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ATI Radeon Released

Posted by emmett on from the swimmy-swimmy-like-a-boy-chased-by-sharky-sharky dept.

Dwayne Mulford writes: "ATI has released their new RADEON with 64MB of DDR memory. It's clocked at 183MHz and really gives the NVIDIA GeForce2 GTS a run for its money. ATI has their product info here and Sharky Extreme did a review of it here."

171 comments

  1. What'd they make it out of? by patreides · · Score: 1

    Sounds like it's made of some radioactive element, like Radon. I'm sure the gamma rays are traveling at the 183MHz range quite easily...

    Boy, and I thought my SPARC ELC had some nasty EMI.

    --
    # debian/rules
    1. Re:What'd they make it out of? by BobTheWonderchicken · · Score: 2

      So I guess if it's radon then my computer really will cause cancer. Oh well, I'm not giving up SlashDot for anything, even my health.
      Kate

      --
      _________________________ Visit me at http://pornforcomputers.com
    2. Re:What'd they make it out of? by saider · · Score: 1

      I'm sure the gamma rays are traveling at the 183MHz range quite easily

      Gamma rays are around 10^20 Hz. Radeon seems to be bombarding your system with some VHF radiation. Check your TV!

      Please moderate to -1 for excessive use of useless information.

      --


      Remember, You are unique...just like everyone else.
    3. Re:What'd they make it out of? by Ian-K · · Score: 1

      Yeah, I see the pattern :-/

      What's the bonus?
      Do I get to sell my ATI Fury 32 (yes, I was one of those ppl who had to wait for months and DID buy the fucker in the end --stupid of me) and get one of those in exchange now?

      But, to be fair, it still works and it's good nuff for what I'm doing with it (which isn't too much gaming).

      But imagine the following workstation:

      • 4 of those new 1.2GHz Alphas IBM plans on
      • 1.5GB PC133RAM
      • The graphics card in the above link.
      • A couple of those cheesy 9GB, 15K rpm Cheetahs...
      That'd have some speed... :-} Quake III on that... Ahhhh... That'd put some framerates into it! Trian
      --
      I'm no longer fed up with MS Windows: I go rid of them :)
  2. Here's the (driver) scoop: by 11223 · · Score: 2
    Here's the (driver) scoop:

    Currently, ATI is in a "we provide the specs, you write the drivers" mode. What this means is that we have to write any drivers we want for this card above and beyond the Windows drivers. Same goes for BeOS support - if we want it, Be, Inc. needs to write it on their own, because ATI ain't helping anyone with drivers.

    Kudos to them for providing specs, but shouldn't you at least be helping to write XFree drivers?

    1. Re:Here's the (driver) scoop: by Jinker · · Score: 5
      "shouldn't you at least be helping to write XFree drivers?"

      Hey, if they want to shoot themselves in the foot, they're allowed.

      On the other hand, one wonders exactly how many of these cards they would actually sell simply due to a full suite of Linux drivers.

      Just how big is the hardcore gamer/linuxgeek crossover? Obviously they're the most VOCAL ones on the internet, and so it seems like there's bunches of them. But I'd be willing to bet that a WAY disproportionate amount of them have web pages and are active on discussion boards etc.

      The high end gaming card market is being driven by people running Windows. If ATI loses all of their potential Linux clients, how many would that add up to? Hundreds? Let's be honest here.

      Writing and supporting a driver well is not all that cheap for them. Publishing the specs is.

      I'd rather have a well written community based driver than a poorly written ATI one.

      Greg

    2. Re:Here's the (driver) scoop: by sxpert · · Score: 1

      ah yeah ? Where do you get the register level docs ?

    3. Re:Here's the (driver) scoop: by 11223 · · Score: 1

      I think you missed the key word: helping. ATI is unwilling to provide any assistance from their engineers in terms of testing, writing snippets of code, etc. No help whatsoever, which to me sounds like we're going to end up getting a poorly written community driver.

    4. Re:Here's the (driver) scoop: by ranessin · · Score: 1


      I was under the impression, from reading the dri-devel mailing list, that Precision Insight is under contract to write 2D/3D X Windows drivers for the card (although I could be wrong).

      Adam

    5. Re:Here's the (driver) scoop: by FascDot+Killed+My+Pr · · Score: 3

      "But I'd be willing to bet that a WAY disproportionate amount of them have web pages and are active on discussion boards etc."

      Which is exactly why they should be catered to. Not all customers are equal, think of reviewers. Each positive review is more than just a happy customer--it is hundreds, thousands even MILLIONS of potential customers. Each of those "hardcore gamers" in a newsgroup/website is a reviewer. Make them happy and the world will beat a path to your door. Make them angry....
      --

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    6. Re:Here's the (driver) scoop: by ranessin · · Score: 2

      This message pretty much sums it up, I think.

    7. Re:Here's the (driver) scoop: by WNight · · Score: 2

      You'd think it'd be worth their time to write Linux drivers, just to be buzzword compliant. I wouldn't imagine it'd be too hard for them to write a driver for their own product...

      An advantage in their favour is that they could write a functional but slow driver then let the community optimize it... they're not trying to hide the register level details so they have no reason to not open-source the code.

      Just a basic, feature complete, unoptimized driver would allow them to claim full Linux support and would be the basis for better community drivers later on. It'd cost them one programmer, for maybe two weeks or so, a drop in the bucket.

      There may not be many Linux gamers, compared to Windows gamers, but they're a louder more vocal crowd, and are likely to turn a bunch of people onto a product if they like it.

      For me, even though I use Windows 85% of the time, Linux drivers are a major concern. I'd hate to buy a $250 graphics card and find out it only works in VESA mode in Linux and BeOS. Besides, the better the Linux drivers, imho, the better the Windows drivers, simply because it's a company to whom drivers are a concern.

      btw 11223: I completely agree with the moderation comment. Any moderator browsing at more than 0 is missing out on any AC posts, and the whole point of moderation is to bring the good messages up from the bottom, not to raise mediocre posts that started at karma 2 even higher.

      Any moderator who doesn't moderate as you suggest is abusing the system and wasting their points on already moderated articles.

    8. Re:Here's the (driver) scoop: by ranessin · · Score: 4


      Again, Gareth Hughes, from Precision Insight, has already begun work on the Radeon drivers. PI is under contract from ATI to write those drivers. It doesn't sound like they aren't getting any help and it *certainly* doesn't sound like we'll be stuck with a poorly written community driver.

      Ranessin

    9. Re:Here's the (driver) scoop: by John+Allsup · · Score: 1

      As a quick thought to the /. admin -- why not disable moderation if the comment level is above zero?
      John

      --
      John_Chalisque
    10. Re:Here's the (driver) scoop: by superkorn · · Score: 1

      All of the bashing of Nvidia here and elsewhere for poor open source/Linux support does not seem to have hurt them too much. Their products are simply too good to pass up in many cases, although it seems that 3dFx and ATI are finally catching up in this product generation. But honestly, how many reviews of video boards even mention linux performance? I haven't been able to read the sharkey one due to its slashdotted status (poor sharkey), but in past reviews on that site I never see linux preformance brought up as an issue. Same for other review sites. They test performance for well known games like quake 3, which may or may not be multi-platform, but they almost ALWAYS test under windows. This is because the majority of games are for windows and the majority of gamers run windows and I think the hardcore gamer/linux zealot crossover is much smaller than it might seem to be. You rarely hear talk of linux on the counterstrike forums...

    11. Re:Here's the (driver) scoop: by Frank+T.+Lofaro+Jr. · · Score: 1

      We don't need that. All we need are correct and complete specs, the hardware to test it on, and some good programmers. If we get a poorly written driver, we shouldn't look to ATI for the blame. We should look to ourselves. Do you believe in open source and open specs? If so, act on it. Write drivers, or if you can't, test beta versions, provide web space for the development or even just moral support. Just don't bitch and whine at a company which is doing the right thing because they aren't going to hold your hand, and don't insult the community by making it sound like we are incapable of writing a good driver on our own.

      --
      Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
    12. Re:Here's the (driver) scoop: by Frank+T.+Lofaro+Jr. · · Score: 1
      They know their hardware. They very well may not have much expertise in Linux or XFree86 internals. But do they really need to. We've got that experience, and we've got specs on the hardware too! So we have both pieces of the puzzle and it is up to us to put them together. ATI isn't screwing us, they haven't hidden the specs, they're giving them to us.

      As for open-sourcing the Windows driver, maybe they have some cool workaround Windows specific brain damage that would be useful to us, but still be valuable intellectual property. So what. As long as we got complete and correct specs on the card we are good to go.

      --
      Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
    13. Re:Here's the (driver) scoop: by argel · · Score: 1
      Same goes for BeOS support - if we want it, Be, Inc. needs to write it on their own, because ATI ain't helping anyone with drivers.

      My understanding is that Be is providing the manpower but ATI is providing technical assistance for said manpower. To me that would qualify as helping out.

      Besides, as a Be user would you rather have a programmer intimatly familiar with the OS writing the driver or someone at ATI who knows a lot less about the OS writing it?

      -- Argel

      --

      -- Argel
    14. Re:Here's the (driver) scoop: by theMAGE · · Score: 1

      Actually they are paying Precision Insight to make and release drivers for XFree.

      Where do you think the ATI Rage 128 drivers in XFree 4.0.1 comes from?

      I have an ATI Xpert99 (Rage 128) and I am using XFree 4.0.1 and I am happy with it.

    15. Re:Here's the (driver) scoop: by Arjuna01 · · Score: 1

      Thats pretty much goes for even the Windows drivers. ATI has never been known to write stable drivers nor update drivers. Last time I bought an ATI was an ATI Rage Pro 128 w/ all that TV and Video capture stuff on it. I ended up selling the card on eBay about six months later because of the poor performance and non-existent support from ATI.

      I saw screw 'em and buy a GeForce.

      --
      "Some mornings, it's just not worth chewing through the leather straps." ~ Emo Phillips
    16. Re:Here's the (driver) scoop: by kfickert · · Score: 1

      I think he's right. I have the Rage Fury 32MB and only SuSE supported it, at least a year ago when I turned Linux, but I don't run any games or high end graphics programs other than GIMP and Blender(on very rare occations). There just isn't a large enough Linux Market to warrent production of expensive software divers. I'm mean after all, ATI needs to spend more time with windows driver b/c the orginal RAGE driver kinda sucked.

    17. Re:Here's the (driver) scoop: by kronoman · · Score: 1

      Thousands, more like as to not. And their loss would almost certainly be nVidia or Matrox's gain. (Maybe 3DFX, but I hear that Voodoo5 sucks rocks. I could be wrong, I've never used one.)

