Forthcoming Interview with ATI VP of software: Ben Bar Haim

severance · Jan 5, 2003, 03:32 AM

dvx support (in hardware) in multimedia center (all codec)

K.I.L.E.R · Jan 5, 2003, 03:37 AM

What future surprises will their be for R300 users?

dartgeek · Jan 5, 2003, 04:04 AM

[Questions for ATi only please - David

So ATi please fix the gamma. If you want picture, ill give you pictures.

lewdvig · Jan 5, 2003, 04:30 AM

You are very brave!

1. Why does ATI employ such a poor install remove process? Do you guys like support calls or something? Just pay the guy who made ATIMAX if you have to - his program works.

2. Why not have a policy of not releasing a driver unless the top 30 games at the time work properly. How many 7xxx series owners were stuck looking at the Neverwinter Nights box instead of playing it? GTA 3 also comes to mind.

3. Why are mobility parts not covered by the Catalyst program. I know the official reason, but as someone who uses Omega drivers and older catalysts regularly to allow me to play my games - I know that the reasons cited for why M7 parts are not covered in the program is false. By necessity, I find all sorts of non-Compaq drivers that work. It would be nice if I could try the latest and greatest.

4. From where I sit, the ONLY thing that has changed since Catalyst started, is that ATI have developed much better driver marketing. My 8500 gives me enough blue screens and random reboots to know this is true and the M7 in my notebook only works with the 6076 driver set. This means that all the claimed speed improvements that accompany each release are wasted on me.

I have had a lot of fun with my 8500 and the M7 seemed like the best choice verses a sea of GF4Go 420 in the Toshibas around here - but I don't think I will be buying ATI parts during the next round. Frankly the drivers are the biggest reason.

lewdvig · Jan 5, 2003, 04:33 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by K.I.L.E.R
What future surprises will their be for R300 users?

EDITED- This about questions for ATi. Not to make smart comments - David

lewdvig · Jan 5, 2003, 04:34 AM

Hire Omega. His drivers routinely beat yours.

Fahim · Jan 5, 2003, 06:18 AM

Is there any possibilities that control panel is integrated in the same inf so that we can use inf to install full driver & control panel?

otheipion · Jan 5, 2003, 06:26 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by lewdvig
Surprise! GF FX is 40% FASTER!

Is that a surprise enough for you?

:^P

Questions for ATi only please - David

Steve81 · Jan 5, 2003, 06:28 AM

Will your drivers ever have better support for Tribes 2? A Geforce 2 out performs a 9700 pro. Something needs to be done.

13bells · Jan 5, 2003, 07:39 AM

1. Why are you locking the bios on many ATI cards so they can;t be overclocked? Leave the "marketing" to the marketers and just provide the best dam product you can for the price. So what if a few hard core gamers get more value than you chose to dispense. They'll be back to ATI again.

2. Please revoke licence to produce ATI cards,to companies like Powercolor, who consistently and deliberately misrepresent their specs to get a few extra sales. This ultimately reflects poorly on ATI. I hope this is not what you consider"marketing".

lewdvig · Jan 5, 2003, 09:00 AM

Questions for ATi only please - David

dmantione · Jan 5, 2003, 09:26 AM

I have a question regarding the length of driver support, both in the future and in the past. Basically what is your policy about how long a graphics card will receive driver support, and how new does an operating system need to be will it get a driver?

For example, if Micro$oft would release a brand new operating system today, I guess the Radeons would get a driver. Would the Rage128 get one too? And the Rage PRO?

And the past: How long do you plan to continue offering Windows 9x drivers? If you would release a card today, I would assume it gets a windows 9x driver. What about cards released two years in the future?

The reason why this interrests me is that I'm currently writing software that *has* to run on Windows 95. And for Windows 95 the Radeon is your worst enemy. So I'm often swapping video cards. I'm even thinking about writing a driver myself, but on the other hand I haven't really interrest in studying the Windows internals.

Daniël Mantione

The_KELRaTH · Jan 5, 2003, 09:38 AM

Re: 9700Pro

1) SuperSampling AA:
Is there likely to be an SS/MS AA combination option in near future?

2) Videoshader:
When will there be an implementation of this feature, I'm specifically interested in video deblocking / noise cancellation and colour Embossing over Divx.
Will it be possible for this feature be enabled to clean up ingame video cut scenes. It would seem a logical step after cleaning up the game image with AA/AF to then complete with improved cut scenes.
(I've not seen anything to suggest that Nvidia is going to offer this feature so it would seem a good direction to exploit)

3) OpenGL 2 API
Will openGL 2 be in Cat drivers shortly?
When NVidia updated their drivers from openGL 1.3 to 1.4 they claimed a 25% performance improvement. Has openGL 2 demonstrated any performance improvements in inhouse testing?

