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ATI Radeon 9700 Dissected
Bender writes "The guys who laid out the future of real-time graphics a while back have now dissected ATI's Radeon 9700 chip. Their analysis breaks down performance into multiple components--fill rate, occlusion detection, pixel shaders, vertex shaders, antialiasing--and tests each one synthetically before moving on to the usual application tests like SPECviewperf and UT 2003. You can see exactly how this chip advances the state of the art in graphics, piece by piece. Interesting stuff."
Dissect my first post.
The big question for an ATI part is how are those drivers. In addition, it looks like going to .13 micron is helping slow Nvidia down for the NV30 but that is a bump in the road ATI will hit too.
I've had ATI's video cards in the computers I've built for myself, and I must say that they are great. I love the All-in-Wonder series in particular. It's nice to be able to watch cable television on one's computer. Looks like ATI has another winner on its hands, and that's good news for all of us.
These are the good old days you'll be telling your children about. Make them worthwhile.
except for prison rape. Men should never get raped. But women ALWAYS should.
I mean, christ. Just look around you, you're bound to see women EVERYWHERE who need to get it in the ass!
"usual application tests"
UT2003 demo has been out for a grand total of 3 days and its already a usual test?
Im fine with my RIVA128 (8 ram)
I dont see why anyone would need a video card like that unless they are playing intense games
The fact alone that ATI puts out a card that challenges (and licks!) the nVidia range of cards is something to the benefit for us all. As consumers, we'll get better and cheaper cards. It doesn't matter if you think ATI or nVidia is the better maker, we all win on this. w00t!
The real question for those of us who don't run Windows is how well it works in X. What it ATI's attitude towards open source ? Are their specs public ? Do they provide drivers ? In short is there a reason to switch from nVidia when I upgrade ?
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
Bad kaaarma duuude. YOu only get twOoo posts... a day.... unless you log out.... we're geniususues
What a quote on page 16. "110 million transistors of joy".
My power Supply struggles with the Radeon 8500. I am going to have to upgrade before i get one of these babies. Running Dual LCD's, the Radeon's are the only real option.
I have to hand it to ATI, they have absolutely wholloped the rest of the market getting this baby out before Christmas.
lounge around on the blue couch
uhhm am I the first post? shoot, am I? That's the annoying thing about slashdot, sometimes you really can't tell.
ummm so yeah I took a really big dump at work today. I feel bad for my co-workers who had to smell it. But at the same time I feel as though I am somehow superior to them for having made them smell my poo poo. I don't know why.
Maybe I just get a sense of satisfaction out of the act of "creation"- there is something magical about taking time out of your busy schedule to dump a big one.
Kudos to you.
this is your friendly troll reminder to change the setting on your comment prefs to "nested" in case you haven't already.
Just don' my job, ma'am.
what's in this whole ATI thing for me? By the way, I don't believe in your saviour.
All the hardware wizadry that ATI can come up with won't matter a damn thing unless they get their drivers straightened out. ATI has a long and sordid history of terrible, terrible driver support - crashes/lockups/glitches etc. etc. (I'm talking Windows here). Take a look at alt.comp.periphs.videocards.ati to see how badly many are faring with this new card, even though many reviewers claim that ATI has fixed their historical driver problems.
Meet the new ATI, same as the old ATI.
It's partly a working style issue. Texture-map people go out with cameras and photograph nice-looking surfaces, which they then apply to models. Or they paint the textures. Procedural shader people try to code up the "meaning" of a texture. Texture maps are created by artists; procedural shaders are created by programmers.
The basic problem with texture maps, of course, is that you can't get too close before the texture gets blurry and the illusion breaks down. In film work, you know where the camera is, so you can figure out how much texture detail you need. Games don't have that luxury; you can get close to a surface and blow the illusion.
Most film work other than Pixar's has used texture maps. There are exceptions, but they're typically for hair, fur, and water, where the problem is motion.
The price you pay for using procedural shaders is that they usually model surface, not detail. So you have to model the detail. Lots of it. Again, Pixar is notorious for this. ("We modelled the threads on the screws, even though you couldn't see them!")
Texture maps, bump maps, and displacement maps can be used to modulate procedural shaders, and that's probably how surface detail will be done, rather than getting carried away with building complex textures in some programming language.
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC / FOX TELEVISION RUN NEARLY THREE HOURS OF COMMERCIALS IN TWO HOUR SLOT
AP, 17 September, 2002. In what is believed to be a World first, documentary makers National Geographic, in association with FOX Television, last night ran 2 hours, 48 minutes and 23 seconds of commercial messages between the hours of 20:00 and 22:00 ET.
It was previously only thought possible to run a maximum of 2 hours of commercial messages during that time frame, but these, previously thought natural limits have now been exceeded.
This amazing televisual feat took place during the National Geographic special feature, "Pyramids Live, Secret Chambers Revealed", in which our precious and sacred World heritage was given the "Americas Scariest Police Videos" treatment.
Almost 7 viewers tuned in to watch as a modified Battle Bot crawled up a 45 degree incline, and was then forced to hang on for dear "cyber-life" for nearly 1 hour whilst viewers were given the opportunity to make many cups of coffee.