      --
      If violence isn't solving your problems, you're not using enough of it. - MAJ Misato Katsuragi
    18. Re:Here's the (driver) scoop: by superkorn · · Score: 1
      Everyone else does! *grin*

      In all honesty I don't really care about getting karma. Yes, someone who logs in and yet is not a karma whore! Who woulda thunk it?

  3. Tom's Hardware review by _J_ · · Score: 4

    Here's what Tom had to say...

    J:)

    --
    Oh well, no point in steering now.
    1. Re:Tom's Hardware review by ODiV · · Score: 1

      I wonder why he keeps mentionning that it's a Canadian company.

    2. Re:Tom's Hardware review by Inoshiro · · Score: 2

      The only problem with Tom's hardware review, is that their server implements referrer filtering.

      Basically, if you're like me, and use a proxy which blanks the referrer, you get that hammer image for every gif, and get the front page of every story. Not fun.
      ---

      --
      --
      Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
    3. Re:Tom's Hardware review by namlhaz · · Score: 1

      Gee, in the time it took me to read over that, fully seven people commented, including one comment which appears to be computer-generated random moronity. Blah. Am I just a slow reader or am I the only one who actually cares to read these things carefully?

      --
      Zahlman Q. Namlhaz, esq. {:> "Zahl Incorporated - the Last Word in Everything(TM)"
    4. Re:Tom's Hardware review by ODiV · · Score: 1

      I posted my comment while I was reading the article. Others may have already read the article (Tom's Hardware is pretty popular afaik).

  4. I hope apple uses these by SpitefulBen · · Score: 1

    The current Rage 128 Pro boards that apple uses are very slow. With luck, Apple will announce new, radeon enhanced models tomorrow at MWNY.

    http://www.iateeism.com --It's more than just a religion.

    1. Re:I hope apple uses these by namlhaz · · Score: 1

      Agreed. I would be *extremely* happy to see Apple upgrade the video card performance.

      I'm also happy about this news just cuz I cheer for ATI (a Canadian company IIRC, hence my loyalty).

      Woo, this is as close to first post as I've come yet...

      --
      Zahlman Q. Namlhaz, esq. {:> "Zahl Incorporated - the Last Word in Everything(TM)"
    2. Re:I hope apple uses these by Performer+Guy · · Score: 1

      Apple is going to use them. ATI let the cat out of the bag. Apple hasn't mentioned this yet but it looks like this is going in the high end G4.

    3. Re:I hope apple uses these by Blue+Lang · · Score: 2

      there is a news.com article right now talking about just that.

      click/a>

      --
      blue

      --
      i browse at -1 because they're funnier than you are.
  5. lack of in-depth technical specs on the website! by purefizz · · Score: 2

    "The RADEONTM CHARISMA ENGINETM supports full transformation, clipping and lighting (T&L) at 30 million/second processing capability for a 10 fold improvement in 3D details"

    30 million what? 30 millions points/second, or 30 million triangles a second?

    I am impressed with the range on 2D and 3D at the same time. What it really needs to identify is if it is OpenGL 1.1 compliant, though? (ie can the pixels scale so you can walk into particle effects like smoke and fire without it looking like crap)

    kick some CAD

  6. Jargon Jargon by 91degrees · · Score: 1

    So whats a charisma engine? And intergrated TLC? And Pixel Tapestrectomy? And why do we need dotproduction?

    1. Re: Jargon Jargon by MostlyHarmless · · Score: 2

      It's quite obvious. A charisma engine is any large marketing department, anywhere. Integrated TLC means it comes with a free CD or R&B music. Pixel Tapestrectomy is a type of surgery. And dotproduction is the latest byproduct of the e-wave of @ttaching "dot" to dotanything. Dot's @all, e-folks!

      --
      Friends don't let friends misuse the subjunctive.
  7. ATI Goes Performance? by photon317 · · Score: 3
    Seems to me with this card ATI is finally starting to cater to the "I need high performance graphics at any price NOW" crowd that 3Dfx and then NVidia have dominated in the past... as opposed to their (ATI's) earlier catering to the large volume OEM market for an affordable card that supported the right buzzwords, but which no serious gamer would want.

    With ATI's financial resources, they could possibly change the high-end 3d graphics landscape if they continue moving in this direction over the next generation or two of cards.

    --
    11*43+456^2
    1. Re:ATI Goes Performance? by barleyguy · · Score: 3

      Actually, both the Rage II and Rage 128 were intended to have leading edge performance, but each of them came out six months or so later than they planned, which put them in the "slightly below average" category.

      One good thing about ATI - their business performance and 2D quality have always been very good. For Desktop Publishing applications, audio recording apps, and similar uses, I've always recommended ATI. Well, that or Matrox. (Also Canadian, which Tom would find very relavent)

      Another point - this card seems to scale well to higher resolutions and bit levels. Because of that, I'd say it is a better card than the GeForce 2. Who needs 120 frames a second at low resolution, when your monitor only works well at about 85 frames anyway? If you can do 85 frames per second, and do it at any resolution and bit level you choose, I think that should be the goal of a fast video card.

      --
      --- "So THAT's what an invisible barrier looks like!" - Time Bandits
    2. Re:ATI Goes Performance? by swb · · Score: 1

      I have a AIW-128 card and I'm more than satisfied with the performance I get in OpenGL and D3D games, plus I can watch TV with it.

      My next card will likely be an AIW-Radeon if ATI can get the driver situation normalized. Their Win98 drivers left a lot to be desired.

  8. Can't wait for the All-in-wonder by Mustang+Matt · · Score: 1

    I've been using the ATI PCI All-in-wonder series card for sometime now. It's not perfect, and I don't think it's supported in Linux but if you're going to use all of it's features it sure is a great card. My version is lacking in the 3d arena. I used to have a Voodoo2 backing it up but the voodoo2 just wasn't quick enough.

    I finally replaced it with an AGP GeForce but I'd really like to see if I can get them both working together. Has anyone tried this combo?

    --
    The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
    1. Re:Can't wait for the All-in-wonder by squisher · · Score: 1

      I using an PCI All-in-Wonder card for some time now and it runs pretty well. 2D Part is the Rage(Pro or IIc) chipset that is both supported by xfree86 3.3.6 and 4.0.
      As another comment already said, the tvtuner works with a third party product called xatitv (the gatos project) http://www.core.binghamton.edu/~inso mnia/gatos
      The same should apply for the All-in-Wonder Pro/128 cards and so I would say it'll be the same for the new ones too.

  9. I'd still go with the GeForce(2) by [Crimson]Chain · · Score: 1
    Why? Because, if I remember correctly, the drivers are the same used in the GeForce (please correct me if I'm wrong). That alone will make for a better product in the long run. The more well-tested your drivers are, the better off you are. I've never had any luck with ATI cards. Last time I tested one out, Quake(1) wouldn't even show the textures properly. Oh well - and I've heard such good things too...

    Adam

    ChainSaw Linux

  10. anandtech review by metalgeek · · Score: 2


    here's the anandtech review of the board
    Goes into quite alot of detail.

    metalgeek

    --
    metalgeek
    windows, just another pane in the glass
  11. Re:lack of in-depth technical specs on the website by bibos · · Score: 2
    Here's your info:

    Graphics controller: Radeon GPU
    RAMDAC: 350MHz
    1.1GTexel/s - 366MPixel/s Theoretical Fill Rate
    30 Million triangles/s
    64MB DDR SDRAM
    Optional VIVO
    Optional DVI

  12. Suprise, Suprise by dolanh · · Score: 1

    ATI releases the Radeon just before MacWorld New York. Could it be because the Radeon will be used in the new G4 systems announced tomorrow?

    --

    just my blog and pix

    1. Re:Suprise, Suprise by disarray · · Score: 2

      Yes. Two new Power Mac systems will be introduced, one will use the Rage 128 Pro chipset (as currently featured in Power Mac G4s); the other will use the Radeon. Additionally, an iMac utilizing the Rage 4XL chipset (dunno what this is) will be announced. The press info is here:

      http://www.businesswire.com/webbox/bw.071700/20199 0394.htm

  13. Something to remember about video cards... by mwalker · · Score: 5

    Something to remember about video cards...

    640k should be enough for anybody!

    oh, wait...

    GRAPHICS CARDS WITH 64 MEGABYTES OF RAM AND COOLING FANS.

    try to sell THAT to someone 10 years ago. -i- wouldn't have believed it.

    --

    --
    What happens when you outlaw guns
    1. Re:Something to remember about video cards... by Spoing · · Score: 1
      Neither would I. I'd expect that much RAM on a typical video card sometime around 2003 to 2005.

      As a quick and very dirty rule-of-thumb, computer components tend to double in size/speed every ~18 months. (YES, I'm mangling Moore's law...no, I don't care!)

      If typical video RAM in 1980 was about ~4K, then the 8MB used now (not one tweaked for games) is right in line for what would be expected; 8MB. (Spreadsheet: a1=4, a2=a1*2...out to 12th place = 8192)

      This is nuts.

      --
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    2. Re:Something to remember about video cards... by John+Jorsett · · Score: 2

      If typical video RAM in 1980 was about ~4K, then the 8MB used now (not one tweaked for games) is right in line for what would be expected;

      Well, that 4kb was before the video cards became little video computers on their own. Their job has changed from one of just displaying text on a monitor to generating polygons, anti-aliasing, hidden surface removal, etc. etc. etc. What the military calls 'mission creep'. That would be one justification for their straying outside of the normal Moore's Law envelope. Or maybe it's like the hard disk drives lately. They've really accelerated beyond the confines of Mooore's Law.

    3. Re:Something to remember about video cards... by John+Jorsett · · Score: 2

      2010: Graphics Cards with liquid helium baths.

    4. Re:Something to remember about video cards... by otis+wildflower · · Score: 3

      GRAPHICS CARDS WITH 64 MEGABYTES OF RAM AND COOLING FANS.

      try to sell THAT to someone 10 years ago. -i- wouldn't have believed it.

      Dude, there were cards (or rather, multiple slot boards and/or external processing units) like that back then for SGIs, RS6ks (for CATIA and other CA(D|M|E) tools) etc.. If you had $30-100k+ to spare.

      I never figured we'd be here now.. The Metaverse is essentially here, for at least 2 senses... COOL.

      Your Working Boy,

    5. Re:Something to remember about video cards... by kronoman · · Score: 1

      2010: Graphics cards that should need liquid helium baths, but due to incredible advances, need only a large heatsink...

      --
      If violence isn't solving your problems, you're not using enough of it. - MAJ Misato Katsuragi
  14. My life is complete. by 11223 · · Score: 5
    On a side note, the Radeon is the only card on the market to support a hardware alpha cursor (the arrow with a shadow) in Windows 2000.

    My life is complete. It's the feature I've always wanted!

    1. Re:My life is complete. by fdragon · · Score: 1

      My life is complete. It's the feature I've always wanted!

