Zardon

ATI have had a great year, with product releases and increasingly good driver support. I recently interviewed Terry Makedon ATI Senior Product Manager and asked him some real world questions so we could get an insight into how ATI work regarding driver support and other issues.

[Zardon] Terry, I appreciate you taking the time in your busy schedule to answer these questions for the Driverheaven members, hopefully it will aid the community to understand a day in your life working for one of the top graphics companies in the world.
How long have you been working for ATI?, What are your daily duties in ATI?

[Terry Makedon] Thanks for taking the time out to interview me. I have been at ATI for about two years now as the Senior Product Manager for ATI's desktop software. I am responsible for the whole CATALYST initiative on the marketing side which involves ATI's drivers, Hydravision, Multimedia Center, and Remote Wonder software. Typically my role at ATI break down into one of two areas. The first is the product planning side. What this basically means is I am responsible for prioritizing and defining ATI's software roadmap in terms of what new features need to be included as well as what priority certain software bugs receive. The second side is marketing our drivers externally which involves talking to media such as yourself.
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[Zardon] Ati seem to be vastly improving driver support in the last year, how do you feel right now about the current state of support an ATI customer will receive?

[Terry Makedon] I feel that ATI's support is top notch in the graphics industry bar none. We have a large dedicated staff of customer support specialists and have reduced our turn around time for customer support to record levels. Furthermore we support all our partner cards, in other words it doesn't matter if you buy an ATI branded retail card or say for example a Hercules, Sapphire, or Visiontek card you still get ATI tech support. We are also very accessible to users whether it be in interviews like this, or even having employees help people out in the various forums.
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[Zardon] How did you go about improving the drivers?

[Terry Makedon] First of all we decided that the first thing we needed to do was get on a consistent driver release schedule. Thus with CATALYST we made a commitment that we would publicly post 8-10 Microsoft certified unified driver sets a year. Our track record since CATALYST launched in June of this year speaks for itself. Secondly we implemented a feedback program called CATALYST CREW, which is a direct end user feedback program. What this means is that at any time we can get reports of incident reports and can thus easily prioritize what the biggest problems our customers are facing. This way we fix the most widespread bugs first and raise the quality of our products continually. Third we initiated some Quality Assurance programs which basically call for much more vigorous testing than ever before. Finally our Vice President of Software (Ben Bar-Haim) called on his troops to provide the world with the most stable drivers in the industry. This is actually not a marketing statement but a fact. We now have the most stable 3D accelerated graphics driver in the industry.
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[Zardon] how many staff work on developing drivers over the various platforms and operating systems? Do you have separate teams working on the various cards in your range?

[Terry Makedon] There are over 500 people involved in software at ATI, whose functions range from architects, to developers, to testers. As for the second part of your question the answer is yes. Our hardware is developed in two parallel teams one in the East Coast of the USA (Boston Area), and one in the West Coast of the USA (Silicon Valley area). The same principal basically occurs for software. The parallel teams are typically responsible for the advanced 3D features of a new card. Then the software gets consolidated at ATI's headquarters in Canada, where various other software teams exist. The Canadian office is in charge for components such as 2D, Control Panels, 3D core, testing, etc. We also have people on site at various key partners such as Microsoft working continually to improve our drivers.
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[Zardon] The recent Catalyst releases seem to be swaying customer confidence, how dedicated is ATI in providing a top quality driver for a potential customer? Can you explain the bug fixing routines?

[Terry Makedon] It is my personal goal that CATALYST is the gold standard of any software suite for hardware. Not just in the graphic card industry. We are continually introducing innovative solutions to problems that were traditionally ignored by hardware vendors. I think having incredible software is an obligation of hardware companies. I call on all other hardware companies to start committing like ATI has. I can not think of one single company that has a publicly stated driver release frequency commitment like we do. Frankly I don't understand why that is.
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[Zardon] The 9700 Pro is currently the top performing mainstream gaming card, a leading competitor is due to release a rival card to challenge your hold in the marketplace. Have you new products planned to retain this position? (im aware you may not be able to answer this directly, but I thought Id ask...)

[Terry Makedon] Of course I can not talk about future products at this time, but all I can say is we are not just sitting back and enjoying the success of the RADEON 9700Pro. We all love the fact we are technological leaders in our industry and will not let that position slip from us easily.
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[Zardon] What is ATIs projection for the future?

