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ATI Talks Game Support, Future Of Graphics Cards

Posted by simoniker on from the duel-to-death-with-nvidia dept.

Sergio writes "Slo-Tech have posted an interview with ATI's representative in game developer support, Richard Huddy. He touched on many subjects, including the evolution of DirectX and OpenGL, why ATI doesn't provide much information to Linux driver developers, and the most common mistakes of game developers ('Nine out of ten games under-use the graphics card. That's amazing, and it's been true for the last three or four years.')"

2 of 41 comments (clear)

  1. A couple of clarifications by Yeechang+Lee · · Score: 3, Informative

    The reason I don't know what kind of card I have is that, although I purchased a brand new, shrinkwrapped Radeon 9500 Pro retail box, I noticed that the card looked somewhat different from the OEM (I think Sapphire) 9500 Pro I'd used for a few days previously. Didn't think much of this until I started seeing indications in places like the XFree86 log that the card might be a 9700, instead of a 9500 Pro (I do realize the two cards both use the R300 NE chipset). Also, that Antalus flyby score is meaningfully higher than what Tom's Hardware found for 1280x1024x32 on a much faster system than my two-year old Athlon 1.4GHz. Haven't bothered to crack the case open again since, so until I do I'll happily enjoy the illusion that I somehow ended up with a 9700 for the price of a 9500 Pro.

    The driver I use is a binary-only one from a German reseller. They appear to be betas of forthcoming versions of ATi's own drivers. As I have XFree86 4.3.0 this has been a great blessing, as ATi's own Web site only has drivers for XFree86 4.1 and 4.2.

  2. Nine out of ten games under-use the graphics card by Screaming+Lunatic · · Score: 4, Informative
    Well duh. It's called the lowest common denominator. The game has to run well on the minimum requirements machine. And the game has to be solid on the recommended requirements machine. It's called scale. You have to support the greatest number of users by putting in a reasonable amount of effort.

    Newer features are exposed in newer drivers. So they may be buggy and perform sub-optimally. There's a learning curve. And enough newer hardware is difficult to get for the developer, how many users will have it?

    Build a modular engine. And try to squeeze in that feature in the next iteration.