      Not yet, there is still the fact that it will take approximately 6 months for them to get the product to market, and 6 months to get working drivers. And once they get the working drivers all bets are off in case you have a hardware failure as there is a two+ week waiting period on support (Phone, email, ...). Oh yeah, and once you get support they just tell you to read non-existant information on their site.

      Sorry I got a ATI Rage Fury MAXX and I'm rather pissed that the card works in Win 9x/NT and Linux/*BSD with XFree86 3.3.6+ but doesn't work under Windows 2000 because they cannot get windows to activate the second chip? WTF?


      --
      --
      The program isn't debugged until the last user is dead.
    2. Re:My life is complete. by taniwha · · Score: 2
      Not yet, there is still the fact that it will take approximately 6 months for them to get the product to market

      Ummmm - not quite - they are shipping today - that's what they're announcing - many online sellers have had them in their catalogs since last week ....

    3. Re:My life is complete. by barleyguy · · Score: 3

      Not yet, there is still the fact that it will take approximately 6 months for them to get the product to market, and 6 months to get working drivers.

      This particular card is the exception to that rule. The card is shipping, and from the reviews I've read, the drivers seem pretty good.

      Sorry I got a ATI Rage Fury MAXX and I'm rather pissed that the card works in Win 9x/NT and Linux/*BSD with XFree86 3.3.6+ but doesn't work under Windows 2000 because they cannot get windows to activate the second chip? WTF?

      As far as I know, NO manufacturer has gotten mutiple graphics chips to work under Windows 2000. The Voodoo 5 might work by now.

      It has something to do with the driver architecture of Windows 2000. So you should be bitching at Microsoft, not ATI. Anyway, bitching at Microsoft might gain you Slashdot karma points.

      --
      --- "So THAT's what an invisible barrier looks like!" - Time Bandits
    4. Re:My life is complete. by Upsilon · · Score: 3
      As far as I know, NO manufacturer has gotten mutiple graphics chips to work under Windows 2000. The Voodoo 5 might work by now.

      It's an AGP issue. The AGP bus is designed to support one and only one device. The Voodoo 5 gets around this by basically pretending to be a PCI card even though it's on the AGP bus. Unfortunately, this means that it can't take advantage of any of AGP's advanced features. Not that that's a big loss or anything. In case anyone out there still hasn't noticed, AGP is pure hype and really doesn't offer any measurable performance increase.

      Anyway, the Rage Fury MAXX does things a bit differently. The way it's supposed to work is that one chip is recognized as an AGP device and the other is recognized as a PCI device. For whatever reason they're having a hell of a time getting this to work in Win2000. The bottom line is if you intend to use that OS, don't get a Rage Fury MAXX.

      --
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      "That's right, I'm quoting myself."

      -Upsilon

    5. Re:My life is complete. by Chris+Pimlott · · Score: 1

      No 3DFX card takes advantage of AGP's advanced features. By design. It's just used as a faster BUS.

    6. Re:My life is complete. by HeUnique · · Score: 2

      Well, if you'll run lspci (on redhat - /sbin/lspci) - you'll see that the MAXX appears as 2 cards - so it foolish your PC to think you got 2 cards..

      Support (if I understood from many people correctly) is not easy for this card and Precision Insight are not planning to support the 2nd MAXX chip..

      So, I'm affraid that at least on Linux/*BSD - you're stuck right there with the 2nd processor (I doubt that they'll write a whole new driver for the MAXX to support the 2nd processor on Windows 2000)

      --
      Hetz (Heunique)
    7. Re:My life is complete. by jafuser · · Score: 1

      [...] and 6 months to get working drivers.

      I agree at least with the working drivers part. Am I the only one who seems to think that ATI makes some great hardware, but their software department seems to either be completely mismanaged or underfunded, and once a card is more than 6 months old, you'll see maybe one more driver update, and that's it...

      Don't get me wrong. I've been buying All-In-Wonder cards since they were first introduced (they are a great piece of hardware), but I keep coming back, looking for an updated driver for an annoying bug that has been there since the beginning, and I have been disappointed too many times.

      And someone please point me to a third-party application that will access the television function in the AIW without having to load that bloated VisualBasic-esque ATI Video Player...

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    8. Re:My life is complete. by IntlHarvester · · Score: 1

      If it's an AGP (hardware) issue and not a Windows 2000 (software) issue, why can Matrox dual head work properly under Linux, but inproperly under Windows 2000?

      (Perhaps this isn't the same issue, tho..)
      --

      --
      Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
    9. Re:My life is complete. by White+Shadow · · Score: 1

      Actually, I would think that that means that all alpha blending in win2k is hardware accelerated. So all you transparent window people (Transperizer) can have pretty windows with a small performance hit. I think that's pretty cool.

    10. Re:My life is complete. by 11223 · · Score: 1
      Actually, that's been hard accelled for a while on other chips, but the hardware cursor has never had alpha blending. It's a chipset feature that's purely eyecandy (but it might be useful for games!).

      Wonder if XFree86 will take advantage of this...

    11. Re:My life is complete. by fdragon · · Score: 1

      I'm not asking for the support of the 2nd chip. I will be happy with just one of them working right now.

      The problem is (if I remember the specs) that the chips run in 3d accel mode by alternating which chip is doing the processing. A sort of double buffering so while one chip is rendering the current frame the other is displaying and preparing to run it. This is were the problem is.


      --
      --
      The program isn't debugged until the last user is dead.
    12. Re:My life is complete. by fdragon · · Score: 1

      It has something to do with the driver architecture of Windows 2000. So you should be bitching at Microsoft, not ATI. Anyway, bitching at Microsoft might gain you Slashdot karma points.

      I would like to see ATI at least give a little more detail on why they are having some problems. If they could just say why and a pointer to the programming specifications for Win2K that would relate to this I would try to write the driver myself.

      As for the bitching at Microsoft, well, I think that in this case it is sorta like silent e. It turns a man into a mane, and pan into a pane, and so on... ;) sorry... listening to Lehrer recently and seemed to fit.


      --
      --
      The program isn't debugged until the last user is dead.
  15. You combine it with by ch-chuck · · Score: 4

    SGI's Reality Engine, Sony's Emotion Engine, throw in a printer personality cart and you have a really intelligent bot w/ feelings that's a pleasure to have around.

    --
    try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
    1. Re:You combine it with by MrEd · · Score: 2

      Soon we'll get the Cyrix Angst Engine and the 3DFx Delusion Engine and we can get Marvin the Paranoid Android working swell.

      --

      Wah!

  16. Fear ovecomes me. by doogles · · Score: 3

    When my video card has as much memory as my computer, you know it's time to be worried.

  17. I Truly Am Amazed By It... by Sir_Winston · · Score: 4

    This is the first time that ATI has been on par with performance leaders since...well...probably since before 3D performance was being stressed much at all. I myself have an ATI All-in-Wonder 128 which I'm fond of, but I have reservations about this new chip.

    First of all, ATI's track record for supporting non-Intel chipsets is pretty sketchy at best, abysmal at worst. Currently the Athlon chipsets out now are well provided for in ATI's drivers, but when you consider that new Athlon chipsets are going to be coming out within the next six months which feature many new advancements and changes, from DDR SDRAM to SMP and more subtle changes, I can't say that I'd buy one with performance in mind unless I'd definitely be running an older Athlon mobo or an Intel setup. These ATI boards will definitely be great for their multimedia features, and the All-in-Wonder version especially promises to be interesting, but I doubt performance will be up to snuff on the VIA and ALi next-gen Athlon chipsets because they poorly supported the VIA MVP3 and similar Socket 7 chipsets and to this day their own webpages tout only Intel processors; last time I was there, not a single benchmark was done on an Athlon, and they "recommended" Intel processor boards. With the new Willamette chipsets coming out, it's likely that ATI will make compatability with those their first priority, and compatibility with next-gen Athlon mobos an afterthought. ATI has also had many odd driver issues, like the Fury MAXX not supporting Windows 2000. Just remember that this might not perform well if you upgrade your Athlon mobo...

    --


    "The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws."--Tacitus, *The Annals*
    1. Re:I Truly Am Amazed By It... by Sangui5 · · Score: 1

      This is the first time that ATI has been on par with performance leaders since

      I hear that the new Voodoos support full-screen hardware anti-aliasing. Given that, then it doesn't matter if ATI/RIVA are ahead triangle/sec or pixel/sec wise, since good anti-aliasing gives a much better looking picture, even at lower resolutions. I mean, anti-aliased 1024/786 @ 60FPS. Who needs more?

      The Tom's hardware review makes a reference to the anti-aliasing setting in the driver options, but doesn't appear to say if the card does it in hardware or not. Anybody know for sure one way or the other?

    2. Re:I Truly Am Amazed By It... by JabberWokky · · Score: 2
      .
      First of all, ATI's track record for supporting non-Intel chipsets is pretty sketchy at best, abysmal at worst.

      I may be wrong, but don't Apple Macs, the Dreamcast, and many embedded products use ATI?

      --
      Evan

      --
      "$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
    3. Re:I Truly Am Amazed By It... by drix · · Score: 2

      Back when the mach64 was a new chip ATI owned the 2D performance segment of the market. Imagine my surprise, then, to open up a computer like 7 years after I bought my first mach64-equipped card (which was top of the line, at the time), and find a graphics card powered by ... another mach64. ATI built this baby into everything right on up through the 3D Rage II+ AFAIK. You are right, though, their 3D chipsets have historically been met with a collective yawn (Rage Fury MAXX, anyone?). Interestingly only Nvidia was able to pull itself out of the "home user" 3D thicket and become a tier-1 manufacturer along with 3DFx (spelled the _old_ way) :)

      --

      --

      I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
    4. Re:I Truly Am Amazed By It... by Salant · · Score: 2

      Yes the Geforce 2 (GTS), voodoo5, and ati raedon all support antialias full screen. Infact that is where ati's chip shines the most. It spanks the gts, and voodoo5 like a little kid at 1600x1200 full screen antialias. Lower resolutions are where its not so hot.

    5. Re:I Truly Am Amazed By It... by Upsilon · · Score: 2
      There are Mac versions of some ATI products, although you naturally have to get a card specifically designed for Macs, you can't just plug your PC card into a Mac. The Dreamcast definately does not use an ATI card. Its graphics processor is based on Videologic's PowerVR technology. I really don't know about emdedded stuff.

      --
      I am not an idiot. Please use my name to email me.

      "That's right, I'm quoting myself."

      -Upsilon

    6. Re:I Truly Am Amazed By It... by Otter · · Score: 2

      There are Mac versions of some ATI products, although you naturally have to get a card specifically designed for Macs, you can't just plug your PC card into a Mac.

