How's about, "supports almost all of the PS 3.0 features except for dynamic branching"....that better?tEd said:
Inquirer spreading R420 info
- Thread starter 991060
- Start date
That's what all the smart money is being bet on. 8)tEd said:
Seiko said:jvd said:
You assume incorrectly. The GF3/GF3 ti garbage really ticked me off but that starts to bring Nvidia into this discussion more than I'd like. I'm talking about ATI and the 3 series here and although a huge fan of the cards, 8500, 9700Pro and soon to have FireGL T2 I'm still the first to admit many things over the last 18months have really ticked me off with ATI.
That aside, I think those looking at the R420 and hoping for new features are going to be very disappointed. Those hoping for very high FPS are going to be thrilled!
Curious, what has POed you about ATI's actions in the last 18 months? I haven't seen any fault with their actions. Unless you mean you're disappointed ATI hasn't been more aggressive with their designs, but then I think that's more of a strategical decision more than anything. Why raise the bar so high so fast if you can spread it out and still be effective?
MrBond said:
Personally I'm rather unhappy with ATI over their lack of linux support. They claimed that moving things back to HQ was going to speed development up, but things have pretty much stalled. I understand that they are reworking some internal parts of the drivers, but it's getting to be rather rediculous. I can understand that they can't devote all that much time to developement for linux given the marketshare, but even something resembling a roadmap saying "We'll have the console switching bug fixed in the release scheduled 18 months from now" would be better than what we are getting currently.
I mean, ATI isn't obligated to support linux, but it's making it tough to stick with them even though I really don't like some of nVidia's marketing practices.
Nite_Hawk
Nite_Hawk said:
I understand where your coming from but consider this. How many games are available for Linux? And how big is the Linux userbase in comparison to Windows? Obviously because of these reasons ATI has put Linux drivers on the backburner.
If your a Linux buff then you shouldn't go ATI.
Doesn't mean you shouldn't be annoyed that ATI doesn't have Linux support that's anywhere near the level of NVIDIA. If NVIDIA can do it, why can't ATI?ANova said:
Well, yeah. Linux is only a really big thing in terms of mindshare. Mindshare is what's important with a new generation, though, not marketshare, and it seems that NVIDIA might have already won that battle.
Oh yea of little faith.The Baron said:
Give it about a month and try and tell me the same thing with a straight face.
ANova said:
Well you see, that's the thing. ATI can really do whatever they want with their drivers, but their lack of linux support certainly is making it difficult to continue purchasing their cards. Right now I'd rather buy ATI except for their lack of linux support. They seem to have figured out that having employees talk to the regulars in forums has helped them gain support (which ends up trickling down to the average joe) and I think catering to the linux crowd is the same idea. The average linux user probably is going to make recommendations to a lot of the "average joe" computer users, and I think ATI would be smart to try and exploit that. Right now it doesn't even really seem like the linux driver guy is working on them full time. A linux programmers salary is what, maybe $60k/year? When you consider how much these companies are spending to design these gpus, that's pretty much chump change.
Nite_Hawk
Nite_Hawk said:
Bit off on that estimate, by a fair amount. We're not talking fully loaded either.
ATI has limited resources and coming from the business side of things myself, I'd rather spend my efforts supporting the OS of the masses. Why? I get a better return, that simple. Linux market is still pretty fragmented as well.
You think 1 guy can get a Linux driver up and running? Think again. There's more than just chump change involved and it isn't a simple process.
However, they have indicated they will be upping their support of the OS. I believe Dave Orton/Rick Bergman mentioned it in an interview a month or so ago. Have a bit more patience and I'm sure you'll be happy with the results.
Seiko said:
Both ATI and nVidia indicated they were going to 18 month product cycles after the R300/NV30 launches. 9800XT was not 18 months after the 9700Pro, it was realistically 15 months after launch, 13 months after shipping.
As people have said, nVidia is a past master at refreshes.
Gf256 - GfDDR - Gf2 - Gf2 Ultra.
GF3 - Gf3Ti500/Gf3Ti200 - which is exactle the same as 9700Pro - 9800Pro in execution. An extra refresh in the XT was added because of the lengthening product cycle.
Nite_Hawk said:
Look, I'm sympathetic to your concerns. Right now, I'm even in Linux (slack 9.1 2.6.5) on my MR9000 with standard XF86 drivers.
In case you haven't noticed, there *are* linux drivers out now from ATI. Yes, they aren't quite up to par with the quality that ATI has with its Windows drivers or nv has with its linux drivers. But you know what? I'm being patient. Linux doesn't have that huge a marketshare so far, and writing drivers takes time, and isn't as high on ATI's priority as improving their Windows drivers, where, arguably is most of their market and most of their users. If they completely abandon linux drivers I won't let them off the hook, but for now I'll let them do their work, as Terry's shown in the past that eventually they make great progress
(You might also want to read his latest interview where he gives public support for the linux drivers and guesstimates a time frame).Download their linux drivers, give them a whirl. File bug reports on the catalyst page. You can help too y'know
Sadly, I haven't messed with their drivers yet because they only supply RPMs and I haven't run rpm2tgz on them yet.