4) Can you please add an "INTENSITY" slider mode in your colour settings

Regards Kel

decan · Jan 5, 2003, 11:55 AM

When will the stuttering be fix?

KoVaR · Jan 5, 2003, 01:52 PM

1) Is ATI aware of the "tv out pluged no boot" problem with some 8500

I know that i should aks software questions... but anyway:
2) Why the hell couldn't ATI name 9500pro 9600 ?
All this 9500 pro, non-pro is making a lot of confusion
And i buy a "white-box" card you can get 9500 shipped as 9500pro...

coastie · Jan 5, 2003, 05:07 PM

Hello, I would like the following question asked:

Is ATI working on a thorough Driver uninstaller program?

This can't be that difficult to do and would be such an asset since they are coming out with new drivers almost monthly!

Thanks,

Coastie

JLP · Jan 5, 2003, 06:32 PM

I would like to ask ATI:
What are your plans regarding Linux drivers?
Will they be updated more frequently then now?
Will you put more resources into writing Linux drivers then now?
Are you actively helping in developing drivers for ATI hardware in XFree86 project?
Do you use Linux anywhere inside ATI?

Uriel_is_UndaC · Jan 5, 2003, 07:14 PM

Got yet another question.

What's up with the Pixel Fillrate on R300 (well on all ATi cards to be exact). Results in 2048x1536 are poor as hell (HUUUUGE drop compared to 1600x1200)
Also 2D performance (Pixel Fillrate in 2D as well as general windows GUI acceleration) is just on par with with Ti4600 (referring to 9700 Pro).

The older Radeon series are horribly inferiour to their counterparts in teh GeForce series. Radeon 9700 Pro is just up to par with Ti4600 which I really would call a counterpart rather GF FX is the counterpart and I assume GF FX will have improved 2D performance compared to Ti4600 thus: all Ati cards are ("very") inferiour when it comes to 2D performance when compared to their GeForce counterparts *period*.

(Yeah I know, most of these card are "fast enough" anyway, but I actually feel the difference, my Ti4600 is a bit smoother when for an example moving a large windows with lots of icons in over the screen while in high res, it "lags", the Ti4600 does not)

Some benchmark to illustrate my point:
Quake 3 four 2048x1536
9700 Pro 118 fps
Ti4600 133 fps
Ti4200 113 fps
8500 - fps (refused to run)

XP Bench: (using a res of 1280x1024)
9700 Pro 119
Ti4600 118
Ti4200 89
8500 65

Dacris 2D Pixel Fillrate: (using 1280x1024)
9700 Pro 976 MP/s (theoretically it should handle 2600)
Ti4600 1642 MP/s
Ti4200 1243 MP/s
8500 834 MP/s

Something is wrong, I've asked ATi support about it and all they could say was that they had a driver problem that effected the score in Dacris 2D Benchmark. They never answered the questions about Q3 or XPBench.

DcibeL · Jan 5, 2003, 07:15 PM

I second JLP's question. Although, I heven't had any trouble with using the 8500 in Linux. But I'm sure that drivers can always be made to run things faster.

ivessy · Jan 5, 2003, 07:56 PM

Does the ati 9700 card have any surprises to be unlocked for when Nvidia's fx card arrives?

otheipion · Jan 6, 2003, 01:24 PM

When will you finally get the multimedia 7.x software to work properly? I've got an ATI Radeon 8500 and a TV Wonder VE and both version 7.1 and the unsupported beta (7.6) give me audio and video problems. These are documented and while I have been able to fix the audio (with more effort than your average consumer would happily stomach) the known issue of a garbled screen when starting ATI TV *unless you hold down a key* is not going away. This through several fresh installations of Windows XP Pro on two different systems (Asus P4B533-B, P4 2.53, 512 MB Corsair XMS; Asus P4PE, P4 2.53, 512 MB Corsair XMS).

MMC has been broken in this manner for an embarassingly length of time. This experience is holding down the reputation of ATI. When will you fix this?

MACport · Jan 6, 2003, 02:58 PM

ATI does not have the same UDA as Nvidia, but a UDA was promised by ATI long ago. When will ATI deliver on the UDA? I stil have to look up my card, unlike the Nvidia detonator drivers that has one driver series good for all cards.

