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ATI Radeon Released
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."
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?
Here's what Tom had to say...
J:)
Oh well, no point in steering now.
"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
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
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
here's the anandtech review of the board
Goes into quite alot of detail.
metalgeek
metalgeek
windows, just another pane in the glass
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
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.
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try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
When my video card has as much memory as my computer, you know it's time to be worried.
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!
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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*
there is a news.com article right now talking about just that.
click/a>
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i browse at -1 because they're funnier than you are.
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
Link to ATI Surprise Announcement
Link to FSAA Story
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.
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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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.
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DO NOT DISTURB THE SE
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
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
It's only when we've lost everything, that we are free to do anything...
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.
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.
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!
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...
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.
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
There's a story at MacCentral.com talking about an upcoming Mac release, as well.
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)
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.)
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DO NOT DISTURB THE SE
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.)
Lets see..
:)
/specs about their video extensions (well, at least Matrox did release some info about their YUV -> RGB conversion if I'm not mistaken).
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
Thoughts anyone?
Hetz (Heunique)
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.
we can install our games directly into the Video Ram is the RAM is enough.
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ATI's new toy:
Video card with more megs
Than your first hard drive
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
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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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?
Just be sure to wear the gold uniform when you beam down -- you know what happens when you wear the red one.