[Terry Makedon] Cant speak about ATI's projection for the future, but my own personal belief is that the best is yet to come. Graphic realism is constantly evolving and with DirectX9 and OpenGL 2.0 the API's have opened a new world of possibilities to game developers. I mean once in a while I play games that are a few years old and marvel at how far the technology has come. For me personally I cant wait for games to mimic real life in terms of visual reality.
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[Zardon] Do you enjoy working for ATI?

[Terry Makedon] Love it. I joined at the right time and experienced the whole behind the scenes development of one of the greatest pieces of technology the world has ever seen (referring to the RADEON 9700Pro). We were all so excited when we started to hear reports from our Engineers about the performance numbers and technical capabilities we were achieving with the product . I remember the anticipation for our launch day and all the euphoria we felt when we finally told the world about the product.
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[Zardon] Any last thoughts?

[Terry Makedon] Well first thanks for the interest you and your web site have shown in ATI and our products. I wish you great luck in the future and for all your readers that own ATI products I would like to personally say "Thank you".

Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays and have a great, prosperous and healthy New Year everyone!

Thanks to Chris Hook for his help with this interview

LukeK

not sure if im allowed to post in here, but I wanted to join up to thank ATI for a great year and for making the best video card on the market (the 9700 pro).

I love mine and I look forward to next year.

thanks terry to you and all your staff, merry christmas

Zarathustra

Yep Terry has been a huge help to the ATI community and we appreciate his hard work!

digitalwanderer

I might rant against ATI a lot lately, but I've heard nothing but good things about Terry and Chris. They're the kind of peeps that make me ALMOST want to re-think me attitude with ATI. Great interview, very informative. Thanks.

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ToshiroOC

Just want to thank Zardon and Terry for spending some time to get more information to us, the teeming masses!

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Mark7

Having just come off a software problem with my AIW card, I'd say that Terry has a rough road yet ahead. When I first contacted ATI customer "support" I got the usual canned reply that had absolutely nothing to do with the problem I listed. From everything I've read on various sites, this is the normal response from ATI.

I've been using my AIW card for almost a year with great satisfaction, but about 3 months ago, all of a sudden an "RManager" error appeared. I simply reloaded the ATI drivers from the disk and immediately everything went back to normal. However, last week, again, the problem popped up and I could not capture in mpeg1 format. ATI's mpeg2 format is next to worthless as far as having others use your video's (unless they have an ATI card and drivers installed also) so I had a real problem.

When I received no intelligent response from ATI, I contacted Microsoft tech support (for a fee!!) and they explained that the the error message was caused by a vendor software problem. Nothing they could do. More emails to ATI brought no real suggestions forthcoming - except to install an obscure codec from their site that has mucho warnings saying "Do not install with ATI hardware!!". The system worked perfectly for almost a year, now the "magic" answer was a new codec???

To make a long story short, I used my disassembler/assembler to see what was the problem with the ATI software. What a surprise - I was taught assembly coding all too many years ago. The level of expertise I saw in the code, IMHO, was rank amatuer. I patched about 8 different sections and now have the system functioning again with the resultant captures now better (more clarity) than under the ATI original drivers.

So, GOOD LUCK, Terry!! You seem to have a monumental job ahead of you!!!

Mark7

ATI LoVeR 9700

The thing is maybe that fix won't work for everybody. When you have a card like the AIW, there are so manythings to program for on their you'd cry if you had to do it. ATi tries to fix the majority of problems, for the largest group of users with problems.

I think ATi has been doing a great job, they've been fixing the most widely known problems and working their way down to the smaller ones.

And you make it sound like you were forced to learn assembly....

digitalwanderer

Wasn't everybody?

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Mark7

Actually, I was "forced" to learn Assembly, Fortran, Cobol, PL/1, etc. But grew to love assembly. Before Gates and Allen "borrowed" DEC's Basic to start their company, I had already written an Operating system (based on mag tape storage) in assembly for a series of industrial microcomputers.

Glad to see that you're an ATI software group supporter - (or are you one of them?) I just knew there must a couple people around that loved them dearly.

I reiterate!! I think ATI hardware is TOPS!! And I'm dead serious in this statement. I think the Radeon products are superior to anything nVidia has - hardwarewise. But software wise, ATI has a loooonnng way to go. Witness their first attempts a mobo chipsets. Dud City becasue of the lack of finely tuned software; should have been an "instant winner".

