Leaked ATi internal slides

A competitor is distributing select slides from an internal ATI presentation which, out of context, can portray ATI in a negative light.

I'm just curious, how would they know a "competitor" is distributing the slide? Would be better to just comment on the slide or "provide" the rest of the slides if they want to clear the air. To say, "A competitor..." sounds like a weak PR move. I trust PR people as much as I can throw a car.
 
Bouncing Zabaglione Bros. said:
Pr( )ZaC said:
Well, you got S3/VIA :LOL:, XGI, Matrox, nVidia and a few others.
The name nVidia smells more than the others...
None of those other companies are competing in the same high-end markets as ATI and Nvidia. ATI and Nvidia are the two big gorillas slugging it out - everyone else is miles back. That's why Nvidia is the one likely to run smear tactics, especially going on their record of smearing 3DMark, Fraps, Valve, or anything else that shows them in a bad light.
Ah, but what if it was one of the smaller players, knowing that everyone would assume it was Nvidia, thus adding to the chance they'll go down in flames and the real leaker could move up in the world... 8)
 
Myrmecophagavir said:
Ah, but what if it was one of the smaller players, knowing that everyone would assume it was Nvidia, thus adding to the chance they'll go down in flames and the real leaker could move up in the world... 8)

What would a smaller player gain? Which smaller player could come in and pick up sales because of discrediting ATI or Nvidia? I can't think of anyone who has the hardware. Heck, even Nvidia doesn't have the hardware, they are just hanging on with brand recognition and marketing.
 
These slides are absolutely GREAT and dictate EXACTLY how an IHV should morally proceed with touting and marketing their products. I find it laughable how anyone (especially if the source is NVIDIA) could try and twist these as being some sort of negative. They are, in fact, the complete opposite.

The line "Influence Benchmarks in our Favor" is EXACTLY how an IHV should morally approach performance measurement benchmarks! Notice it says "Influence BENCHMARKS" and not "Influence our Drivers or Products to FAKE" etc.etc.

To "Influence Benchmarks in our Favor" stipulates that through persuasion try and convince benchmark providers to use features or other uses that will provide the best benefit to ATI class hardware. This is the proper way to market a product.

A good example- if NVIDIA wanted to get good scores, they could try to persuade a benchmark company to use lots and lots of stencil shadows and framebuffer reads in order to give a larger impact to their hardware over ATI's. NVIDIA has done this for YEARS with Futuremark by insisting previous versions use the smallest, least thrashable sized textures with unheard of 2-vertex T&L ganging for all geometry through static paths. This is why 3dmark2000-> had such a HUGE lead for NVIDIA Products. It wasnt fake or unreal performance, it was just insanely incorrect when compared to videogames since it would take 14+ years to write a dynamic game engine with this degree of specialization.

Of course, now consumers of 3d accelerators have become a bit more knowledgable and saavy so something this extreme would clearly not be possible, but similar efforts to a lesser effect could be approached. You could basically make two types of benchmarks to sway results towards one IHV or another- one being a more Doom3-ish benchmark (low precision shaders, lots of stencil,etc.etc.) or a heavy DX9 style benchmark (lots of higher precision shaders, larger textures, etc.etc.)

The leading IHV's both have their strengths and weaknesses and you could pretty much set-out to show massive superiority for one versus the other, and do so without any real fear of recoil. After all- Doom3 is going to be a stencil-heavy, shader-light game, so you could just point an NVIDIA-centric benchmark at Doom3 as the model and be kosher for "real gaming" use comparison/accuracy. ATI has the same effect with it's emphasis on high-precision shader performance, so you could point any ATI-centric benchmark at every other DX9 game and benchmark so far as being the model. :)
 
AHAHAH YOU BASTARD YOU DELETED IT THAT LINK WAS CORRECT. :/ damn I'm gonna search through the inet cache now!

The html even still has the correct image size but thanks to no cache I dont got the picture.

The image was 1456x1104 its nice to see that the images either side of it still work.

The slide was comparing ATI Gear the game or whatever to Nvidia the way it ment to be played.

Now I won't mention what it said more closely I'll let DW explain if he wants

Nah lets bust him he tried ot make a fool of me

FRANKLY DW has bashed ATI
the slide that he forgot to show contained a comparision between the two such points as

ATI

Encourage developers to use standard apis

NV

Encourage developers to use CG locking them into it and similar to what happend with glide.
 
bloodbob said:
AHAHAH YOU BASTARD YOU DELETED IT THAT LINK WAS CORRECT. :/ damn I'm gonna search through the inet cache now!
Me? No, never!

