ATI Interview: You ask the questions

[KimVette]

I have a few questions for ATI:

Assuming he gives candid responses and avoid canned marketing doublespeak

1. When are you going to do something about your lackluster support? You have great feature-rich products, but by the time you make them stable they are "could've beens" (not even has-beens!) because of the time it takes you to post even "unofficial" (read: beta and unsupported) drivers that allow the user to access most of the advertised functionality

2. When are you going to change your stance regarding Windows 2000 and acknowledge that Windows 2000 and multiprocessing are here to stay and are bound to become very popular with high-end gamers and media producers once more SMP-aware multithreading apps become available?

3. Why does your support spew out canned responses which do not even address support queries and/or bug reports?

4. I'm going to second this question: WHY the HELL did you can the Video Wonder just before release? I wanted one, and still want one. Please repeat this mantra until you understand it: "Hardware realtime MPeG2 encoding good. Software MPeG2 encoding bad."

5. Why oh why did you release the Radeon All in Wonder in only 32MB form?

6. You know, two Radeon chips, TV tuner, 64MB of RAM, and a MPeG2 encoding coprocessor on one board would be a GREAT product. If you won't do that, how about a single Radeon chip with 64MB of RAM, and a MPeG2 encoding coprocessor on one board ?

7. When are you going to finally ship ANY product on time? I'm a software engineer at a very hot Boston-area startup and we are able to release within 1 month of our targeted date. Why can't ATI, a company that has been around since the 80s?

8. Now that you have expanded and built a huge new office, how about staffing it up with experienced software engineers who actually know how to unit test, a proper quality assurance department which actually validates said functoinality, and a support staff which actually knows hardware?

Assuming he does not give candid responses and spews canned marketing doublespeak

In this case let's not even bother asking technical questions and let's have some fun:

1. Do you have a pet monkey named "bubbles?"
2. Are you the founder of realdoll?
3. How many body piercings do you have, and what do you have pierced?

Well, I'd rather see those three answered than read doublespeak.

--Kim

 

[BeefJerky]

I hear that the Radeon drivers don't support T&L and other features on the Mac is that true?

 

[Sharptooth]

I'm a Super7 user and would like to know what kind of support is being considered in the drivers for Radeon products?

What kind of openGL and D3D performance can we expect for our systems?

--Fernando

 

[mahle]

Perhaps you can help, since ATI support has no knowledge. I suspect the problem lies in the KT133 chipset.
I have the AGP Radeon All In Wonder 32 Mb Tuner board on an MSI K7T Pro. I believe I have the correct bios settings and the latest motherboard bios, 2.1. I have the Via 4-in-1 chipset drivers installed, 4.25. The AMD 1 gig CPU seems to work well enough with everything else.

My problem is that when I boot up the tuner and start changing channels, it will eventually hang. The mouse pointer will disappear, then the picture. If I try to boot up a DVD, it will hang. Video capture I haven't tried since the board is not stable enough to get to the point where I can try video capture!

I believe it is a video driver problem, or the KT133 chipset problem.

What do you think?

thanks!

 

[yakimushi]

Drivers that work in Win2K??? Pretty please?

 

[CQuinn]

mahle,

Try the Via 4in1 version 4.27 drivers
http://www.viahardware.com/download/index.shtm#4in1

Disable ATIgart in startup (msconfig)
- the AGP drivers that are installed for the Radeon can conflict with the
Via AGP drivers.

see also http://www.rage3d.com/radeon/guide/
for other helpful tips.


I have upgraded my AIW Radeon to an Abit KT7-Raid and am using the
3063 drivers. The hang problem I had before with DVDs went away
when I upgraded. I had never seen a problem switching channels once
the ATI Tuner drivers were all installed.

 

[geekspeak]

:disgust:
Drivers Drivers Drivers, we need better driver support.
I just picked up a radeon 32DDR and I've had nothing but problems with 3d games, the card I replaced, a TNT2 worked perfectly with everything. I'm almost ready to return it and get a GeForce 2.

What are they going to do about this.

 

[Treasurer]

Hi,

The most important feature of a video card to me is the DVD playback quality. I know that the ATI Radeon has very good quality, but it failed the moire tests in Madonion and Faroudja's Video 2000 benchmark. If this was improved to pass the tests, ATI would be close to pefection! I really look forward to seeing this improved upon. Can this be done for 3rd generation Radeon?