As for the "fix", it's only chance that XP will do an interrupt at the wrong time when the ATI software is trying to accomplish a couple items. If the software was "done right", the interrupt would have no effect. So, a percentage of users can easily experience this problem. I have to give Microsoft the credit for pointing me in the right direction as to where to look. RManager problems are indicative of badly written software (their words) and it isn't reserved just for ATI. But it should never happen!!

Mark7

digitalwanderer

I've always agreed with this philosophy, but don't you feel that might actually be turning a corner this time? I've been pretty impressed with their recent efforts and think with just a skotch of work their drivers might actually be considered almost "decent" now.

You don't feel they've improved? Honestly?

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Mark7

Do I think that they've improved? In hardware, YES!!!! I don't know about the software they wrote last week (or the week before, etc). My main "gripe" is the REAL lack of software support. For starters, go to their website with any number of browser versions and you won't be able to communicate. There IS an HTML standard, but they seem to be unaware of it.

Next, and I would recommend doing this just for the "grand" experience, file a report regarding any software problem. First, you'll get a referal to a list of web pages that covers much territory. It may or may not have anything to do with your problem, they seem to care less. Secondly, there will be no real attempt to acertain your specific problem - no matter how much detail you provide. In other words, if you can't ferret out a solution from the sparse list of faqs they'll give you, well that's just too tough luck (for you). Having bought nVidia cards for quite a number of years and having used their tech support on a couple occaisons, I can tell you there is a BIG difference. I mean a BIG difference. At least nVidia personnel actually try to dig into the details - that just doesn't happen with ATI. Either they don't know HOW to dig into details - or don't have the facilities to do so.

With ATI's apparant determination to branch out into other fields that speaks well for their upper managements determination. But to be successful they better take a CLOSE look at their customer support. The computer industry is starting to become littered with the "bodies" of once fine companies that couldn't control their services - hope ATI doesn't become one of them. ATI SHOULD be able to easily go head to head with nVidia, plus kick VIA's butt on the motherboard front. But it takes more then words to accomplish the task!!

Mark7

unifox

3DFX is The only one that I remember of, that had fixed driver release "date" every 14 day there would be released a new set of drivers, first a beta set, then a certfied set...giving a total of 12 certified driver sets a year....Damn I miss 3DFX and it's [COLOR=orangered]POWER[/COLOR] F*CK Nvidia for stealing tech from 3DFX, that lead them into a lawsuit that 3DFX would have won, but didn't because of "bad money using". Please give me back my Glide API....damn no more low fps...................................[COLOR=orangered]POWER!!!!!!!!!!!![/COLOR]

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Damn - I need help

infinity

Things really don't happen all of a sudden. With a lot of drivers and patches, they are not necessary unless you have a problem currently or they allow an unaceptable security gap.

"ATI does not recommend unnecessary driver updates, when your graphics card is functioning properly. "

So some program or a Windows update is to blame, and the drivers would have to be reworked.

As far as support in general, its gotten 100% better then the original radeon days. At least now they probably have the systems to handle e-mails and phone support. Even though you got a form letter back, the person who read it, hit reply and in some software on some server marked in a PeopleSoft database "8500 AIW 128" "Capture issues" "Other: RManager Mpeg1."

I have the exact same card and do run into problems, with that much on it I would only imagine it would and quite frankly would be scared if I didn't, but when you inovate, you create the problems (and watching tv while playing cs or any other program counts, then its inovative ;) I benched 9000 or so when I first got the card. And now its around 9900. Not bad and the problems that I may have had when I updated this and that get worked out by the next release.

Two years is not alot of time to get things done perfectly, but it is a great start. ATi actually has Linux Drivers !?!!?! and well like alot of Linux Drivers, they're horrible!!!! But I'll continue to send e-mails til they fix it.

I have to give the guy the credit when he deserves it. Though it may not be perfect, he's doing alotbetter then the guy he replaced ;)

PS 3dfx > all

Quinn1981

Even though I loath ATI products and the companies performance seems to be lacking in nearly every front to me...

... I still have noticed a steadily growing commitment to hardware and software quality. Most notably, the drivers have improved leaps and bounds over the Rage128 days.

I think the biggest thing is the people (customers) are being listened to and remembered.

There are still a lot of things to work on and certain things that are overly praised (drivers, tech support); still I do see more effort and people working hard.

Nice work. Keep up the progress.

PS: Please release some new software for the TV Wonder VE please.

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