The sub-pyramidical explorer's big moment came approximately 24 milliseconds from the end of the 2 hour commercial marathon, when its fibre optic camera pierced a mysterious stone door to reveal absolutely bugger all.
The worst terrorist attack in recorded history occurred over a year ago, followed by a Holy War against Islam, and now Israel and the Palestinians as well as India and Pakistan are teetering on the brink of their own war, Argentina is in the midst of a financial crisis, America is considering launching attacks against Somalia and Iraq, and you people have the gall to be discussing a comparison between Everything2 and LiveJournal's backends???? My *god*, people, GET SOME PRIORITIES!
The bodies of the thousands of innocent civilians who died (and will die) in these unprecedented events could give a good god damn about a Everything2 or LiveJournal, your childish Lego models, your nerf toy guns and whining about the lack of a "fun" workplace, your Everquest/Diablo/D&D fixation, the latest Cowboy Bebop rerun, or any of the other ways you are "getting on with your life" (here's a hint: watching Cowboy Bebop in your jammies and eating a bowl of Shreddies is *not* "getting on with your life"). The souls of the victims are watching in horror as you people squander your finite, precious time on this earth playing video games!
You people disgust me!
what the dead scream for:
KILL all towel heads
Kill all camel jockeys
Kill all sand niggers
Kill all dune coons
Who needs all those gobbly gook figures and charts. Just say ok this one fast but this one faster because of drivers. It's been the same story since this video card race began with GlQuake and I find it all quite tedious. GlQuake still blows doors on all the eye candy and window dressing of todays games.
Last Friday night, my friends Mike (Locke Lionheart, chaotic good thief), Adam (Alyon the chaotic evil Mage), Mark (Dustaine Mave, the lawful good Paladin), Lee (Kipisficus the Chaotic Neutral hobbit fighter), Justin (Lord Zio, Lawful Evil psionic), and I all gathered in my parents' basement, bringing 6 24-packs of Big K Cola, $160 in Pizza money (they can deliver to a small window), an entire box full of AD&D 2nd edition manuals and other Dungeons and Dragons necessities, and 20 hits of high-powered blotter acid, along with 3oz. of weed for calming us down.
The paramount item in our cache was a PC with all the Rhapsody albums (ripped from our purchased albums) in raw WAV format on it, set to loop infinitely under Winamp. We all wore cloaks, armor, and holy symbols as appropriate for our D&D characters, some of us carrying swords we bought at flea markets.
We locked the door, threw a circle of salt around our table to keep the demons away, cranked Rhapsody's Rain of 1000 Flames up on Justin's (Lord Zio) monstrous Logitech Z-540 speakers to the point where we had to shout to hear each other clearly, and dropped two hits of acid apiece.
We began with the usual start in the town, buying equipment and visiting the inn, and within 30 minutes, during "The Wizard's Last Rhymes," our dingy and dark basement became an ancient forest full of kobolds, goblins, and elves. The DM started losing his mind within the hour of the hallucinations, and we were no longer rolling dice, but slaying ogres with our swords and spells! Luca Turilli came riding in on a horse with a sword and a shield, and joined our party as an NPC to fight the evil sorceror, King Diamond! We ventured through the Carpathian forests and into the darkest dungeons in giant castles and forbidden crypts with Luca, fighting countless abominations with a brave heart, as the music of Rhapsody filled us with true reality!
After we vanquished King Diamond, we freed Fabio and Alex, and partied out for hours, playing air-lutes and amazing each other with cantrips and Tenser's floating discs. Exhausted, we found our massive dragon pipe and smoked about an ounce of weed between us, and the hallucinations began to die down. The basement laid in ruins, with boxes slashed open, and a few charred D&D books lying over in the corner -- explaining the poison gas released by a dragon that made us cough. Taking a break and trying to remember if we were dreaming or not in our post-hallucination haze, we ordered a few pizzas and gave the pizzaman all our money, as we were unable to count. We drank 2 24-packs of Big K cola, pissing in the corner and defecating in the crawlspaces (wiping with notebook paper) as we continued to smoke weed. While listening to "Dargor, Shadowlord of The Black Mountain," we decided to take our last hits of acid and begin again!
The next part was a haze, but we know Rhapsody was there the whole time! I don't remember much, but I do remember this woman with pierced breasts wielding swords, and Luca Turilli fighting valiantly against an evil Will O' Wisp! We came to at what we realized was Sunday afternoon after two days of hallucinations and sleeplessness. Sliced-up pizza boxes laid strewn across the floor, an entire makeshift shelf full of boxes was chopped up with an axe and collapsed all over the place, and there were burnmarks from more than one fire started. The water heater was also punctured, and Mike had a really nasty cut with blood all over his Stratovarius shirt -- the chain mail was the only thing that saved him -- and Adam was either bruised or burnt. The monitor was broken by blunt trauma, but the speakers continued blasting Rhapsody's "Legendary Tales" at a deafening volume. The air reeked strongly of fire smoke, marijuana, urine, and feces; our ears rang horribly, and we were exhausted and injured -- just as it would in medieval times, and we felt satisfied!
