ATI Interview: You ask the questions

[heppu]

When Will ATI make card that is as fast as geforce2 cards?

 

[BFG10K]

When Will ATI make card that is as fast as geforce2 cards?

Saying nVidia's boards are faster than ATi's is a highly debatable statement. ATi's Hyper-Z technology really helps to keep minimum framerates up, which is really important in 3D games.

 

[zsir]

This was posted on Rage3D...

Orton outlined what intense competition from NVIDIA has forced ATI to learn. "In the past, we never really went for all out [graphics] performance and driving technology. Instead, what ATI was good at and able to do because of its market position, was let technology trickle down naturally from the high end of its product line down through the order."

This model doesn't work anymore, as NVIDIA's huge desktop PC-market share gains against ATI show. ATI has been forced into a big change of focus as described by Orton. "Today what we're focused on is developing world-class gaming performance, and driving this into the workstation and performance market where we can leverage ATI's historic strength at driving out production costs. This is a big departure from the past, when we never went for all-out performance."


Could he elaborate....

 

[DustySmurf]

Why did the VideoWonder card using the C-Cube Mpeg2 encoder get cancelled just before the December 99 ship date ?
I still want a PC based PVR option, I was disappointed to find mid-way through 2000 that the "Better solution" was to buy a Radon card for video capture - where was the hardware mpeg2 encoder? .. and when you already have a GeForce for 3D this just wasn't an option.

 

[guste]

I think all the good questions have been suggested already. My only wish is that Mr. Orton doesn't provide the awful answers that he gave for his other recent interview with Sharky.

This is a much better interview, and I hope that Mr. Orton was taking notes that day....

 

[WoundedWallet]

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When will ATI stop using COREL programmers to write their drivers?
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ooops!

 

[martiol]

Will there ever be an tv addon to Radeon 32 DDR?
It's so sad watcing DVD on the monitor.

 

[CyruzTheGreat]

From the sharky interview

http://www.sharkyextreme.com/hardware/articles/dave_orton_interview/4.shtml

"Dave Orton: ATI continues to strive to deliver the highest quality and performance in our drivers. Radeon has made a significant improvement in the quality of our s/w drivers, and we will continue to raise the bar for the industry. The improvements are attributed to our processes, our architecture, and our people. We are building a universal driver architecture that will allow all Radeon products and all future generations to build on the strength of the Radeon drivers. We have received good feedback on the quality of Radeon drivers. We intend to build on this trend. In terms of support for dual-asic solutions - ATI is committed to MAXX technology. The Radeon driver was developed with these plans in mind. "

- Bull-s-h-i-t... is all i can say.. And sir, howabout all the rage pro, 128, 128 pro customers wich u scre'wed upside down ? What abou tthem ?

Dave : u said it herh, scre'w em.. been there, done that, will do it again.. herh


I will have to *see* it before i friggin belive it. Maybe u should get out of ur VB driver writing envoriment. These drviers r even more buggier than windoze itself..

Never in my 12-13 years of PC using experience have i EVER been faced with something like this..

visit www.rageunderground.com to get a clue of what im talking about (the discussion boards)

 

[NPlack]

My main concern with the ATI Cards is the horrible performance in W2K. I love this O/S, but the ATI card just won't allow me to do this due to the lack of performance in W2K games. The Capture support works exellent in Win98SE, but where is this in W2k? Also what about DTV and HDTV support in the TV tuner? Is a driver update required? Or is there a BIOS or Hardware limitation? My local town now has all of the stations broadcasting in DTV. I would have liked to have my card be able to decode this. These are my main conserns. I would really like to know about this.
-Thanks!
Plack

 

[rickn]

I doubt Mr.Orton even answers these questions. His answers from that Sharky interview sounds like they were answered by someone in marketing -- they are worded way to eloquently. He just passes them off to someone else to answer. And they we feed a line of BS just like they always do to try and hold everyone over to their next product, and the same suckers will fall for it all over again

 

[Exorchist]

I have only got this one question:

Are you gona implent support for 8-bit palletized textures?
I`m a huge Final Fantasy-fan, and the game looks best with that feature.
I had to buy the voodoo5 5500 AGP to get that (though i had intended to buy radeon).

Simen

 

[Esquire]

Would you rather eat a spoonful of salt or of pepper?

 

[Soccerman]

uhh, guys the reason why I'm saying don't concentrate on Drivers still stands, you're not going to get any informative answers out of him, just the typical PR (which is why he's there) about them striving for better drivers etc..

besides, I think their drivers have improved quite a bit (the beta ones anyway), though like I said in my last post, win2K still needs improvement (from what I've seen so far).

maybe you should all look at some facts about their latest drivers, before harping on them for not releasing newer better drivers at all!

 

[cgtran]

SUGGESTION AND QUESTIONS
Suggestion: why don't they have the final stabled drivers for the videocard before they release it out to the public whiling leaving them behind with problems to complain about.