      All Macs ship with ATI cards (currently Rage 128). In fact, one would assume that this announcement is tied to the opening of MacWorld tomorrow, where new hardware is expected. I'm not knowledgeable about aftermarket cards, but new Macs use AGP slots and older ones use PCI, so as long as drivers are available, PC cards should work fine.

      Off-topic: So what are the odds that Apple is really coming out with a cube tomorrow? I'm still thinking that this is their best misinformation job yet -- but that something Insanely Great is coming instead.

      --
      What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
  18. Does it really matter? Who can afford it? by Evan-Xun · · Score: 2

    All these numbers and features are great, but who actually has the cash to buy one of these new generation boards?

    I just upgraded to a TNT card in my Dual p2 400 machine about 6 months ago, and put my old ATI 8mb Rage in my Linux box. Just curious, who actually intends on buying or has bought a new-gen card?

    Evan

    --
    "These are not people who use Linux because it is better; these are people who use Linux because they like the elitism t
    1. Re:Does it really matter? Who can afford it? by Duke+of+Org · · Score: 1

      I just bought a voodoo3 about 2 weeks before they announced the Voodoo5
      Which SUCKS!
      But, I won't buy another card until
      1.they are UNDER 150$ (such as my V3)
      2.THey fully make use of the AGP bus (agp 4x, please!)
      3.THey get disant drivers that are stable for more than 3 secs

    2. Re:Does it really matter? Who can afford it? by otis+wildflower · · Score: 2

      3.THey get disant drivers that are stable for more than 3 secs

      Dude, Linux 2.4.0test4 + XFree4.0.1 + the kernel module from the DRM X distro + Matrox G400Max 32 dualhead = 20-30+ minutes stable Quake3 on my BP6.. ROCK!

      Your Working Boy,

    3. Re:Does it really matter? Who can afford it? by Duke+of+Org · · Score: 1

      I guess I don't do all the extra crap.
      I just Use Redhat6.2 and use all the bundeled drivers and XFree86 files

    4. Re:Does it really matter? Who can afford it? by flaggzz · · Score: 1

      hmm and I was going to buy one these suckers (g400 32mb)...

      thought the g400 drivers where more stable by now, since g400 is almost a year old now...

      why not just reuse my old mystique 220 instead? ;-)

      --
      Ring brother, ring for me | Ring the bells of hope and faith
      Ring for my damnation | I am at the gallows end
    5. Re:Does it really matter? Who can afford it? by otis+wildflower · · Score: 2

      thought the g400 drivers where more stable by now, since g400 is almost a year old now...

      Apparently the M$ drivers are _real_ stable, and the DVD/TV out support is outstanding, but these things tend to take longer on Linux :(

      why not just reuse my old mystique 220 instead? ;-)

      Heh, don't play much Q3A do you? ;)

      Your Working Boy,

    6. Re:Does it really matter? Who can afford it? by flaggzz · · Score: 1

      nop... mostly cuz i'm using a k6 200mhz ;-)

      sucks bigtime

      --
      Ring brother, ring for me | Ring the bells of hope and faith
      Ring for my damnation | I am at the gallows end
  19. ATI's poor drivers by Hobart · · Score: 1

    Regardless of how high-powered the card is,
    the card is effectively useless for any market
    beyond the kid playing games who doesn't mind
    having to reboot every hour or two because the
    card locks up. ATI never produced a card with
    a stable video driver for WinNT4 (BSOD anyone?)
    and they won't provide specs for a stable driver
    to be written by the community (Linux/BSD/Windows/Whatever).
    Moderate this down.

    --
    o/~ Join us now and share the software ...
    1. Re:ATI's poor drivers by ranessin · · Score: 1


      My Rage 128 has drivers for X-Windows, written by Precision Insight under contract with ATI. The drivers are quite stable and even have decent 3D support.

      Ranessin

    2. Re:ATI's poor drivers by NetCurl · · Score: 1

      That's not true. There are plenty of good drivers for X, and the reason there haven't been great drivers is that ATI was never taken seriously before. There cards are the cheap alternative, but it appears that they will be getting much more interest in the months to come when this card hits the market.

      ATI has also released the specs and it should not be hard to build a nice, stable driver. With Apple bringing BSD to their OS, I'm sure an easy port of the ATI drivers won't be all that hard after the beta of OS X is released.

      --

      It's only when we've lost everything, that we are free to do anything...

    3. Re:ATI's poor drivers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      The Win9x drivers aren't very good either, and ATI has a history of dropping support for older products as soon as new ones are released. For example, the 3D Rage II/II+ drivers have not been updated since July 1998, even though they have several known bugs (corrupt fonts, disappearing mouse pointers, etc.). But I switched to Linux in June 1999, and I've had no problems with the card. Even my TV tuner works better than in Windows. The Windows tuner program is huge, and takes about 45 seconds to load, the Linux program (GATOS) takes 1 or 2 seconds. And when the Windows program crashed, Windows needed to be restarted before the tuner could be used again. Actually, it seems ironic that a group of people with no documentation (GATOS was originally designed with reverse-engineering, I'm not sure about the X drivers) could support the card better than ATI.

    4. Re:ATI's poor drivers by swb · · Score: 1

      I'll second this, I was really disappointed with the quality of the drivers for my AIW-128 card under Win98 and even more disappointed by the waiting game ATI made us play for decent Win2K support.

      To their credit, they have released a full suite of drivers for the AIW-128 on Win2k, including all the multimedia stuff and I haven't had a problem with any of it, in spite of the fact that its listed as "special purpose." This includes TV, DVD, and 3D.

      Overall I think they're too quick to walk away from driver support for "old" products and not quick enough to get the drivers right for new or current products. I suppose again to their credit, they have been more oriented towards the OEM market where driver support means "make my screensaver look pretty" rather than "make my timedemo score better".

    5. Re:ATI's poor drivers by Wolfier · · Score: 1

      I don't know about you - I have used an Xpert 2000 with its newest beta driver on W2K with no crash at all. Rock solid in 2D and 3D.

      If they come up with a "budget" version like the GeForce2 MX, the Radeon WILL be in my next video card...

    6. Re:ATI's poor drivers by kubis · · Score: 1

      Hmm. I have been running my P-II powered by WinNT 4.0 and ATI Rage 128 card and the only reason why i got the BSOD was my grandma who uses toaster and coffee machine in the same and the comp gets unpowered :))

    7. Re:ATI's poor drivers by kronoman · · Score: 1

      This is the reason (coupled with nVidia's staunch refusal to excise the closed-source stick from their collective rectum) that I (and other serious Linux / BSD'ers that I know) use Matrox cards (especially on dual-boot boxen). (however, to ATi's credit, we have a few Cyrix MII systems with ATi Xpert98 cards in them, running NetBSD/Current, XFree 3.3.6, that work great... Although this could be the XFree guys.)

      --
      If violence isn't solving your problems, you're not using enough of it. - MAJ Misato Katsuragi
  20. (OT) re: your sig by br4dh4x0r · · Score: 1

    I'll moderate however I damn well please, smartypants.

    love,
    br4dh4x0r

  21. Yes, Apple is using the Radeon cards by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2
    InsideMacGames broke the story yesterday. Of course now Jobs will probably *not* use them, just cause his surprise was spoiled. ;) They also have a story on the FSAA on the Radeon, which was 3dfx's biggest feature for the Voodoo5. Should be a fun MacWorld...

    Link to ATI Surprise Announcement
    Link to FSAA Story

  22. Gamer's depot review... by StevenMaurer · · Score: 1

    Yet another review is available from gamesdepot. You can find it here.

  23. 1280x1024 bug by Montressor · · Score: 2

    I wonder if that's rearing its ugly head again? I think that could be the reason for those performance drops on the GForce cards.
    For those of you who don't know, it seems like the Windoze drivers for nVidia drop off performance at 1280x1024, while the Linux ones do not. Most of the benchmarks show it very well.

    1. Re:1280x1024 bug by evanbd · · Score: 1

      Interesting. I'd always thought that was mainly fill rate limitations. Where are these benchmarks?

    2. Re:1280x1024 bug by Montressor · · Score: 2

      Well, it's not as general or widespread as I made it sound, but, if you search for 'benchmark' on LinuxGames, and pick the first one (Evil-something-or-other) you can see it occuring at the high quality 32 bit setting, which is shown on the very last graph in the whole article.

  24. Linux video card recommendations? by daviddennis · · Score: 3

    While we're sort of on this subject, could anyone suggest a good video card for Linux use?

    I have a Compaq Pentium III/700 system whose video performance lags under Linux as compared to Windows. It's blazingly, even awesomely, fast under Windows but doesn't seem to be performing up to potential under Linux/Mandrake/Enlightenment.

    The video setup that came with it is an Intel I810 or 815 chipset. My suspicion is that the driver wasn't that well optimized for Linux.

    All I really want is screaming fast 1280x1024 @ 32 bit colour. I'm not fond of shooting up stuff, so I don't need awesome 3D performance or anything, just the ultimate possible regular graphics.

    I don't use Windows at all on the machine, but would like to be able to use BeOS. I may eventually use the machine for video editing (MiniDV/FireWire) under BeOS or Linux, so anything that would make that work better would be good.

    Any recommendations?

    Many thanks.

    D

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    1. Re:Linux video card recommendations? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Matrox G400 (dual head/tv out ad lib)

    2. Re:Linux video card recommendations? by 11223 · · Score: 2
      Try XFree86 4.0 - if you're on the latest mandrake (7.1), it comes with the distro. XFree86 4.0 has had 810 support from the beginning.

      However, Enlightenment itself just plain lags. Wait until they move the core to imlib2 if you want performance on that front.

      I don't think BeOS has a 810 driver - if you're looking for a new card and are interested in true cross-platform support, buy a 3dfx. (That and FSAA is just plain cool).

    3. Re:Linux video card recommendations? by SquadBoy · · Score: 1

      My next video card for Linux will be a Matrox

      --

      Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
    4. Re:Linux video card recommendations? by WolfPup · · Score: 2

      Knowing the i810 chipset somewhat, if it has the intel integrated graphics chipset the reason it probably has more trouble in linux is the way the video chip accesses video memory.

      Instead of having a separate memory for the video it uses the system's main memory dynamically for video functions. So when in 2d mode it only uses maybe 4MB of system memory and then jumps to 11MB when using 3D. I'm not sure how this would be handled in Linux. I'm not the dynamic allocation is supported at all and whether it just ends up being a static value.

      However, as far as videocards go. I've heard a couple of things, 3dfx seem to have a good following and nvidida cards have some drivers, but the releases from nvidia seem to be in binary only form. As far as other manufacturer's go, I can't say.

      "A man whose circumstances went beyond his control" -- STYX

      --

      -- Wolfpup

      "A man whose circumstances went beyond his control." -- Styx

    5. Re:Linux video card recommendations? by Rand+Race · · Score: 2
      BeOS does support the i810 (and i740) for R5. Still, I too recomend a 3dfx chipset for it's cross-platform support. My Voodoo3 works like a champ on BeOS, OpenBSD, Mandrake Linux, and Windows.