When my parents got back home from their weekend quest to the Rockies, they were infuriated and told me that I really needed to get a job or go back to college, and move out -- but they're too afraid to do anything, and life resumed to normalcy the next week, as we saved up our parents' money for our next Rhapsody adventure!!!
Does anyone else have anything similar to share? Any stories of mixing Rhapsody with either D&D, RPGs, and/or LSD are welcome!
Rhapsody is the truly the greatest band to bring fantasy to life!
(I only skimmed through part of it, but it looks like if you have an ATI card, you may not have much luck with UT2K3.)
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
Your faggotry is unparalleled on www.goatse.info. Please explain to your Slashdot fans why you have become an out-of-the-closet homosexual.
SPEC is a synthetic benchmark, it ain't any "application test".
Actually I'm wondering why main processors with less transistors are about three times the speed. while GPUs have more transistors with less speed?
I would surely hope that ATI comes up with the next generation of the AIW series powered with this chip. Let's hope though that they make a product that includes ALL the features of all their products (no AIW model has dual screen output, some have firewire ports while others don't etc...)
Just imagine an AIW powered by the RADEON 9700, with dual screen output, perfect (preferably hardware deinterlaced) TV picture, FireWire connectors and all the stuff that would make us happy geeks.
Seems the AIW product is the best in getting the Video Cards (GPUs, your-preferred-abbreviation-here...) to the next level....
Linux drivers, anyone?
---- Fear the mighty TsEA
We've all been there but don't like to admit it. We've all kicked back in our cubicles and suddenly felt something brew down below. As much as we try to convince ourselves otherwise, the WORK POOP is inevitable. For those who hate pooping at work, following is the 2001 Survival Guide for taking a dump at work. Memorize these definitions and pooping at work will become a pure pleasure.
ESCAPEE.
Definition: a fart that slips out while taking a leak at the urinal or forcing a poop in a stall. This is usually accompanied by a sudden wave of panic embarrassment. This is similar to the hot flash you receive when passing an unseen police car and speeding. If you release an escapee, do not acknowledge it. Pretend it did not happen. If you are standing next to the farter in the urinal, pretend you did not hear it. No one likes an escapee, it is uncomfortable for all involved. Making a joke or laughing makes both parties feel uneasy.
JAILBREAK (Used in conjunction with ESCAPEE).
Definition: When forcing poop, several farts slip out at a machine gun pace. This is usually a side effect of diarrhea or a hangover. If this should happen, do not panic. Remain in the stall until everyone has left the bathroom so to spare everyone the awkwardness of what just occurred.
COURTESY FLUSH.
Definition: The act of flushing the toilet the instant the nose cone of the poop log hits the water and the poop is whisked away to an undisclosed location. This reduces the amount of air time the poop has to stink up the bathroom. This can help you avoid being caught doing the WALK OF SHAME.
WALK OF SHAME.
Definition: Walking from the stall, to the sink, to the door after you have just stunk up the bathroom. This can be a very uncomfortable moment if someone walks in and busts you. As with all farts, it is best to pretend that the smell does not exist. Can be avoided with the use of the COURTESY FLUSH.
OUT OF THE CLOSET POOPER.
Definition: A colleague who poops at work and damn proud of it. You will often see an Out Of The Closet Pooper enter the bathroom with a newspaper or magazine under their arm. Always look around the office for the Out Of The Closet Pooper before entering the bathroom.
THE POOPING FRIENDS NETWORK (PFN).
Definition: A group of coworkers who band together to ensure emergency pooping goes off without incident. This group can help you to monitor the whereabouts of Out Of The Closet Poopers, and identify SAFE HAVENS.
SAFE HAVENS.
Definition: A seldom used bathroom somewhere in the building where you can least expect visitors. Try floors that are predominantly of the opposite sex. This will reduce the odds of a pooper of your sex entering the bathroom.
TURD BURGLAR:
Definition: A pooper who does not realize that you are in the stall and tries to force the door open. This is one of the most shocking and vulnerable moments that can occur when taking a dump at work. If this occurs, remain in the stall until the Turd Burglar leaves. This way you will avoid all uncomfortable eye contact.
CAMO-COUGH.
Definition: A phony cough that alerts all new entrants into the bathroom that you are in a stall. This can be used to cover-up a WATERMELON, or to alert potential Turd Burglars. Very effective when used in conjunction with an ASTAIRE.
ASTAIRE.
Definition: A subtle toe-tap that is used to alert potential Turd Burglars that you are occupying a stall. This will remove all doubt that the stall is occupied. If you hear an Astaire, leave the bathroom immediately so the pooper can poop in peace.
WATERMELON.
Definition: A turd that creates a loud splash when hitting the toilet water. This is also an embarrassing incident. If you feel a Watermelon coming on, create a diversion. See CAMO-COUGH.
HAVANA OMELET.
Definition: A load of diarrhea that creates a series of loud splashes in the toilet water. Often accompanied by an Escapee. Try using a Camo-Cough with an Astaire.
