Don't forget that Valve later rendered HDR on ATI 9600 series card with no perceivable performance penalty, and showed that elbow grease and ingenuity can remove theoretical hardware limitations.

Also, I remember that quote (from Gabe himself, I think): "We may have polished graphics further, but that game won't be Half Life anymore.", a direct stab taken at linearity of Doom of that time.

> elbow grease and ingenuity can remove theoretical hardware limitations

Of course, 'theoretical' hardware limitations aren't hard limits -- they're soft[ware] ones. However, if you find yourself battling concrete hardware limitations, what you need is to put your back into it and a little know-how.

The thing is, HDR is considered too expensive and impossible on these cards without specific hardware capabilities and relevant API support.

Valve said "Ha, let's see!" and implemented great HDR visuals with integers only. So it's not just let's hack together and see how it goes. IIRC, it took three re-implementations to get it right and performant.

Similarly, I'm not a stranger when it comes to hardware and its limits, but what deemed impossible by many, even knowledgeable people, doesn't mean it's a hard, cold truth (e.g. demoscene and PoC||GTFO).

My apologies, I read too deeply into your comment. I just enjoyed (too much) the use of the phrase 'theoretical hardware limitations'.

No worries, enjoy your stay. :)

> came with Half-Life 2

I think mine came with Vietcong, which was... underwhelming.

Is that the game that had this in its soundtrack? https://youtu.be/fuYL-keoGvU

I still listen to it on occasion. Don’t even remember how I found that song because I’ve never played that game, I don’t think.

Yes, the soundtrack and setting was objectively the best part of that game

Nope, I got a 9600XT, and it came with a serial number for HL2. I added a Zalman cooler on top of that card, and it was both silent and stable.

I got the 9600XT for Half-Life 2 which was kinda silly in the end since HL2 took so long to come out that I could have gotten a newer card. However I believe it also came with a copy of Counter-Strike Source Beta which I enjoyed greatly. My card had tiny LED's on it that prevented me from sleeping with my computer on. Great times.

I guess it depends on who made the card? Probably Sapphire and MSI and others had different bundled stuff (maybe also different by country, and I'm in EU)

Just shows how big the markup was, to be able to bundle a 60$ game with a 300$ card.

The Radeon cards came with coupons for HL2 a while before the game was released. My brother bought one from someone in school, there was quite a bit of trading going on :)

I still have mine - it came with my 9800 XT. The last AGP card I ever owned.