      --
      Insanity is the last line of defence for the master diplomat. But you have to lay the groundwork early.
    6. Re:Linux video card recommendations? by otis+wildflower · · Score: 2

      I like the G400 because it drives my Multiscan W900 @1920x1200x24 very well w/32MB, but as the newer 3Dfx cards support that amount of RAM (and 24-bit 3D) I would consider them for any upgraded unit..

      Your Working Boy,

    7. Re:Linux video card recommendations? by Tower · · Score: 1

      Matrox. Plain and simple.

      --
      "It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
    8. Re:Linux video card recommendations? by drew · · Score: 1

      a few other people have said 3dfx. i have one and am happy with it, although i don't think it is what i would reccomend, especially if you are not planning on playing many games on it.

      for 2D performance (i.e. an insanely huge desktop at hig res/refresh rates) matrox is probably that card to go with. for the longest time the XFree86 developers cited the matrox milleniums as the fastest drivers they had. i have personally never used a matrox, but i have had friends who were vey happy with them. i tend to buy ati video cards. i imagine it will be a while before this new one is well supported in linux, but i am quite happy with the xpert128 that i have now and the xpert@work (mach 64 rage 3d pro) that i had before this card.

      ati and matrox both make very high quality and fairly affordable 2d cards with some 3d support under linux. for true 3d support, though, you should go with the aforementioned 3dfx cards, as thaqt is really the only way currently to get good open 3d support in linux.

      --
      If I don't put anything here, will anyone recognize me anymore?
    9. Re:Linux video card recommendations? by daviddennis · · Score: 2

      Apparently the driver supports acceleration only in 24-bit colour, and you need 32-bit colour to get rid of some tiresome analomies in Netscape (i.e. the very strange black and white icon display). Thus my desire for a better card.

      Thanks for all the responses, folks! I'll look into both 3DFX and Matrox.

      D

      ----

  25. DDR Memory by sulli · · Score: 1
    I didn't know they made memory in the former East Germany!

    sulli

    --

    sulli
    RTFJ.
  26. Won't buy another one by Pfhreakaz0id · · Score: 2

    When I initally got my all-in-wonder Pro, I raved about it. I knew it wasn't the fastest 3d card around, but I don't game a LOT. I loved all the multimedia stuff. BUT, ATI has really let me down with their Win2K support. They STILL don't have a driver that supports all the stuff. I have an old beta driver for the all-in-wonder 128 that at least lets me watch TV. I'm really peeved. I mean, this OS came out WAY back. SUPPORT IT already. I despise booting up into 98 just to watch a DVD. Actually, I despise booting into 98 period. 98 is to 2K as my Atari ST was to my first Mac.
    ---

    --
    DO NOT DISTURB THE SE
  27. $$ Cost to much!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    I think that these graphic chip companys like nvidia, 3dfx, etc. should concentrate more on the value/performence of their cards instead of just brute force at any cost. Maybe its just me, but I really don't think many people can afford these $300 cards every 6 months. I remember when I bought my Riva TNT and thought that $130 was stretching the limits. Anyways, just my $0.02.

    1. Re:$$ Cost to much!! by ODiV · · Score: 1

      Read Tom's take on it here:
      http://www.tomshardware.com/graphic/00q3/000717/ index.html

      He seems to think that this is not a brute force solution. Of course the development of a more elegant solution would cost more than just chucking another 16 megs on a card.

      Let's see where this card takes us, and don't worry, the way things are going it'll be cheap enough soon. (ATI has a really cool video card trade in program by the way. Check out their website for details.)

    2. Re:$$ Cost to much!! by DebtAngel · · Score: 2

      Not to mention that I have the distinct impression Tom and crew are on crack.

      They use 20% more transistors than the GeForce 2. They are therefore faster. But elegant? The Kyro PowerVR3 is elegant. The Radeon seems like a big ol' hack job to me.

      It's a brute force solution, with everything except the kitchen sink to boot (if there's anything to love about ATi, it's that).

      OK, I think I've whined about Tom enough for today. :)

      --

      Is this post not nifty? Sluggy Freelance. Worshi

  28. The problem with ATI. by Matt2000 · · Score: 3

    No matter what the performance results of new ATI products, you can pretty much guarantee that it will be at least 2 driver releases after the actual release of the card when you will be able to play any games with stability, and you will also be pretty much guaranteed that the card will NEVER get it's drivers to the state where everything works satisfactorily.

    ATI has burned me too many times by abandoning my card before the drivers get mature enough to be stable and consequently I won't be buying any of their stuff again.

    Hotnutz.com - Funny

    --

    1. Re:The problem with ATI. by orbital3 · · Score: 1

      I would have to agree with you wholeheartedly. I've run my All-In-Wonder 128 under Win95, Win98 and now Win2k, and NONE of the drivers have been any good. When I tried to play Moto Racer 2 (keep in mind, this came _bundled with the card_) the game would just crash. My fresh new Diablo 2 won't run in Direct3D mode, and when I installed the multimedia and DVD software, my computer got VERY unstable. What really worries me is that the drivers for the Radeon are based on the ones from the Rage 128 chip... New drivers based on drivers that have never ever worked well even on their native chip?... no thanks.

      I also own a Voodoo 3 and can say hands down that 3dfx's drivers are by far superior. Until ATI can consistently prove to me that they've changed their ways regarding drivers, I'm avoiding them like the plague.

    2. Re:The problem with ATI. by HeUnique · · Score: 2

      Well, I donno about you, but at work I got 2 machines and on each one of them - ATI Rage Pro AGP card. One is running XFree 3.3.6 and the other - XFRee 4.0.1 CVS - both of them are running perfect without any glitches...

      Maybe someone could help them write drivers for Windows - I donno :) (And yes, I agree with you about their drivers - on my previous job I had the "pleasure" to see their drivers screws graphics (and I'm talking 2D on NT!)..

      --
      Hetz (Heunique)
  29. question by ArchieBunker · · Score: 1

    What the hell is with these posts? Is there html imbedded or what?

    --
    Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
  30. That much better? by jslag · · Score: 1
    I despise booting up into 98. . .98 is to 2K as my Atari ST was to my first Mac.

    Wait - if 98 is way way cooler than 2k, why do you despise booting into it?

    ----------------

    1. Re:That much better? by Pfhreakaz0id · · Score: 2

      Look my, ST was cool, but --face it-- it was the poor man's mac. Yes, on a $/power factor it killed everything out there, but the mac was lots better (not that I didn't like my ST.)
      ---

      --
      DO NOT DISTURB THE SE
    2. Re:That much better? by Pfhreakaz0id · · Score: 1

      WARNING! Anecdotal evidence ahead:

      I run 98 because 2000 is at least 10 times as stable as 98, in my experience. I have run it at work and at home for about 4 months now. Not a single crash. Period. Not one. The only problem I've had is with the ATI *&($# driver messing with the boot-time defrag with Diskeeper.

      On my work machine, that uptime is particularly impressive. Your're talking a DEVELOPMENT machine. I've probably installed 200 things on it (and removed half). Under 95/98 and even nt 4 workstation (not as bad), I expected a development machine to get flaky after 3 months and require a rebuild every 6. I realize many slashdotians run Linux and don't care, but the system .dll protection under 2K is worth the upgrade. Of course, that's easy for me to say, I work for an MCSP and don't pay for the license, my employer does :)

      anyway, that's what fires me up about ATI. They said they would support it (win 2k). They said "beta in march, for now use the AIW 128 drivers. Their not really SUPPORTED but they'll work." Then, in April, they said "oh, beta in July" what they didn't say was "don't bother downloading the latest AIW128 drivers, because will do a hardware detect and won't install", instead they let me figure it out.

      Bottom line -- this card is not that old, I bought it in February 1999 when it was the top of their line. They should do what they said it will do. I'm still waiting for my damn drivers!
      ---

      --
      DO NOT DISTURB THE SE
  31. High-End Machines from Apple by NetCurl · · Score: 2
    Apple is going to announce high-end G4's tomorrow with RADEON in them. The article is right --> there.

    --

    It's only when we've lost everything, that we are free to do anything...

    1. Re:High-End Machines from Apple by namlhaz · · Score: 1

      A vaguely amusing bit of censorship from that article:
      "Somebody must have (messed) up at the company," the PR person said.

      --
      Zahlman Q. Namlhaz, esq. {:> "Zahl Incorporated - the Last Word in Everything(TM)"
    2. Re:High-End Machines from Apple by piku · · Score: 1

      Those machines are going to KICK ASS.

  32. Crunch time for 3D? by Hortensia+Patel · · Score: 5

    I'll be interested to see how this one does.

    Consumer 3D acceleration has advanced at a phenomenal rate in the past few years, for two main reasons.

    Firstly, until now everyone has been chasing SGI's taillights. SGI and OpenGL pretty much defined how to do fast 3D, so hardware and API designs have evolved toward that goal in a fairly consistent manner. (Except for a few unsuccessful oddballs like the NV-1 and D3D-RM.)

    Secondly, it started off as a wide-open market with no entrenched leader. Lots of competition, leading to low prices and very fast product cycles.

    This picture is starting to change, which is why I wonder whether the rate of progress is going to slow down. Firstly, consumer hardware has now caught up with SGI. SGI's "high bandwidth throughout the box" systems still win for some workstation apps, but there's no gaping chasm in speed or features any more. We're in uncharted territory now, and there's much less agreement about what the next goals should be. If every vendor starts innovating along radically different paths, apps will have a harder time using them all, and without app support the upgrade cycle is broken.

    At the same time, the competition is thinning out drastically. ATI is now just about the only significant competitor to NVidia; 3Dfx is just about hanging in there but is suffering from repeated slippages and is going to have a very hard time catching up. These days NVidia is very, VERY influential in defining the direction of Direct3D, and will become more so now that they've been selected for X-Box. Remember that D3D (unlike OpenGL) has no extension mechanism, so a D3D version written to favour one vendor is a huge competitive advantage - if other vendors can't get their features exposed then they've effectively wasted a generation.

    I'm a big fan of NVidia. Their hardware is superb, their drivers are excellent, they have a serious commitment to OpenGL and cross-platform support, and they contribute a lot to the graphics community in terms of research. But I'm not sure I'd like to see a total NVidia monopoly on consumer graphics. For that reason, if no other, I hope Radeon does well.