UNCLE TED.
Definition: A bathroom user who seems to linger around forever. Could spend extended lengths of time in front of the mirror or sitting on the pot. An Uncle Ted makes it difficult to relax while on the crapper, as you should always wait to drop your load when the bathroom is empty. This benefits you as well as the other bathroom attendees.
FLY BY.
Definition: The act of scouting out a bathroom before pooping. Walk in and check for other poopers. If there are others in the bathroom, leave and come back again. Be careful not to become a FREQUENT FLYER. People may become suspicious if they catch you constantly going into the bathroom.
Fuck you man!!!
.any way fuck Ed and Ein.
Cowboy Bebop is cool. Spike is awsome. Faye is hot. Jet is badass. Ed and Ein are kinda funny. .
Get over yourself; get over death. It is not like innocent people dying is some new phenomenon. It has been happening for a long time. Slashdot and the Internet are here because of it.
Your priorities suck. You will die. I will die. It is just a question of when. The bodies you whine about are already dead.
Live in the now man. And don't let me catch you speaking ill of Cowboy Bebop again!!!!!!
Now, if you can provide that, let me throw a twist that makes me think nobody has done it - I've run 100% Linux for several years. Is there a site that reviews video cards plus all the extras (like TV-in and out) with an eye toward their Linux compatable features? I have a G400 and ATI All in Wonder Pro and can do TV-in (but not record video) and TV-out (although I lose a monitor and have to swap cables makes that a PITA).
For that matter, I'd like to do video editing at some point in the future (when I get a digital camcorder). I'd like to convert all my VHS tapes to a digital format. Anybody know of a good import card at a reasonable price (under that $5k prosumer/low end professional bracket)? If it doesn't pull the absolute *best* quality possible from the VHS format, I'm content to wait rather than reencode a couple years from now.
I kick this question out to Slashdot every year or so. To those with experience: what's the latest?
--
Evan (no reference)
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
occlusion detection? Is that used for detecting the occult?
I can see how it might be usefull for games like Quake, Doom etc, but I'm not so sure about GTA etc
Ok ok, its probably just a typo
Yeap, I really need such a monster card to play UT2003 at 120 FPS...really...what, you don't believe me ? why ? just because my eye can't tell FPS after 60 ?
The crossbar solution is very nice though as a memory interface. It has 19 GB/sec memory bandwidth. I would like to have that bandwidth in the main CPU though. An Athlon/Pentium 4 will smoke those cards with such a memory bandwidth.
off ATI's site: RADEON 9700 PRO 128MB AGP $399
Not to dog on ATI or Nvidia but 400 bucks for a video card is just to much. Sure it can pump out 200+ fps but it kind of gets pointless after 30. what can the humen eye sample at? 24 fps(guess) or so? Cards like this are made to stroke egos, and mine is big enough. I can only pray it doesn't fall into the wrong hands (sucky gamers that cry lag).
Processing power isn't measured in GHz. These GPUs follow a different paradigm, which makes comparisons complicated, but they generally have far greater raw processing power, albeit geared towards a special application. And about clockspeed: CPUs are clocked faster because they have less transistors (and smaller dice).
[SIGGRAPH 2002 State of the Art in Hardware Shading]
l ek/Doc/html/n ode14.html
c ore/dxshader1/
[Approaches for Procedural Shading on Graphics
[Real-Time Shading Languages, Course Notes, SIGGRAPH 2002]
[Real-Time Shading]
http://reality.sgiweb.org/olano/
[A GOOD source of scientific literature especially on computer graphics]
http://citeseer.nj.nec.com/cs
[Shadermaps: A Method For Accelerating Procedural Shading]
http://www.merl.com/papers/TR2000-25/
[Using Procedural Shaders with Global Illumination Algorithms]
http://graphics.cs.uni-sb.de/~slusal
[Hands-on Shader programming]
http://www.gamedev.net/columns/hard
Reminds of Biology class.
Now those Radeon 9700's know what it feels like to be a frog.
Ribbit.
.:| fydo |:.
When they were disecting it did they see the AGP 8x bug?
l
http://mirror.ati.com/support/infobase/4080.htm
"In certain [most] cases, after installing the RADEON 9700 PRO 128MB in an AGP 8x capable motherboard, the system will not post, or boot up. "
Try Pinnacle, but read the forums before you buy ANYTHING.
I'm converting my VHS tapes over now.
BTW No linux drivers.
Build their own Xfree86 driver enables all the features of their own card under none-ms systems , and don't expect the 3rd party will do them this favor ..... being a friendly and good company
about the AGP 8x error and no Win 9x driver support and data corruption under NTFS.
So, despite this card's impressive numbers, expect 60 fps under XP and 2K running on fat 32 only.
If voting were effective, it would be illegal by now.
Every NVIDIA card since the GeForce2 Ultra has had Linux drivers before they even hit the shelves. This is because Nvidia pay people to write and maintain the drivers. They might not have specs, but at least NVidia support your choice of operating system.