Questions:
What's the next step in their AIW? is it going to be HDTV compatable with 64mb?
If so, what would the approximate price be for this card, and when will it be release with suitable drivers?

 

[fadel]

Hi Anand, you are great guy, i like you.
My question is, will ATI have one drivers, support all ATI GPU's. are they redying new drivers like this. when will they available.

 

[ltk007]

1) What are your plans to compete with Nvidia's new mobile video cards, as well as the NV20?

2) Was the 3DFX buyout a good thing in the eyes of ATI or not? Does less competition mean more market for ATI, or does it mean more domination by Nvidia?

3) Have the sales for the Radeon been better or worse than expected? Is ATI's future secure?

4) Can I have a free AIW Radeon?

 

[smukkel]

My 2 bit question:

Does the COO see any revolutionary uses of videocards/chips in the near future in home apliances or other gadgets? And: The concept of a cpu --> graficscard --> monitor/tv is been around for decades now, does he expect any changes in that area? (monitors with integrated videocards graficchip on cpu instead of northbridge ? What's his idea of future technology development?


Good luck Anand

Smukkel

 

[Cryect]

Does ATI plan to add support for Satelite Dish and Pay-Per-View in their All-In-Wonder line?
Will drivers continued to be updated on a regular basis?
Will ATI being moving to a chip based tuner?
Will MPEG4 support be possiblely included for compression/decompression in hardware like MPEG1 and MPEG2 have?
Will similar technology to that in the Gamecube be appearing in PC products?
Can we expect to see improved 16bit scores anytime soon?
What about 64bit color does ATI plan to be the first to deliver 64 bit color?

 

[NicColt]

Since Video for Windows (VfW) is an industry standard in video capture, why did ATI severely limit the functionality of all it's Radeon cards by only supporting DirectShow and not include support for Video for Windows. VfW is an industry standard when it comes to third party capturing software like NetMeeting and Windows Media Encoder 8, even previous ATI cards like the AIW-128 supported VfW. What do you tell all the present, and potential future owners that ATi isn't or won't support Video for Windows.

That's what I would like to know.

 

[Webmonkey]

This is what I would like to ask ATI:

1. Is there plans for a "Rage Theater 2/pro" chip with improved MPEG2 encoding performance/quality - and pherhaps hardware en/de-coding support for MPEG-4/divx?

2. The current Tv-Wonder only has support for MPEG1 - When will ATI make a new version of its TV Wonder - with the Rage Theater chip and MPEG2 suppport, so that we can buy a seperate capture card and seperate Radeon (2) 64MB.

3. Is it true that ATI will start to release all version of its next Radeon 2 at the same time, so that we do not need to wait months before we can get an All-in-wonder? and what about the European version of the AIW? Will we still have to wait almost ½ a year?

It would be nice to have, so that my PC can replace my VCR and with the low price of CDR media, it could be both easy and cheap to create SVCDs.

Webmonkey

 

[CyruzTheGreat]

if he gives u a 'sharky' response, fart in his face and tell him to come up with something else.

 

[thermite88]

Will ATi acknowledge the W2K driver problem by posting a open and honest assessment of the issue in their support page? Let the user and potential buyer to know the issues, sources of the problem and what to expect in the near term future.

I have one Radeon DDR sitting on my desk waiting to be installed. It will not happen until an acceptable W2K driver is available.

 

[Warpo]

How will ATI support alternative OS's with their driver support? Will they develop their own drivers for current and future cards, or leave it to the open source developers to do so?

 

[RadioactiveCPU]

Will ATI make drivers to support Video For Windows? If so, when?

 

[Stormlord]

- Why is the All In Wonder Radeon still not available in Europe?
- Why is there only a 32MB version of the All In Wonder Radeon, and no 64MB version?
- Why were the Radeon chips & memory clocked at 166/183Mhz, when about all of the chips can handle 200Mhz? If the problem is chip availability why not release an "ultra" version at higher clock with higher speed memory @ a premium? Nvidia does it, why not you?
- Why is there no Radeon VIVO with SVIDEO in/out - I mean: only composite sucks, doesn't it - is anybody still using that crap? The space is there on the circuitboard, only the connectors are missing. The direct competition (Asus Geforce Deluxe) has them with and without tuner (the latter being more comparative to an All In Wonder Radeon)- so why not you?
- Why are there STILL no new & stable drivers officially released by ATI while there are beta and leaked drivers circulating that solve a great many glitches and problems for several people? ATI clearly needs to attract more talented driver programmers and release unified drivers + setup up-to-date beta-drivers availability (under disclaimer ofcourse).
- Why are so many parameters of the video-in limited by ATI driversoftware (capture resolution, input formats etc...)?
- Why do the ATI interfaces have to look so damned ugly and cheesy? Have any of you guys ever heard of design?
- Will we have to wait for 1-2 years with Radeon 2 aswell before we get legitimately released stable and flawless drivers?

While I have to congratulate your hardwareteam on a great job (they appear to be among the few to adhere closely to the AGP specs), I think the softwareteam needs more decent programmers and resources.