Yep. I believe ATI was the one where if you renamed quake.exe to quack.exe it suddenly performed significantly worse.

Shader replacement and fingerprinting is par for the course in the GPU industry. The ethics are arguable when it comes to applications that aren't benchmarks - is it really wrong for the vendor to apply post-facto optimization to give end-users a better experience? Certainly, though, in the case of benchmarks it's a slimy practice.

It is now, and because it improves things for gamers it’s hard to argue with.

Quack.exe was for Quake 3, Before shaders even existed. At that time drivers didn’t have special paths for certain games, which is what made it a scandal.

If ATI had said they were doing it, perhaps it would have been fine. But they hid it and looked like they were doing something underhanded (true or not).