ATI release some specs, and that's all. They don't either bother writing drivers for their cards and they just hope someone else will - *maybe the weather channel, maybe soon, maybe later, maybe not for your specific card) or release binary-only drivers (great, at least they exist) that don't have anything like the performance of their Windows drivers. The UT2003 benchmark, if ran under Linux, won't even start on a Radeon 8500 (which ATI do have fast, binary only drivers for because its missing correct support for S3 texture compression. Which isn't exactly a new technology by any means.
So I can get Open Source 2D support for a Radeon 9700? Great. I'm sure 2D support is why people buy a Radeon 9700.
Vote with your dollars.
for starters I can discern between 60fps and 120fps (but not much higher) but, like being able to tell an mp3 from a wav, it's not something everyone can do.
FPS is also related to response and remember it is peak FPS. Get 15 people filling a nice open zone with plasma and expect your FPS to drop.
The Quake champions I know could tell you the FPS without having it displayed from the responsiveness.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
SHILL! SHILL!
And did I mention: SHILL!
now i can play quake 3 at 700,000fps!
Right now I'm using a Matrox G550 with two CRTs and I nothing but problems: When using video editing software (Avid ExpressDV, Premiere, Final Cut, you name it) with more then 16 bit colours the mouse disappears on the primary display. When i try to use software with some kind of fullscreen mode, like media players, acdsee, the computer reboots... I really loved my G550 with one Display. But (for me, YMMV) it just plain sucks with two displays... Anybody using the 9700 with two monitors with different resolutions (1600*1200, 1280*1024, with win2k) and can tell about his or her experiences?
Perhaps I'm being pedantic here, but that's not what MIP mapping was for. Lance Williams invented it as an inexpensive means of texture antialiasing (see "Pyramidal Parametrics", Computer Graphics (SIGGRAPH) Vol 7, No 3, July 1983 (reprinted in Seminal Graphics)). Once the highest resolution texture map is defined, a "pyramid" of smaller, down-filtered, maps are created from that original source.
You cannot obtain more detail than that which is defined in that top level map.
Oh, incidentally, it is not a great idea to go swapping the MIP map levels in and out of (texture) memory because on true hardware the levels that the texels are read from are chosen by the hardware on a pixel-by-pixel basis. You could easily end up with texture aliasing if the hardware is forced to read inappropriate texture levels. (The P(o)S2, of course, has b'all texure memory and so developers often don't have a choice).
What you are probably looking for are solutions either based on virtual texturing (i.e. specific HW support for swapping texture data) or use of detail textures.
Simon
"... before moving on to the usual application tests like SPECviewperf and UT 2003"
I just read the article. Did I miss the UT2003 page or is the slashdot poster smoking crack?
One thing I should add. Pyramids of textures were used in texturing systems prior to "MIP" mapping, but it was Williams who introduced triliear filtering. (The earlier systems used simpler filtering, eg Dungan(?) just used linear interpolation of samples).
"Manufactured on a 0.15-micron fab process, the Radeon 9700 chip has a land mass roughly equal to that of France, provided France hasn't surrendered any land lately."
Have murderous AI's locking us in the holosuite and not before then...
(Wait a minute, hasn't the Playstations 3 PR team claimed they're debugging that at the moment?)
Why are you slamming ATI for releasing binary-only drivers, while hailing Nvidia? Nvidia does exactly the same thing.
What do you think the 1MB 'Module-nvkernel' file in their NVIDIA_kernel-1.0-nnnn.tar.gz is?
NVIDIA_kernel-1.0-2960> file Module-nvkernel
Module-nvkernel: ELF 32-bit LSB relocatable, Intel 80386, version 1 (SYSV), not stripped
You didn't seriously think the few snippets of C code in that package was the complete driver, did you? That's just a kernel wrapper for their binary blob.
Epic Games' much-anticipated Unreal Tournament 2003 Demo is now available on a self-booting Gentoo Linux-based LiveCD, allowing you to play the Unreal Tournament 2003 Demo using any modern PC with an NVIDIA GeForce 2 or greater graphics card and a CD-ROM drive. Full networking, OSS sound and Creative Soundblaster Live! and Audigy support included, allowing for the full gaming experience including LAN/Internet play, EAX environmental audio and of course 3D accelerated OpenGL graphics. The CD also serves as a fully-functional Gentoo Linux installation CD. Go grab it here!
That's you. We're all different in what we can perceive.
I can see 75 and I doubt I've got the most sensitive eyes.
Another aspect to consider is what happens to fps when you up the resolution or image complexity. Per-pixel shading, resolution, Anti-Aliasing, etc., will all combine to slow the cards down.
What's keeping me away from this card is ATI's notorious reputation when it comes to drivers. Why buy killer hardware if the software for it is dodgy? Add to that that ATI's not saying how they'll handle 8X AGP and it doesn't make me comfortable that it's a good choice.
For that matter, I'd like to do video editing at some point in the future (when I get a digital camcorder).
Video capture on Linux... from a "freebie" capture port on your video card??
Forget it man.