    1. Re:Crunch time for 3D? by taniwha · · Score: 3
      I think it will slow down - but probably not for the reason you think - there's a memory bandwidth wall fast approaching in the consumer space - by which I mean that if you are using off-the-shelf DRAMs there's only so much bandwidth you can get out of them and they're already pushing them to the max - no more factor of 10 performance boosts in the pipes without gross rearchitecting of people's graphics pipes (and software/drivers/etc). We saw this same thing happen with 2D - for a long time companies were fighting to outdo each in 2D graphics performance - 64-bit cards, 128, 256 etc - but you can only push bytes into dram so fast and wider buses mean more pins but only factor of 2 performance increases - eventually there came a point where everyone's performance became pretty much the same and no-one really cares any more provided it's 'fast enough'.

      Instead in the 3D space I think you'll see a broadening of the features available - and more optimization to avoid drawing pixels at all - Radeon seems to already have some of this with it's 'Hyper-Z' stuff

    2. Re:Crunch time for 3D? by Hortensia+Patel · · Score: 1

      I'd agree that bandwidth constraints are important, but I don't think they're the end of the world. At the moment (on-card) bandwidth primarily limits framebuffer read/write and texture sampling; these have been major issues in the past because they were usually the bottlenecks in software 3D, but the hardware focus now is shifting more towards single-pass multitexture (which can actually reduce bandwidth requirements in some cases), per-pixel shading (which is more computation than memory access) and on-card vertex manipulation (which is a really wide-open field, and is already causing historical API models to creak a bit at the seams).

      The comparison with 2D graphics is possibly misleading - 2D hit a plateau because it became "fast enough" for just about anything. I mean, once you can comfortably redraw the entire screen every frame there's nowhere much to go without branching off into Aqua-style eyecandy silliness. Maybe one day 3D will be "fast enough", but I don't see it anytime soon. There are ways around the bandwidth wall if you want to badly enough; move blending ops into RAM as some companies have done to avoid the read-modify-write round trip, or use a Talisman-style tiled architecture and parallel pipelines.

      (Love the nospam penguin, btw!)

    3. Re:Crunch time for 3D? by taniwha · · Score: 1
      I'd agree that bandwidth constraints are important, but I don't think they're the end of the world. At the moment (on-card) bandwidth primarily limits framebuffer read/write and texture sampling;

      Yes - and with more bits/pixel (now 32 is becoming common) and bigger displays you need a lot more bandwidth for just driving the screen (4x1280x1024x75 = ~400Mb/sec alone to get the data out of the memory - and you figure you need at least the same amount to get it if you're doing 1 frame/frame so close to 1Gb/sec just for the frame buffer. The good news here is that neither the number of pixels/screen or the refresh rate is going up at a horrble rate - in fact the pixel count and bits/pixel will probably plateau at HDTV sizes (modulo 4x or 16x for antialiasing) - which in a couple of generations of silicon will fit on-die (remember my comment was about the use of off-the-shell DRAMs - a technology that tends to drive density rather than speed) - once you move that (and the Z buffer) on-board you can have radically different memory architectures (ie really wide and/or radically banked for parallelism) that wil probably allow you another order of magnitude DRAM performance

      (then again maybe we should bring back VRAM to double our bandwidth in the mean time - the problem being that now days there's 100s of 1000s of gates in the display backend past the DRAM outputs where in the days of VRAMs we used to put a simple mux and DAC)

      the hardware focus now is shifting more towards single-pass multitexture (which can actually reduce bandwidth requirements in some cases), per-pixel shading (which is more computation than memory access) and on-card vertex manipulation (which is a really wide-open field, and is already causing historical API models to creak a bit at the seams).

      Yup and all these require different programming - I wonder who's really driving the APIs - the chip architects or the game developers - both have pretty long development cycles - I bet it's pretty hit and miss ...

      The comparison with 2D graphics is possibly misleading - 2D hit a plateau because it became "fast enough" for just about anything. I mean, once you can comfortably redraw the entire screen every frame there's nowhere much to go

      well to be fair the same could be said for 3D cards - benchmarking things at 100+ frames/sec is really quite meaningless if the screen is doing 75Hz ... which is one of the reasons we're now seeing all this stuff that provide better image quality (for example Radeon has T&L to get poly counts up, bump mapping, skins etc etc)

      There are ways around the bandwidth wall if you want to badly enough; move blending ops into RAM as some companies have done to avoid the read-modify-write round trip, or use a Talisman-style tiled architecture and parallel pipelines.

      Yup Talisman sorts of stuff was what I was refering to when I was talking about 'radically different architectures' in my previous post - in general we're going to have to play with the memory hierarchy to get faster memory access - bringing some of in on-chip as in Talisman-like image-space stuff or even hardware ray tracing (the number of rays you have to trace is 1st order proportional to the number of screen pixels which as I pointed out above isn't going up particularly fast - there has to be a cross-over point where this becomes usefull)

    4. Re:Crunch time for 3D? by fudboy · · Score: 1

      I disagree that the industry is near slowing down, and I'll tell you why: we are about to see a big jump in display qualities. HDTV's run at twice the resolution most of us are currently set to. 2048x1280 if I recall, which is quite a boost if you ask me.

      This latest crop of cards only barely support those resolutions, and certainly not at 85+fps with however many millions of triangles/sec. Lots of room for development there. Even if standard consumer machines are running 133mhz fsb and 1.5ghz cpus, the cards will still have to do most of the work. Thus further gpu upgrades and more and faster ram can be piled on to these cards for years to come yet.

      Concerned that HDTV is vaporware? HDTV's are for sale at every home audio/video store in the western world, as far as I can tell, at least all over the US west cost. You can get a 27" sony hdtv for $4k US here in California (sure, my 21" monitor cost only a 1/3rd as much but the prices are dropping fast)

      As HDTV picks up some steam (lord knows it's been long enough) Those people who adopt will realize that their TV sets are much higher resolution than their monitors.

      There will be a demand for HDTV monitors then, and manufacturers have doubtlessly already realized this. Soon, I expect to see smaller 21" HDTVs for this purpose (around desk sized, that is to say). Maybe CRT, maybe LCD, maybe both, doesn't matter cause today's video card and entire systems from cpu to ram to mb chipset will be choking at those resolutions. The entire hardware industry will enjoy dozens of generations matching the HDTV resolutions, in the smallest possible increments.

      Beyond that, someday there will be some sort of viable 3d display that takes enormous amounts of bandwidth, displaying HDTV like resolutions in a cubic area instead of on plane. A whole 'nother round of upgrades await!


      :)Fudboy

      --

      :)Fudboy

      I guess I'm only a Fudboy, looking for that real Transmeta
    5. Re:Crunch time for 3D? by taniwha · · Score: 1
      I disagree that the industry is near slowing down, and I'll tell you why: we are about to see a big jump in display qualities. HDTV's run at twice the resolution most of us are currently set to. 2048x1280 if I recall, which is quite a boost if you ask me.

      I think the point I was making was that there's a big problem with consumer (ie something that costs a couple of hundred $$ and fits on a PCI card) 3D getting faster - it's memory bandwidth into off-the-shelf DRAMs - in fact HDTV makes it worse - 2048x1024x4bytes/pixelx85Hz is 700Mb/sec just to read the pixels and put them on the screen - peak is really closer to 900Mb/sec because there's no need to fetch pixels during blanking - remember a 200MHz DDR DRAM bank only produces 1.6GB/sec best case (realiisticly you might get 1.2-1.4 - this doesn't leave an awfull lot of bandwidth for rendering ..... 3D on HDTV is going to be slow (in fact the bandwidth sucked up by display refresh is roughly proportional to the square of the screen resolution) - plus more pixels also means you need more bandwidth and GPU oomph to do a good job ....

      This latest crop of cards only barely support those resolutions, and certainly not at 85+fps with however many millions of triangles/sec. Lots of room for development there.

      Right - but they're going to have to use a different technology that simple consumer DRAMS if they are going to keep producing order of magnitude performance increases every generation. However as I pointed out elsewhere - screens aren't going to get much bigger for a while so the memory bandwidth they suck wont keep increasing generation to generation - and I bet the 'sweet spot' the chip designers aim at wont be 3D on HDTV any time soon - in fact it's more likely to be something like 1kx512 scaled and filtered on-the-fly to HDTV resolutions which uses a lot less bandwidth (1/4)

      Concerned that HDTV is vaporware?

      Nope - as a logic designer I've been designing HDTV capable displays for almost a decade now - I still remember showing my first card driving what was at the time one of less than 10 HDTV monitors in the US at a show 7 years or so back - that thing weighed a ton and needed a forklift to get it into the booth.

      As HDTV picks up some steam (lord knows it's been long enough) Those people who adopt will realize that their TV sets are much higher resolution than their monitors.

      Yup - and in fact Radeon claims to support HDTV out YPbPr (I don't know if this is standard on the new cards or a future feature - I'd guess standard through a fudged VGA cable) - but then ATI makes set-top graphics chips too ...

    6. Re:Crunch time for 3D? by stanis · · Score: 1

      The consumer 3d market is allready moved past fully accelerating the OpenGL pipeline and into new territory. So far, the industry is doing well dealing with having outrun SGI.

      The introduction of more per-pixel effects in the latest generation of cards is something that was only briefly touched by SGI, and only in extensions to OpenGL, never in the core API. Perhaps the biggest challenge facing OpenGL today is the task of re-defining itself with per-pixel based materials. Vertex based shading is fleeting.

      It does seem that the industry has changed directions from chasing SGI's Infinite Reality to chasing RenderMan. Quake3 introduced the idea of using a shader language for realtime effects and this idea will continue to grow. It is a powerful way of expressing material properties and enables a new era of graphics inovation.

      Remember the VGA and all its wacky hardware? Many people found things that they could do with VGA hardware that the hardware designers never thought of. Shader based graphics cards are bringing us back to these days of evil tricks.

      Just a few weeks ago I read about a technique where cubic environment maps are used to normalize interpolated vertex normals across a triangle. You simply create a cubic environment map that maps a 3d direction to a normalized 3d vector in that direction. This means we can do true phong shading on consumer hardware!

      Also, the hyper-z technique that ATI is hyping is not new. Check out the paper from your 1997 SIGGRAPH proceedings on "Visibility Culling using Hierarchical Occlusion Maps". I do applaud them for using a slick algorithmic technique rather then just throwing gates at the problem.

      --Tom Stanis

    7. Re:Crunch time for 3D? by Hortensia+Patel · · Score: 1

      even hardware ray tracing (the number of rays you have to trace is 1st order proportional to the number of screen pixels which as I pointed out above isn't going up particularly fast - there has to be a cross-over point where this becomes usefull)

      Um. Number of rays may be proportional to number of pixels (which, as you say, is fairly fixed), but the cost of evaluating intersections for each ray is proportional to the complexity of scene geometry (which is going going through the roof).