Jan 5, 2003, 03:32 AM	#31
severance DriverHeaven Newbie Join Date: Jan 2003 Posts: 1 Rep Power: 0	i want dvx support (in hardware) in multimedia center (all codec)

Jan 5, 2003, 03:37 AM	#32
K.I.L.E.R Kronos, Father of Zeus Join Date: Jul 2002 Posts: 162 Rep Power: 0	What future surprises will their be for R300 users? __________________ P4 1.8Ghz Intel i845 mobo R300 768mb RAM SBLive Windows XP Home

Jan 5, 2003, 04:04 AM	#33
dartgeek DriverHeaven Newbie Join Date: Jan 2003 Posts: 2 Rep Power: 0	Re: ATI Control Panel- "CONTRAST" Setting [Questions for ATi only please - David So ATi please fix the gamma. If you want picture, ill give you pictures. __________________ Rage3d represent!

Jan 5, 2003, 04:34 AM	#36
lewdvig DriverHeaven Junior Member Join Date: Jun 2002 Posts: 65 Rep Power: 0	One more thing Hire Omega. His drivers routinely beat yours. __________________ Athlon 64 3000+ (Venice E6 325*8), ASUS A8R-MVP, Thermalright XP90, 2x512 Generic DDR400 (TCC5 2T, 432 MHz), ATI AIW X1900, WinXP, WD 200GB + 250GB 7200RPM HDDs, BenQ 1655, Creative Audigy, 3DMark05: http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dm05=1976148[color=#0000ff] [/color] Acer Ferrari 4005WLMI, Turion MT37, ATI Mobility X700 128 MB 3DMark03: [color=#0000ff]http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k3=4327648[/color]

Jan 5, 2003, 06:18 AM	#37
Fahim DriverHeaven Junior Member Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: In Front of my PC Posts: 42 Rep Power: 0	Integrated Driver Is there any possibilities that control panel is integrated in the same inf so that we can use inf to install full driver & control panel? __________________ AMD Athlon64 X2 6000+ ASUS CROSSHAIR AM2 Motherboard 2 x 1GB Corsair XMS PC2-6400 DDR2 800MHz SDRAM 160GB+500GB+750GB+1TB+1TB+750GB+250GB+750GB+750GB+ 1TB+120GB+400GB [COLOR=green]NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB (650,1940)[/COLOR] [COLOR=#008000][color=red]ATI RADEON HD 3870 512MB (800,2340)[/color][/COLOR] [COLOR=#008000][color=red]ASUS AX800 XL 256MB (??)[/color][/COLOR] Coolermaster Real Power 1000W PSU

Jan 5, 2003, 04:30 AM	#34
lewdvig DriverHeaven Junior Member Join Date: Jun 2002 Posts: 65 Rep Power: 0	You are very brave! 1. Why does ATI employ such a poor install remove process? Do you guys like support calls or something? Just pay the guy who made ATIMAX if you have to - his program works. 2. Why not have a policy of not releasing a driver unless the top 30 games at the time work properly. How many 7xxx series owners were stuck looking at the Neverwinter Nights box instead of playing it? GTA 3 also comes to mind. 3. Why are mobility parts not covered by the Catalyst program. I know the official reason, but as someone who uses Omega drivers and older catalysts regularly to allow me to play my games - I know that the reasons cited for why M7 parts are not covered in the program is false. By necessity, I find all sorts of non-Compaq drivers that work. It would be nice if I could try the latest and greatest. 4. From where I sit, the ONLY thing that has changed since Catalyst started, is that ATI have developed much better driver marketing. My 8500 gives me enough blue screens and random reboots to know this is true and the M7 in my notebook only works with the 6076 driver set. This means that all the claimed speed improvements that accompany each release are wasted on me. I have had a lot of fun with my 8500 and the M7 seemed like the best choice verses a sea of GF4Go 420 in the Toshibas around here - but I don't think I will be buying ATI parts during the next round. Frankly the drivers are the biggest reason.

Jan 5, 2003, 06:28 AM	#39
Steve81 DriverHeaven Newbie Join Date: Jan 2003 Posts: 1 Rep Power: 0	Will your drivers ever have better support for Tribes 2? A Geforce 2 out performs a 9700 pro. Something needs to be done.