Video capture requires drivers AND applications. You buy a video card for Linux, and IF the manufacturer supports Linux, video drivers are all you get. ATI has drivers for Linux... but not even the 3D part. See what I mean?
The only way to get Linux capture drivers is to buy a dedicated capture card for Linux. That way you get what you paid for, with no "missing features" on the Linux side.
Besides, the way things improve and drop in price, you never want to buy this hardware BEFORE you are ready to begin using it.
Me? I have a MSI GeForce4 4400 (oc'd of course). Capture only works on Windows, but in a few years I expect Linux capture support to become a competitive feature... just like primitive driver support has become now.
I've used broadcast capture equipment, and while this capture port can be called a "toy", the MSI Video-In/Out port which handles uncompressed 720x480 fine (if your drive can not handle uncompressed YUV I sugest HuffYUV which is lossless compression).
Whatever you use, "realtime" MPEG compression sucks. It looks OK if you consider how hard your PC is working to do the job in software, but there's just no substitute for variable-bitrate multipass compression. CBR video creates fixed size files that are compromised everywhere... multipass VBR allows you to lower the "average" bitrate by 25%, AND give better quality (presuming you lower the bitrate floor and ceiling and have a good encoder).
I've transferred 8 hours of VHS to DVD so far. Did someone say Star Wars? I didn't. ;-)
With VHS, you shouldn't have to capture at 720x480 because of the limitations of VHS resolution on the VHS tape... you can get away with 360x480 (not a typo!) and then double the horizontal lines... a good capture card does this in hardware.
IF there's a way to use 360x480 on DVD and specify the aspect ratio as 8:3 (did I do that right?), you'd save a LOT of DVD space but I have not tested this. Until I figure that problem out, there's no advantage to capturing at this res... but it's worth mentioning if your hardware cannot keep up (you would have to stretch the video afterwards).
In short, dual boot... or fork out real cash for professional capture under Linux. You have a limited selection under Linux and will pay more until the market becomes more viable.
You'd also need to MASTER your DVD's under Windows. No authoring sw for Linux anywhere (AFAIK). Once you HAVE mastered your DVD, you CAN burn it under Linux using dvdrtools.
Several things jumped out at me in the beginning of the article:
Card can do 30 bit color. ATI has no drivers for Windows that can do this, however.
Card has floating point for color mapping. ATI has no drivers for Windows that can do this, however.
And so on. In short, there are many cool things in the hardware that do you no good right now, because they aren't supported in Windows.
<voice character="biff">McFly! Hello!</voice>
Were ATI to release the interfaces to this things to the XFree86 guys, they could have an environment in which all of this cool stuff was supported very quickly. And since you can get access to the XFree86 code easily, supporting things like 30 bit color depth becomes a great deal easier than doing so under Windows. Yes, you might have to modify (GTK|QT) to get full support, and you might have a few apps asking for a 24 bit visual because they don't support 30 bit, but imagine if you had (Gnome|KDE) running 30 bit depth, running The Gimp.
Imagine running Q3, UT, or RTCW in 30 bit color with floating point shaders.
Imagine the pain on MS's collective faces when the boot logo of the demonstration machine is not broken glass but rather flightless waterfowl.
www.eFax.com are spammers
Well I don't have hdd errors but ever since I upgraded from GF2 MX to Radeon 9000 Pro the hdd performance seems slower. Would this be hardware or software issue? I'm using the catalyst 2.3 drivers btw.
I've noticed that the Wintel world loves to use "detection" in many of the buzzwords (such as motion detection)... Occlusion Detection may be slightly more familar to you as Occlusion Culling or just the "Cull" step in the render pipeline. It's nothing new, in fact the time saving step is what allowed oldschool 3D hardware (such as an SGI RealityEngine) to obtain decent performance back in the day.
If you're putting pieces together and considering them as a whole, that's synthesis.
If you're taking pieces apart and considering them separately, that's analysis.
If you're explaining this on Slashdot, that's anal-retentiveness.
dice? wtf are you talking about?
That was classic intercourse!
"Quartz Extreme" for XFree86 anyone? I have a huge amount of power locked up in my NVidia Gefore4 Ti card, wish I could use it for my regular 2D work (blending, translucancy, etc.)
-adnans
"In short: just say NO TO DRUGS, and maybe you won't end up like the Hurd people." --Linus Torvalds
Why are you slamming ATI for releasing binary-only drivers
I'm not. Read what I wrote. I'm slamming ATI for not releasing any drivers for their current generation cards, releasing poor quality binary only drivers for their older cards, and expecting the community to write drivers for the rest.
"The Radeon 9700 Pro leads in nearly every category. It's endowed with gobs of memory bandwidth and a blistering pixel fill rate that's more than double that of the closest competition. "
it is listed at "2600" on the chart which is just a little over a few of them, and below another one.
either I'm retarded (*very* likely), or there is some sort of typo on there.
There are some odd things afoot now, in the Villa Straylight.
