes was only like 33% done. This was after the intended release date. And this beta game, the 9800xt crushed it
 
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