Jan 5, 2003, 07:39 AM	#40
13bells DriverHeaven Newbie Join Date: Nov 2002 Location: Canada Posts: 2 Rep Power: 0	1. Why are you locking the bios on many ATI cards so they can;t be overclocked? Leave the "marketing" to the marketers and just provide the best dam product you can for the price. So what if a few hard core gamers get more value than you chose to dispense. They'll be back to ATI again. 2. Please revoke licence to produce ATI cards,to companies like Powercolor, who consistently and deliberately misrepresent their specs to get a few extra sales. This ultimately reflects poorly on ATI. I hope this is not what you consider"marketing".

Jan 5, 2003, 09:00 AM	#41
lewdvig DriverHeaven Junior Member Join Date: Jun 2002 Posts: 65 Rep Power: 0	r300 and gf fx both suck Questions for ATi only please - David __________________ Athlon 64 3000+ (Venice E6 325*8), ASUS A8R-MVP, Thermalright XP90, 2x512 Generic DDR400 (TCC5 2T, 432 MHz), ATI AIW X1900, WinXP, WD 200GB + 250GB 7200RPM HDDs, BenQ 1655, Creative Audigy, 3DMark05: http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dm05=1976148[color=#0000ff] [/color] Acer Ferrari 4005WLMI, Turion MT37, ATI Mobility X700 128 MB 3DMark03: [color=#0000ff]http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k3=4327648[/color]

Jan 5, 2003, 09:26 AM	#42
dmantione DriverHeaven Newbie Join Date: Jan 2003 Posts: 1 Rep Power: 0	I have a question regarding the length of driver support, both in the future and in the past. Basically what is your policy about how long a graphics card will receive driver support, and how new does an operating system need to be will it get a driver? For example, if Micro$oft would release a brand new operating system today, I guess the Radeons would get a driver. Would the Rage128 get one too? And the Rage PRO? And the past: How long do you plan to continue offering Windows 9x drivers? If you would release a card today, I would assume it gets a windows 9x driver. What about cards released two years in the future? The reason why this interrests me is that I'm currently writing software that has to run on Windows 95. And for Windows 95 the Radeon is your worst enemy. So I'm often swapping video cards. I'm even thinking about writing a driver myself, but on the other hand I haven't really interrest in studying the Windows internals. Daniël Mantione

Jan 5, 2003, 09:38 AM	#43
The_KELRaTH HardwareHeaven Newbie Join Date: Dec 2002 Posts: 10 Rep Power: 0	Re: 9700Pro 1) SuperSampling AA: Is there likely to be an SS/MS AA combination option in near future? 2) Videoshader: When will there be an implementation of this feature, I'm specifically interested in video deblocking / noise cancellation and colour Embossing over Divx. Will it be possible for this feature be enabled to clean up ingame video cut scenes. It would seem a logical step after cleaning up the game image with AA/AF to then complete with improved cut scenes. (I've not seen anything to suggest that Nvidia is going to offer this feature so it would seem a good direction to exploit) 3) OpenGL 2 API Will openGL 2 be in Cat drivers shortly? When NVidia updated their drivers from openGL 1.3 to 1.4 they claimed a 25% performance improvement. Has openGL 2 demonstrated any performance improvements in inhouse testing? 4) Can you please add an "INTENSITY" slider mode in your colour settings Regards Kel Last edited by The_KELRaTH; Jan 5, 2003 at 09:50 AM.

Jan 5, 2003, 11:55 AM	#44
decan DriverHeaven Newbie Join Date: Dec 2002 Location: Sydney AUS Posts: 1 Rep Power: 0	When will the stuttering be fix? __________________ 2.66@3.3ghz Gigabyte 8pe667 ultra 2 Vapochill PE ATI 9700 Pro

Jan 5, 2003, 01:52 PM	#45
KoVaR DriverHeaven Newbie Join Date: Dec 2002 Location: far far in YUROPE Posts: 5 Rep Power: 0	1) Is ATI aware of the "tv out pluged no boot" problem with some 8500 I know that i should aks software questions... but anyway: 2) Why the hell couldn't ATI name 9500pro 9600 ? All this 9500 pro, non-pro is making a lot of confusion And i buy a "white-box" card you can get 9500 shipped as 9500pro...