NVIDIA uses the same codebase for ther Windows, Mac OS ?, and Linux drivers. This same codebase will also be used for their FreeBSD drivers to come. Their unified driver architecture ensures that every platform the card runs on gets the latest version of the code and can take advantage of each card's features. So this is definitely a few notches above ATI who won't even produce drivers for my platform, let alone release full specifications to the public to write them.
As for the complaint that NVIDIA is no better than ATI because of a binary driver release: that is not NVIDIA's fault. NVIDIA tries to make as much of their driver open source as possible (which is kind of a necessity because of the plethora of kernel configurations out there). However, the closed-source portions are kept closed because of SGI's patents on OpenGL. Assign blame where blame is due, please.
Why bother.
I think the poster's point was that you have two choices for drivers with an ATi card:
a) Open-source drivers - No S3TC support, UT2K3 won't even run
b) Binary-only drivers sorely lacking in performance. (I don't even recall seeing any Linux binary drivers from ATi - Does he mean the XiG drivers you have to *pay extra for*?)
With Nvidia, your only choice for 3D is unfortunately the binary drivers. While I'd rather not have it be that way, NV's drivers are maintained from the *same* source base that ATi's are, and hence are kept as up-to-date as the Windows drivers. In fact, the Linux drivers often *outperform* NV's Windows drivers by 1-2 FPS. (Not a big difference, but the fact is that they are not only "as good", but they are FASTER.)
So overall, given that binary drivers are the ONLY real option for both cards, NVidia is the way to go because their binary drivers are *far* superior to ATi's.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
I believe SGI sold most (all?) of their OpenGL patents to Microsoft some time ago...
some info about the agp8 (dys)functionality can be found http://www.overclockers.com/tips00114/ .
"Tweaktown has a news item (dated 9/12, 7:08 AM) which states that Epox Taiwan told them that the 8X AGP problem is being caused by the GPU, and a new stepping corrects the problem.
"
if it was just software problem i'd not care that much about it since there was theoretical possibility of convinient update..
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Currently I have the All-In-Wonder 128. One nice feature is that I can record TV or VCR straight to MPEG2 (among other formats). Does anyone know if future ATI cards will support straight-to-MPEG4 encoding?
http://www.techweb.com/encyclopedia/defineterm?ter m=die
Im running yesterday's snapshot of the DRI project's drivers for the ATI Radeon r200 series chips (8500 and probably 9000 as well) and OpenGL works (gears at least..). Xv works as well (xawtv). These will probably be integrated into the XFree86 codebase at some point. Remember that these are snapshots and not releases so they will probably not be 100% stable.
... that there seems to be a great deal of trouble with the AGP 8X interface as documented here and acknowledged here? This does not appear to be an isolated case, as many people with many different mainboards are reporting this. If one looks only at performance without the chance of actually getting the thing working, the review is incomplete, if not downright misleading.
That is all.
No. The question was in two parts - the first about video cards, the second about deticated analog capture solutions. In fact, the reason I phrased it like that was in case there is a nice hardware analog to firewire solution that would be OS independant.
Hardly freebie... my price range was "something under $5k". The Linux specific capture cards that I have seen have not compared well to other capture solutions. Since my analog capture requirements are primarily VHS, that's a very low hurdle. Since my home theater system is HDTV, I'd rather have something now to encode my rare VHS tapes (stuff that will never be available on DVD - quite a bit is converted from messy 16mm stock. Cult movies, low budget horror flicks, etc.) so I can safely get rid of all the tapes (well, put them in deep storage, and just flip them every 24 months).
In other words, I'm looking to do for video what album collectors are doing to vinyl that will never be converted to CD (for that matter, I have a bunch of Tim Curry and Little Nell albums... ;) ).
You'd also need to MASTER your DVD's under Windows.
I'm looking to store them on DAT tapes on an HP drive, three duplicates, one local, one in another state, and one in storage. Collectors have a thing about threes (with physical stuff, it's one to play with, one to keep, and one to sell or trade). No need for DVDs in the immediate future - as I need the movies for festivals or whatnot, I'll restore the file, use them, and then delete.
--
Evan (no reference)
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
A card is only as good as its support drivers and ATI support BLOWS. I've had a radeon 9700 since the day they came out. 2 weeks after they hit the market you could still not get ANY HELP from ATI. The card is great, their support SUCKS, and DRIVERS make the card. While I love the performance, the 5 day response time for a simple driver question, which WAS NOT answered, instead I got a form letter telling me to go to a broken URL to download drivers that did not exist. After 2 PHONE calls I still was down and It took me requesting a RMA# to actually get anyone to read my email. ATI's big problem has always been their LOUSY drivers and things have not changed. While the Radeon out performs my TI-4600, if drivers keep coming this slow and buggy I will be tempted to put the Nvidia card back in the main machine. NWN STILL HAS ISSUES with the catalyst drivers, and it crashes on exit about 85% of the time, needing a hard boot. My advice is if you've not already bought one HOLD OFF. Let ATI make their commitment to driver support first before investing that much money. BTW the WDM drivers they shipped with the card WERE not windows certified, even though they claimed they were. It seems the WDM drivers were left out of the bundle shipped to M$ and they just tacked them on after the fact. ATI support claims a certified driver will be forth-coming...or so they've said for 3 weeks now.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
All very nice, but we're talking about Radeon 9700 here, which is a different chip entirely. And not supported by DRI, BTW.