    8. Re:Crunch time for 3D? by Ella+the+Cat · · Score: 1

      It's important to distinguish Talisman from tile based rendering - I'm an advocate of the latter and have issues with the former. I recall seeing a newsgroup post by Michael T Jones of SGI saying how the Talisman paper at Siggraph 96 didn't give credit to people who'd been working in the area for years, but I couldn't find it. (I did try, and I'd appreciate being given the reference if anyone else can find it). I didn't believe in the image warping aspects because if you turned you head or went round a corner the whole frame had to be re-rendered anyway. Tile based rendering gets you so much, in particular anti-aliasing, elegantly.

    9. Re:Crunch time for 3D? by fudboy · · Score: 1

      sorry for the delayed response, not sure if you'll get this, but I think we are 'agreeing at each other' in a roundabout manner.

      sure off the shelf dram probably won't cut the mustard for HDTV resolutions, but that only means some other technique will be used (example: say 16gb of rambus style @ 66Ghz)

      Completely outrageous now, sure, but a gig of ram was unthinkable when I got my TI/99 4a with 16kb ram and cassette tape based storage device :)

      :)Fudboy

      --

      :)Fudboy

      I guess I'm only a Fudboy, looking for that real Transmeta
  33. Queasy... by EEEthan · · Score: 1

    The idea of waiting for ATI driver support just makes me feel a little sick...I didn't like it when NVIDIA had bad drivers and I don't think that I'm ever going to buy a card without ready, shipping linux drivers. Now, 2d and 3d seem like they will be supported. But as for its TV tuner and video-in portions? I really don't see them being supported at all. Do you?
    Sorry, I guess I just have no faith in ATI. Good luck to all involved, but, well, blech. Call me back when there's real driver support, ok?

    1. Re:Queasy... by HeUnique · · Score: 3

      Lets see..

      So far, the XFree team did the whole 2D drivers for most of known cards (and they did/doing a great job! - I just hope that someone from the XFree documentation people will write some documentation about the Xv extention, please?? we need some video in X and DGA is not enough!)

      Precision Insight are doing the 3D drivers for the popular cards (Matrox, ATI, 3DFX).

      IMHO, I think We need a new group that will write another "driver layer" which will support most (if not all) Video extensions of those cards - motion compensation, iDCT, you name it (the BTTV did this quite nicely with the TV Tuner cards)- so if a program needs to output a video - it should use this "driver" - same as DRI being used for 3D graphics (I hope I explained myself correctly - I'm pretty tired right now :)

      I hope that some representitives of those hardware companies who read this post can release some info /specs about their video extensions (well, at least Matrox did release some info about their YUV -> RGB conversion if I'm not mistaken).

      Thoughts anyone?

      --
      Hetz (Heunique)
  34. It gets worse... by Christopher+B.+Brown · · Score: 2
    I remember the "good old days" when:
    • I upgraded my Atari 400 to 32K of RAM, and had a hard time imagining how to use it all.
    • My Atari 400 had 32K of RAM, and a 120K disk drive

      I now have more cache on my "obsolete" Pentium Pro CPU than that.

    Anyone that suggests that X is bloated! when they're using a video card with 64MB of memory needs to be thrashed severely with a clue stick, as the wastage of 10-15MB of RAM, which is about all the bloat that is likely to be plausible with X, just disappears in the variances here...

    --
    If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
    1. Re:It gets worse... by Alpha_Geek · · Score: 1

      Umm... X does not waste Video RAM, it wastes System RAM. Having 64MB of Vid RAM doesn't make X run any faster, but a chipset specific X server will.

      PPro obsolete!?! My primary home system is a PPro and it still runs plenty fast for me (192MB of RAM doesn't hurt :). I just may have to build a new system when the new All-in-Wonder comes out.
      -

    2. Re:It gets worse... by Alpha_Geek · · Score: 1

      Granted... my point was just that lots of Video RAM isn't going to make the bloatedness of X disapear.
      -

  35. Full specs? Really? by Straker+Skunk · · Score: 2

    I looked around the site, but couldn't find the magical PDF files. I don't suppose they'd link those in from the brochureware pages.

    Just how much in the way of specs are they releasing? Does it go above and beyond the 2D core? Will people actually be able to write full OpenGL drivers for this thing without an NDA?

    Because, if ATI really is being that open with the specs, the beauty of it is that everyone who's been burned by NVidia not releasing theirs will finally have the chance to hit them where it counts: by moving to a competitor's product.

    The Radeon looks awesome, and if a level of support for it similar to that of the G400 can come around, Linux and a whole host of non-x86 systems will finally have an open path to cutting-edge 3D support!

    --
    iSKUNK!
  36. Consumer hardware has gotten REALLY fast. by be-fan · · Score: 4

    For those of you who haven't been on the scene lately, I'll clue you in. With the arrival of the GeForce, consumer 3D hardware has gotten REALLY fast. Right now, the GeForce 2 GTS is nearly the fastest 3D card availabe on PCs for workstation tasks. If you head over to Intergraphs's website, you'll see their comparisons between the Elsa's NVIDIA Quadro-based card and Intergraphs Wildcat 4210, which is currently the fastest workstation card availabe (more than twice as fast as the SGI Visual Workstation series in awedvs tests.) However, the Quadro-based card is nearly 50-70% the speed of the intergraph machine. Considering that the Quadro is only 135MHz compared to the GeForce2 GTS's 200MHz, plus the fact that the GeForce2 has twice as many pipes, it means that a GeForce2 is probably close to the performance of a Wildcat 4210. Thus, you can get nearly all of the $2000+Wildcat's performance in Hercules's $400 64MB GeForce2 card (which can be run at 235MHz core and 200+ MHz RAM). That sound you just heard was a collective orgasm from all the 3D Studio users who just realized that a $5000 PC can take the place of their $10,000 intergraph.

    --
    A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
  37. Specs instead of drivers is still good... by Frank+T.+Lofaro+Jr. · · Score: 1
    ATI's stand is perfectly fine with me. They don't want to support/write drivers themselves, but they are providing us all the tools we need for us to do it ourselves. That is a very good thing. With the specs we can write drivers and debug them and optimize them, etc. We likely have at least as many people in the Linux community that can write drivers as ATI has. ATI is likely not interested or in the best position to write drivers for the Linux kernel or XFree86. So people in the Linux community can, should, and likely will do so, in an open source environment. (Barring any sillyness on the part of XFree86, they act kind of closed sometimes).

    So Linux community, I ask you to take up the challenge.

    P.S. Any drivers we write, let's make modular enough so that more than XFree86 can use them. Mesa3D over the raw hardware or a kernel driver will be much faster than over X... It would be great to not be dependant on X. Since we have the specs, we have the choice to do it right...

    --
    Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
  38. priorities by GungaDan · · Score: 1

    So this is what ATI has been doing with its time... I've been waiting for their multimedia center and dvd player software for win-dohs 2000 for many moons now. 2 months for the drivers; now how many years for the apps? Guess there's more money in a fancy new card than in supporting your existing customers...

    --
    Eloi are stupid, throw morlocks at them!
  39. NO HARDWARE SPECS, NO GIVVA MY $$$A by maynard · · Score: 5
    On the other hand, one wonders exactly how many of these cards they would actually sell simply due to a full suite of Linux drivers.

    Just how big is the hardcore gamer/linuxgeek crossover? Obviously they're the most VOCAL ones on the internet, and so it seems like there's bunches of them. But I'd be willing to bet that a WAY disproportionate amount of them have web pages and are active on discussion boards etc.
    I can't speak for any other Linux users, but I'll sure buy the ATI Radeon if it's significantly better than the 3dfx Voodoo 5. I've got a Voodoo 3 right now, and very much wanted to purchase a GeForce 2 until I found out NVIDEA wasn't releasing hardware specs for their product. I'm not going to spend $300+ for closed hardware for which I can't get opensource drivers. Period.

    Never mind the ethical dilema of supporting hardware manufacturers who "do the right thing" for us free software proponents, even if it means giving up a few features every now and then. Frankly, I'm not about to shell out that kind of cash to anyone unless I know I'll be able to support the hardware years from now when it becomes outdated. When's the last time you saw a modern driver under Windows for the GD5380, or S3/968? Telling me to buy new hardware is NOT why I run Linux/BSD.
  40. Will be released for Macintosh, as well. by phlake · · Score: 2

    There's a story at MacCentral.com talking about an upcoming Mac release, as well.

  41. (PI's doing it) Re:Here's the (driver) scoop: by Akai · · Score: 1

    Precision Insight, the same folks behind the 3dfx, Matrox, i810, and Rage128 drivers are doing Radeon drivers.

    According to messages on the DRI-DEVEL list, ATI contracted them to write the drivers, like they did for the rage 128 drivers.

    The ATI website does not reflect this information.

    --
    Please send all UCE to scally@devolution.com so I can f
  42. Great Card!! Who cares ... by dgb2n · · Score: 1

    I sure don't. This is another example of video cards rapidly outpacing the ability for game manufacturers to really challenge the video processors as well as the consumers desired upgrade cycle.

    With the exception of a few hard core gamers, no one really needs this kind of processing power. 2D (which is the mode in which most cards run most often) isn't really affected.

    I've yet to run into a game on which my TNT2 based card bogs down. Sure, it would be great to have this thing but ATI can keep it until there's a more compelling reason to upgrade.

    Just my .02

    r/

    Dave

  43. Hardware Good - Drivers Bad by BadBlood · · Score: 1

    ...at least in OpenGL implementation on Windows. That has been ATI's Achilles heel since way back. I don't think there has ever been a poor review about their hardware and its potential. It's just that their OpenGL drivers for Windows generally blew chucks when compared to those of Nvidia.


    --


    Praying for the end of your wide-awake nightmare.
  44. Drivers for Radeon by HeUnique · · Score: 4

    Well, Precision Insight (Hi Gareth!), are already working on the drivers for the Radeon graphics chip, so drivers for Linux should be vailable soon..

    Also, Intense 3D will release soon a driver for XFree 4.0.x RSN (the driver for their WildCat series is written by Intense 3D, so expect some kick-ass performance!)

    --
    Hetz (Heunique)
  45. I work for ATI... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3

    and do you know how many driver writers there are here? I'd say less than 50. We have 2D, D3D, DVD, OpenGL, and other drivers to write for 4-5 products in the pipeline. We're actively paying DI to develop open-source 3D drivers, and XFree developpers have access to most of our 2D register specs. And finally, we have to keep outpacing a ferocious competitor on both the hardware and software side. (something to most companies would find impossible, we did to a point, and we'll continue doing.)