Thanks

 

[ET]

Wow, some response! (Although most of it was "drivers!&quot I think that CQuinn had the best questions. Anyway, here are mine:

Why does ATI provide VIVO functionality only on the highest end cards. I could live well with slow 3D and a low amount of RAM (even 8MB), and I can live without a TV tuner, but would like good video in and out. The Radeon VE will supply a solution for the 'out' part, but not for video in. Is there any chance for a low end card with such functionality?

How does the planned Intel chipset with integrated Radeon core compare to ATI's S1-370 TL, and ATI's next generation north bridge? Will the Intel deal affect the development of ATI's own chipsets? When will ATi's chipsets appear on the market?


Also, a couple of answers to posts made here:

Redwingsguy, Glide is already free for all, and has been for a year or two, I think.

pidge, regarding unified drivers and ATI's support - ATI has better support for older products than nVIDIA. Have you seen a driver update for the Riva 128 lately (Rage Pro generation)? And nVIDIA's latest drivers have been reported to run more slowly on TNT cards than older drivers. Would you really want to download new drivers for the Rage 128 just to find out the update is only for the Radeon, or is even slowing down your chip? Frankly, I'd rather have drivers for each chip separately.

 

[bearax]

I briefly scanned over the interview done at Sharkys. If anyone here thinks that you are going to get real answers you are wasting your time. It seems that Mr. Orton is a politician and gives canned responses. I think it would accomplish more not to ask him questions but to tell him his driver development team sucks. Give him a print out of every post given and send links to EVERYONE at ATI. I don't think Mr Orton knows what the problems are. He needs to know. He needs to walk away from the interview with the feeling that if he does not get his company in gear there will be no company in a year or two. End of story. Get a development team that can produce usable drivers for all of the major chipsets and the Mac or call it a night.

If you can't get through to him, ask him when the radeon ve hydravision dual display card is going to be released and if there will be a full blown radeon version made.

thanks

 

[KimVette]

<< I briefly scanned over the interview done at Sharkys. If anyone here thinks that you are going to get real answers you are wasting your time. It seems that Mr. Orton is a politician and gives canned responses. I think it would accomplish more not to ask him questions but to tell him his driver development team sucks. Give him a print out of every post given and send links to >>



Hence the reasoning for the second set of questions I posted if he plans to give canned responses -- we may as well get in some gossip if he's just going to lie about the products and the company anyway.

$.02

--Kim

 

[CowboyBebop]

Will ATI keep or cut the 3 textures per pipeline, will ati come out wit a demo that uses the 3 textures per pipe that can run on other cards so game developers can see the advantage of having 3 texture per pipe in one pass ? Ati knows that their support is the only real weak link and if they do what are there plans to tackle it because as a fan and a stock holder I want a real answer

 

[KimVette]

You're a stockholder? In that case he has all the more reason to lie and evade questions for the Anandtech interview. Call me a cynic, but I expect MOTS (more of the same) from ATI.:disgust:

I just wish someone else would offer all-in-one cards (3D/2D/Video Capture/Tuner) then I'd dump ATI products like a bucket of warm vomit.

--Kim

 

[KimVette]

^ Bump!! ^
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[NicColt]

Has this interview ever been done ? where is it.

I also have a question.

According to this press release, it says that WindowsME Movie Maker and the ALL-IN-WONDER RADEON are a &quot;perfect match&quot; and &quot;provides the ideal video editing system&quot; and &quot;enhanced support for NetMeeting&quot;

However ATI's official stance with Video for Windows it this;
&quot;ALL-IN-WONDER RADEON does not provide direct support for Video For Windows solutions.&quot;

Now since those software requires a Video for Windows WDM and the Radeon's only include support for directshow and ATI does not provide support for Video for Windows and therefore makes these products totally incompatible and useless with Radeon cards and since ATI knew about this before releasing the September 14th press release, my question is;

Will ATI be releasing a similar press release for the upcoming Windows XP, will they continue to mislead the video card buying public in order to save face with marketing and issue lies about the true in-compatibility with the Radeon cards?

Nic