What happened wwith the weather channel helping in funding open source drivers with ATI?
That's what I meant. Sorry. :)
I am very tired of these 2 words being misused.
Occultation is the term for when light is blocked.
occlusion n.
1. The process of occluding.
2. Something that occludes.
2. Medicine. An obstruction or a closure of a passageway or vessel.
3. Dentistry. The alignment of the teeth of the upper and lower jaws when brought together.
4. Meteorology.
1. The process of occluding air masses.
2. An occluded front.
5. Linguistics. Closure at some point in the vocal tract that blocks the flow of air in the production of an oral or nasal stop.
occultation n.
1. The act of occulting or the state of being occulted.
2. Astronomy.
1. The passage of a celestial body across a line between an observer and another celestial object, as when the moon moves between Earth and the sun in a solar eclipse.
2. The progressive blocking of light, radio waves, or other radiation from a celestial source during such a passage.
3. An observational technique for determining the position or radiant structure of a celestial source so occulted: a lunar occultation of a quasar.
Or both of you could get a mac and realize this works flawlessly out of the box with no tweaking
The hurdles one has to go through to use a x86 box, it's just sad.
I live in a giant bucket.
ATI seems to be pushing the envelope more than NVidia at the moment, at least in more interesting ways.
I just wonder when the first OpenGL 2 implementations and applications will come out, so people can really use that card's features to their full extent on non-Windows platforms.
>Or both of you could get a mac and realize this works flawlessly out of the box with no tweaking
;-)
Why bother with such a snide remark? You read the article; obviously I have a working setup and I am happy with it.
BTW -- this isn't 1995 anymore... x86 plug and play WORKS as good as on the Mac; sometimes BETTER. Don't believe me? Tell me how you get a external DVD-R recorder working on an iMac. The blinders that some Mac users wear.. it's just sad.
BTW, I had a G3 up until 2 years ago. The Mac has a chance of becoming the "best of" both Linux and Windows, but they'll never get the new titles without expanding the user base.
YEARS AWAY, but it's more likely that Linux will become more usable AND get the needed apps... before Apple gets their prices in line. Or maybe neither will happen.
>No. The question was in two parts - the first about video cards, the second about deticated analog capture solutions. In fact, the reason I phrased it like that was in case there is a nice hardware analog to firewire solution that would be OS independant.
Oh. Then you want a RCA-to-Firewire bridge. You can get them at CompUSA or online for $150 up. They are basically realtime capture devices using a constant bitrate. I have no idea what the quality is, but I would doubt it's as clean as software-based multipass variable bitrate stuff.
Like you said though... the current Linux offerings are sub-par. Now you can GROW that market yourself by buying an inferior product, but who the hell wants to do that?
It will take a few years for Linux multimedia to gain traction. The special effects houses are ALREADY on Linux, but you're talking niche stuff that we can't afford. If you can't wait a few years, get a iMac or PC capture board.
I can, and since nobody this year can suggest anything decent, I'll probably wait another year and ask around again. :) As I said, I'm in no hurry to encode now and then reencode everything a few years later because there's something better. Since it's VHS, I have a low bar for quality required (but I want the maximum quality out of that poor source).
get a iMac or PC capture board
I've been thinking about getting a Mac for my next laptop. If a PC capture board that ran under Linux and delivered good quality existed, I do it. I may wind up just buying a new motherboard and put together a Windows machine for this... but then, as I said, I'm not in a hurry, I prefer Linux, and making a deticated system that I'll use for one (albiet long) project seems a bit of overkill - I'd rather be able to use the capture card for occasional casual use later without hauling out a different machine, having to keep that machine working right, etc.
That adds up to a standalone hardware solution (which you say is not as good as software based stuff), or a deticated capture card, which everybody seems to agree is split at either the subpar or high end professional levels.
So I'll wait.
--
Evan (no reference)
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
thanks for that, I had NO idea that the plural of an IC "die" was also "dice". Still sounds wrong, particularly as they're made by photo-lithography. Ho-hum.
That was classic intercourse!
Well you plug it in, and start burning. Complex, eh?
I've seen more than enough plug and play not working worth anything on x86 (3 of the components on my system wern't detected)
Not to mention they are expanding thier user base. But there is really nothing I need from windows that mac dosen't offer (ditto for linux, just linux is annoying sometimes)
I just make snide comments whenever someone describes a overly complex system on a x86 machine (I have several at home), because most people aern't even aware mac's are an option.
NaveWeiss (slashdot.org/~naveweiss) sucks hairy donkey balls
Really, in the scheme of things, at the moment, why should any company care about Linux drivers. THere is no money in it. For most big companies Linux is a server operating system that some people have adapted to the desktop. If ATI can have the choice of a team of programmers hacking away at the Linux driver, or optimising the Windows driver what do you think any manager would choose. (that is any manager who wants to stay employed).
Write your own drivers oh linux gamer