I think you just got the link wrong, I have no idea what you're talking about. ;) :devilish:
 
THANK YOU Bolloxoid

Making headlines about this is just typical Digitalwanderer hysteria.

Someone that agrees with my POV.

Maybe we can also tell DW that Ati is a corporation and are out to make money, just like every other corporation on the planet?

Any corporation would be stupid NOT to influence things to their favour.
 
Bah... hell... so those slides are the real deal... They still look odd to me but what do I know.

Well at least we have more drama... It seems the majority of the community was smart enough to not take the bait on that one and call it like it is. Impressive to say the least.

Wating for the next episode of this soap opera.
 
xGL said:
I don't like the "Influence benchmarks in ATIs favor" either as they seem to have separated it from the "Ensure compatibility" line.
Benchmarks are made to be neutral and should not contain optimized code for whatever vendor.
Then again, this slide is quite ambiguous and maybe even out of context as there are no explanations.

I don't want to get caught in a Russ-like situation (To pull a Russ; To Russ), but the point obviously needs to be made:

While "benchmarks are made to be neutral," ATi is not.

Remember FM wants nV in the fold to gain insight and tips into their future architecture. Consider this a form of influencing 3DM04 in nV's favor.

FYI (OK, to avoid being painted with the Russ brush ;)), I shot this off to happy fun Fuad:

Hi Fuad,

Re: http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=11762

Forgive the bluntness, but did you actually "witness" the "disturbing presentation" live, or did you just flip through the PowerPoint files?

If you just perused the PowerfulPoints, may I ask if you got those files from an enterprising ATi competitor (as ATi is throwing/spinning this back at its doe-eyed fans, per the response found on he same link below), or from the following site? http://www.elitebastards.com/

Yes, I suspect you blew your top without corroborating indignation. I thought bluntness would be more constructive than flaming the editor, but cc'ing the guy wouldn't hurt. ;)

Cheers to You Both,
Pete


PS - How can one see a "conspiracy" in ATi's comparatively superior performance in TR:AoD, as the game falls under nVidia's marchitectured umbrella? HL2 is perhaps understandable (though I really doubt it, given the preponderance of other DX9 evidence), but TR:AoD cannot possibly be secretly cozying up with ATi under nVidia's prominent (yet currently downcast) nose.

PPS - Or can it? Could these marchitecture folks be even more than just mindlessly soul-crushing? Could they be so advanced in their trade that they've moved up to double agents?! Run for the hills!
 
Solomon said:
I'm just curious, how would they know a "competitor" is distributing the slide? Would be better to just comment on the slide or "provide" the rest of the slides if they want to clear the air. To say, "A competitor..." sounds like a weak PR move. I trust PR people as much as I can throw a car.

Solomon, you're dead right with your take on PR people. Having said that at least in Yahoo Finance someone's saying that Brian Burke has distributed the ATI slide. I wonder whether he's given any accompanying remarks while doing it... ;)

http://finance.messages.yahoo.com/bbs?.mm=FN&action=m&board=15969433&tid=atyt&sid=15969433&mid=76122
"These slides came to me indirectly from Brian Burke and the people who gave these to nVidia DESERVE to be fired!"
by 'digitalwonderer'- the poster of the slide

(and yes, if digi really posted that I'm inclined to agree)

- Tom
 
TMorgan said:
(and yes, if digi really posted that I'm inclined to agree)
Uhm, I only go by "digitalwonderer" at Warp2Search & [H]...I'm not sure if that's me or not right now. :| (W2S because of a log-in prob with me regular account there that I was too lazy to have 'em fix, [H] because I keep getting banned. :rolleyes: )

Hmm...it made Yahoo financials? I don't know if I should be impressed or fearful, I think I'll go with both for now. :?
 
When I saw the slides I wondered how out of context they were and how inflammatory the first sentence would be seen as. Influence in our favour is too open to be criticsed beyond it being too open! You could infer it means any or all of:

1) Follow OPEN standards more
2) Use more advanced features
3) Use more advanced shaders
4) Use shaders structured more to ATi's capabilities
5) All the NVidia types of tricks and cheats (IQ loss, optimisations)

I love slide 3 :) Frankly I see this as a lame attempt by a used to be great company to stall until they have their act together and overall it is hurting the industry and its consumers. Someone should really read them the riot act.
 
Errr...I took it to go and convince benchmark writers to test things the ATI parts were good at (or opponents parts were bad at) and avoid doing the polar opposite.

At least that's what I would do if I were trying to sell graphics chips. ;)
 
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