  46. much different experience by drew · · Score: 1

    your experience with ati cards is much different than mine. admittedly, i have never used my rage128 in windows, so i have no idea what it's drivers are like. but my previous ati card was the xpert@work. the drivers that came with this card worked perfectly straigt out of the box, and were never updated. i never once had a problem with it, and it is still being used today in my parents computer. i much preferred that to my voodoo3, for which new beta drivers were still being released over six months after i got the card (and it was not even new when i got it)

    --
    If I don't put anything here, will anyone recognize me anymore?
  47. More Reviews by Chris+Pimlott · · Score: 2

    I'm surprised there was just Sharky's review. All of the sites normally come up with reviews when the NDA's expire:

    AnandTech
    Fast Graphics
    FiringSquad
    GamersDepot
    GameSpot
    GA-Hardware
    HotHardware
    PlanetHardware
    Tom's Hardware

    For my money, Anand's is the best place to go for these things, although Tom usually has better discussions of the details behind the hardware and features itself.

    Also, 20 questions with ATI, mostly about Radeon.

  48. Only when.... by efuseekay · · Score: 2

    we can install our games directly into the Video Ram is the RAM is enough.

    --
    Mode (3) smart-aleck mode. Press * to return to main menu.
  49. how do these compare to OXYGEN cards ? by Brigadier · · Score: 1



    I remember back in the day if you wanted a 3D carrd you had to have a OXYGEN cards, these would be upwards of $2K, and still are. Though not used for video games they were/are used for 3DStudio type stuff (drool) I know of late many main stream cards now support Open GL, as many 3D programs support Direct 3D. does anyone have any info on how these cards compare.

  50. Re:Sharky too by zorgon · · Score: 2
    It took me over an hour just to read the Sharky article, let alone the Tom's article. {enable flamebait mode} 90% of /. commentors don't bother to read the articles anyway, what do you expect? {disable flamebait mode} So you're one of 10%, perhaps. ;)

    WWJD -- What Would Jimi Do?

    --

    I am quite civilized, and I should be brought a beer immediately. -- Bruce Sterling

  51. Haiku by 575 · · Score: 2

    ATI's new toy:
    Video card with more megs
    Than your first hard drive

  52. Poorly written? I think not. by Svartalf · · Score: 2

    First off, the driver for the Radeon will probably be none other than Gareth Hughes, one of the developers that wrote the Rage PRO driver. The quality of that driver is comparable to some of the better quality drivers for Windows (well... allowing for the Rage PRO- which is a lame chip compared to other chips... :-)

    --
    I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
  53. Oh man don't whine about that... by Arker · · Score: 1

    They release the specs and you whine because they didn't write a driver for you? *boggles in incomprehension* Releasing the specs is the holy grail so far as hardware support goes, and it puts them a world ahead of their competition. With the specs disclosed competent kernel hackers can and will be writing good solid open source drivers, not just for a few versions of x86 linux, but for any system that needs them. Releasing the specs shows that they get it.

    Besides that, I believe you are in fact wrong about that, they have contracted with Precision Insight (I think that's the name) to write drivers for them in the past and several other posters have said they are doing that in this case too. At any rate, drivers are icing, the specs are the cake, how can you complain if they are releasing specs?

    --
    =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
    Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
  54. [OT] Moderation. by Fist+Prost · · Score: 1

    He does have a decent idea (that should go to Moderation BTW :-), and your point is a good one. How 'bout a compromise (apologies if this is what either of you meant and I'm just being obvious).

    You get your moderator access and would be able to use it, but if you are reading at anything >0 and hit the "moderate" button you get one of those patented, trite slashmessages saying "Whoa there, kemosabe, why not try looking at some of those poor underrated AC posts while you're at it?" and a dynamically generated link to reopen the page, setting the threshold to -1 and resetting the moderation forms.

    --

    Fist Prost

    "We're talking about a planet of helpdesks."
    -Jaron Lanier
  55. 64 MB video cards by GodSpiral · · Score: 1

    They'd sell a lot more of these thingies if you could use the unused RAM while in X or win32 as the first swapfile.

  56. If you give them the little finger... by uradu · · Score: 1

    ...soon they want the whole hand, and then some. I remember the early days when ATI (along with Diamond?) wouldn't provide specs for their chips, never mind write drivers, and there was only minimal XFree support. People were howling for the specs. Now that we've got the specs, we're whining about having to write the drivers. There's just no pleasing anyone...

    Uwe Wolfgang Radu

  57. Agrument can be made that we don't need this power by ChozSun · · Score: 1

    but I enjoy it just the same.

    I love games but I do not consider myself a hardcore gamer.

    But I do want my fix of Unreal Tournament, NHL 9x/2K and Starcraft.

    For that one FPS on my list, I would like for it to run as smooth as possible.

    For the most part, we need more 2D power. For this, Matrox comes out screaming. 3dfx was going somewhere with 12MB 3D graphic accelerator that was in additional to your plainjane 2D/4MB card.

    I wish it would go in that direction: Keep a nice 2D card and then upgrade (not-too-expensive) your 3D accelerators.


    ChozSun [e-mail]

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    ChozSun
    ChozSun.com
  58. huh? by RelliK · · Score: 1

    I don't know if it's just because I've got an older card or what, but it works fine in both win98 and Linux. (I used to run NT a while ago and it also worked fine). At work a few boxes have Xpert98 and it works fine as well. So I haven't experienced any driver problems. In fact I'd say ATI is the best card for low end. And now the Radeon is kicking some serious butt on the high end. And since they released the specs, I'd expect the Linux driver to appear fairly soon.
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  59. Re:Open your eyes by Mr.+Gus · · Score: 1

    I know it might seem stupid to complain that the card looses at 16-bit and resolutions under 1024x768, but it really isn't that dumb a complainnt-- when games start coming out that seriously tax the current generation of 3d cards, resulting in games that are unplayable at higher resolutions/colors, GeForce users are going to be able to run their card in 16-bit color and/or at lower resolutions to make the games playable while the ATI users get almost no performance gain doing the same thing, and just can't play the game.

    "Tomorrow is another day. Damn."

  60. ISA Version? by qqaz · · Score: 1

    I'd like to use one of these in my 486.

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    sup :cool:
  61. ATI driver support is poor!! Watch out! by chocolatetrumpet · · Score: 1

    I purchasted an ATI All-In-Wonder PRO with 8 megs of ram a while back, state of the art for its day, with tv in and out and all that. Now when I upgraded to Windows 2000, no longer can I use the video/tv capabilites of my card. Sure, the display on my monitor is fine, but I actually wanted to take advantaged of the cards "tv" abilities for which I bought it.

    But wait, there are still not even BETA drivers out for win2k!!!

    I will NEVER buy ATI again!!! Be careful of their driver support!!!

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    Spoon not. Fork, or fork not. There is no spoon.
  62. Matrox by bartok · · Score: 1

    Ask anyone who knows his shit and youll be told that Matrox cards offer the best image quality. The G400 drivers are pretty stable and perform well. If you're not in a rush though, try to wait for them to release the G450 and G800. I wouldn't be surprised if the G800 is as good or better than the Radeon.

  63. No problem with ATI. by mirko · · Score: 1

    It seems you have not been lucky with your hardware.
    I personally have 2 pc.
    One is equipped with an ATI AIW128 card (previously with an Xpert98) and my laptop has a Rage Pro 3D LT inside.
    All of them run perfectly but I admit I had once to send an email to support@atitech.ca in order to receive (3 days later) a brand new CD including Cinemaster in my mailbox. this was about a TV Tuner problem... Nothing *that* serious regarding my absolute TV non-addiction.
    I am also really happy with one important thing regarding ATI: they respect the colors (sound like a soap ad but I mean it).
    Take a Voodoo, it'll be "too green", a Matrox won't produce a "dark black" and a Geforce has some "extra yellow".
    This is the reason Apple mostly uses these cards in their Mac which are, IIRP, the graphists' machines.
    Au revoir.
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    Trolling using another account since 2005.
  64. Video Capture? by Starselbrg · · Score: 3
    I finished up the review thinking to myself "wow, this is quite a fast card, and from ATI no less". Then, all of the sudden, on the last page listed under "pros" I see that video capture is supported!

    It has on the fly MPEG2 compression of video-in. That's simply amazing; what's more amazing is that no one is talking about it. This is feature I've been looking for in a high-quality video card.

    The big question is, however, will there be Linux support for this? I know there isn't really any video-editing software for Linux. But, with a cool card like this, people might get interested in it.

    If this feature had Linux support and if the priced dropped a bit (boy, $399 is pricey), I would certainly buy one.

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    Got HTML? Want LaTeX? Try html2latex
    1. Re:Video Capture? by HeUnique · · Score: 2

      Not so fast...

      First, this feature is also available on the Rage 128 cards as well

      Second, in order to really USE the mpeg-2 encoding (which is done entirely in software) - you'll need a very fast Pentium III processor

      Third - I really doubt that you'll see this supported on Linux - ATI won't release even a piece of document about this feature- unless you'll sign an NDA - and even with that - I'm not sure you'll get somthing..

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      Hetz (Heunique)
  65. Another review by lythari · · Score: 1

    anandtech also has a review of the Radeon. To summarise it, at 16 bit colour, it's only an average card. However, at 32 bits, it as good as or better than the Geforce 2 GTS.

  66. Re:Open your eyes by Mr.+Gus · · Score: 1

    My point had nothing to do with that. It still gets 60fps in 16bit in current benchmarks, but think a bit later than now (2001? 2002?), when the Radeon is old. Will Super Unreal II Championship Edition Turbo run on it in 32bits decently? Maybe not, and if not, you'd naturally try stepping down to 16bit to make the game fun and/or tolerable, except in the Radeon, it'll hardly make a difference.

    I agree that arguing about the difference between one insanely-high framerate vs another isn't too important, but when the chips become older, the Radeon won't be as useful for as long as the GeForce2 will be.

  67. Umm, yeah. by panda · · Score: 2

    So, why does anyone need a video card with 64MB of RAM and a 183MHz chip? Like, what are you trying to display? 1,000 fps in Quake III? I mean really, beyond 30 fps and your eye really can't tell the difference. What, are you displaying a bitmap of the Milky Way galaxy at .2 micron pitch and you want to rotate it in 3-D in real time?

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    Just be sure to wear the gold uniform when you beam down -- you know what happens when you wear the red one.
  68. ATI does mpeg2 in hardware by DABANSHEE · · Score: 1

    ATI does mpeg2 in hardware Yes thats right ATI has always been the best of the mainstream cards in video in/out & mpeg2/dvd hardware acceleration, plus of course on card TV. It also does HGTV in hardware too. Really the only thing ATI cards have been lacking in was knockout 3D, now it has that, It makes the 3dfx & GeForce cards look pedestrian in comparison.

  69. ATI DVD h'ware acceleration by DABANSHEE · · Score: 1

    Contray to what most internet reveiwers think, most graphic cards use 3d a small proportion of the time. However when it comes to Video in/out, MPEG2/DVD hardware acceleration, & HDTV support in hardware, plus the best on card TV implimentation, that ATI card makes your TNT2 look like a 1/2 meg trident card by comparion, or at the best a 1meg s3 virge card.