Jan 5, 2003, 05:07 PM	#46
coastie DriverHeaven Newbie Join Date: Dec 2002 Posts: 4 Rep Power: 0	Hello, I would like the following question asked: Is ATI working on a thorough Driver uninstaller program? This can't be that difficult to do and would be such an asset since they are coming out with new drivers almost monthly! Thanks, Coastie __________________ AMD ATHLON XP 2100+@200x10 W/ARKUA HS FAN/ ENERMAX CASE AND PS/ Soltek 75frn2 ultra 400/ 1 gig pc3200 /RADEON 9800np /AUDIGY2/ SAMSUNG 48X24X48 CDRW/ WD80 GIG 8mb cache HD/ WINXP HOME/ KLIPSCH PROMEDIA 2.1/ MSFFB2 JOYSTICK

Jan 5, 2003, 06:32 PM	#47
JLP DriverHeaven Lover Join Date: Aug 2002 Location: Slovenia Posts: 249 Rep Power: 0	Linux???? I would like to ask ATI: What are your plans regarding Linux drivers? Will they be updated more frequently then now? Will you put more resources into writing Linux drivers then now? Are you actively helping in developing drivers for ATI hardware in XFree86 project? Do you use Linux anywhere inside ATI?

Jan 5, 2003, 07:14 PM	#48
Uriel_is_UndaC DriverHeaven Junior Member Join Date: May 2002 Location: Sweden, Lund Posts: 35 Rep Power: 0	Got yet another question. What's up with the Pixel Fillrate on R300 (well on all ATi cards to be exact). Results in 2048x1536 are poor as hell (HUUUUGE drop compared to 1600x1200) Also 2D performance (Pixel Fillrate in 2D as well as general windows GUI acceleration) is just on par with with Ti4600 (referring to 9700 Pro). The older Radeon series are horribly inferiour to their counterparts in teh GeForce series. Radeon 9700 Pro is just up to par with Ti4600 which I really would call a counterpart rather GF FX is the counterpart and I assume GF FX will have improved 2D performance compared to Ti4600 thus: all Ati cards are ("very") inferiour when it comes to 2D performance when compared to their GeForce counterparts period. (Yeah I know, most of these card are "fast enough" anyway, but I actually feel the difference, my Ti4600 is a bit smoother when for an example moving a large windows with lots of icons in over the screen while in high res, it "lags", the Ti4600 does not) Some benchmark to illustrate my point: Quake 3 four 2048x1536 9700 Pro 118 fps Ti4600 133 fps Ti4200 113 fps 8500 - fps (refused to run) XP Bench: (using a res of 1280x1024) 9700 Pro 119 Ti4600 118 Ti4200 89 8500 65 Dacris 2D Pixel Fillrate: (using 1280x1024) 9700 Pro 976 MP/s (theoretically it should handle 2600) Ti4600 1642 MP/s Ti4200 1243 MP/s 8500 834 MP/s Something is wrong, I've asked ATi support about it and all they could say was that they had a driver problem that effected the score in Dacris 2D Benchmark. They never answered the questions about Q3 or XPBench.

Jan 5, 2003, 07:15 PM	#49
DcibeL DriverHeaven Junior Member Join Date: Dec 2002 Location: Canada Posts: 43 Rep Power: 0	I second JLP's question. Although, I heven't had any trouble with using the 8500 in Linux. But I'm sure that drivers can always be made to run things faster. __________________ [D-cibeL]

Jan 5, 2003, 07:56 PM	#50
ivessy DriverHeaven Newbie Join Date: Nov 2002 Posts: 1 Rep Power: 0	Does the ati 9700 card have any surprises to be unlocked for when Nvidia's fx card arrives?

Jan 6, 2003, 01:24 PM	#51
otheipion DriverHeaven Newbie Join Date: Dec 2002 Posts: 2 Rep Power: 0	When will you finally get the multimedia 7.x software to work properly? I've got an ATI Radeon 8500 and a TV Wonder VE and both version 7.1 and the unsupported beta (7.6) give me audio and video problems. These are documented and while I have been able to fix the audio (with more effort than your average consumer would happily stomach) the known issue of a garbled screen when starting ATI TV unless you hold down a key is not going away. This through several fresh installations of Windows XP Pro on two different systems (Asus P4B533-B, P4 2.53, 512 MB Corsair XMS; Asus P4PE, P4 2.53, 512 MB Corsair XMS). MMC has been broken in this manner for an embarassingly length of time. This experience is holding down the reputation of ATI. When will you fix this?

Jan 6, 2003, 02:58 PM	#52
MACport DriverHeaven Newbie Join Date: Jan 2003 Posts: 2 Rep Power: 0	UDA architecture ATI does not have the same UDA as Nvidia, but a UDA was promised by ATI long ago. When will ATI deliver on the UDA? I stil have to look up my card, unlike the Nvidia detonator drivers that has one driver series good for all cards.