Does the "runs best on" matter?

[Fire_Zealot]

Does the "runs best on" matter? Is there any benefit? Or is it just marketing crap?

 

[VBDude]

Just marketing. I love starting up "The Movies" and getting Intel and ATI ads when I'm using AMD and nVidia hardware. It doesn't make a (noticeable) difference what you use, just as long as it isn't obsolete. There may be slight optimizations in some games, but as hardware from competitors improves and game patches are released, the differences continue to diminish, and in some cases, actual "best on" performance can become better on competing hadware.

Most of the time these "best on" campaigns come from game developers getting free hardware in exchange for advertising during the games start-up; reason being that the advertised hardware is the very hardware the game was built on. It's easy to say it "runs best on" this hardware when it hasn't been run on anything else. (Not that the testing department would let that happen.)

When you think of it, it's a great place to put an ad if you want gamers to see them often. The only downside is some games won't let us click past it. So I start to get angry at Intel, for example, because they're delaying my enjoyment of the game. Then it becomes a copycat of non-skippable DVD intros. And I hate those too.

 

[prozac26]

Marketing.

Lots of money is involved, so some games have the "Meant to be Played" by nVidia. It doesn't mean you need an nVidia card for best performance.

 

[chuckshissle]

Yep, marketing and advertising.

 

[MrCommunistGen]

In many cases they are Bink Video files (like BF2) and if you find them, you can remove them from the game directory so that they never play.

-mcg

 

[weilin]

good call, that is true for many games.

 

[VBDude]

You know, I've never really looked into it. Thanks for the tip.

 

[coolsquirtle]

no way! they're all noobs

THE WAY ITS MEANT TO BE PLAYED!!!!

TWIMTBP RUNS SOOO MUCH SMOOTHER ON NVIDIA HARDWARE!! ITS MINDBLOWING!!!

 

[Fire_Zealot]

Okaaaaaaaay



anyways, if its just marketing crap, why is there alot more Nvidia crap than ATI crap?(atleast to the level I've seen)

 

[cleeve]

That's simple. Because they put more marketing dollars into it.

 

[SciFiMan]

There was a time a couple years ago when it was true in a few games though, depending on what DX9 features were supported on cards. Something about optimization, different code paths, etc. I forget the details but it was mostly first gen DX9 cards I believe. From now on however all cards will have all the DX10 feature set so it will just be a hardware horsepower war.

 

[Fire_Zealot]

yeah, thats gonna be great... thanks for all the info guys!