More ATI Driver News from Derek Smart

[Derek Smart [3000AD]]

As to where I got my info on per game patches, several websites are now posting fixes/workarounds for the 9700's problems in current games.

I've seen one - from ATI themselves, which was actually just a DLL from a later release of drivers. What others have there been?

So far, I am aware of four instances in which ATI have had to release replacement DLLs to fix game problems. One of those was the fog issue with GTA3 (which they didn't fix in MY game until it became a problem in GTA3), the other is the TnL (and other fixes) in the patch they released yesterday. If you'd like, I can go through my logs and check all instances for you.

 

[Kassandra]

A word on another thing: Your nitpicking about which graphics cards other than ATI's Derek Smart had no problems with gives me the dire impression of you trying to make a point of nothing to hide the fact that you have nothing really to say to counter him.

No, actually I completely believe and agree with him.

I just would like to see his comments put into perspective. It's kind of pointless to talk about problems without comparing those problems with those seen elsewhere.

It's like giving ATI a "bugmark" score of 23, but not giving comparison scores from other companies.

Well, it looks like I got you completely wrong here. Forgive me.

 

[Dave Baumann]

I don't think so. Just because I don't notice something's broken because I never use it a way that would reveal it, doesn't mean that someone who does use it that way has no right to complain about it and demand it to be fixed - which afaik is exactly what Derek is doing.

I’m not saying that he has not got an issue with ATI drivers – that’s all fine. However his posts make it sound as this is a global issue this is clearly not the case, however he failed to address that.

Add to that he had several other apparent issues with ATI drivers, one of which is actually no change from before and another of which is being dropped from API support anyway (and another method has been pointed out) it doesn’t really add up to much. Sometimes a little more of a considered approach can be useful.

 

[Kassandra]

]Its not very easy having to stand up in a crowded room and telling everyone to go fuck 'emselves you know.

Yeah and it sure shows a lot of maturity.

You have really understood what Derek wanted to say, don't you? LOL!

 

[Dave Baumann]

]So far, I am aware of four instances in which ATI have had to release replacement DLLs to fix game problems. One of those was the fog issue with GTA3 (which they didn't fix in MY game until it became a problem in GTA3), the other is the TnL (and other fixes) in the patch they released yesterday. If you'd like, I can go through my logs and check all instances for you.

Yeah, I was talking about what patches have there been for 9700 specifically.

 

[Derek Smart [3000AD]]

It's like giving ATI a "bugmark" score of 23, but not giving comparison scores from other companies.

It is not my place to give out wanton scores. I leave that to bogus benchmarks.

I am reporting problems with ATI boards and which do NOT exist on ANY other board so far. PERIOD.

So, WHY should I waste my time dolling out scores? And while we're at it, which part of ALL my earlier statements in which I - CLEARLY - stated that ALL the problems I've had with ATI are EXCLUSIVE to those boards, was unclear? To me, they were clear enough, to the extent that exclusionary premise therein is enough for any fool to grasp, process and move on. Giving me shit because I didn't point out something an nVidia or Matrox driver is just that ---> giving me shit.

As it so happens, I don't have a SINGLE open issue with nVidia, nor Matrox not anyone else. The one great thing about ATI support is the dev support folks. I can't say enough nice things about Mike and his team. They're VERY VERY responsive and in my experience, no matter WHO the developer is they're always there. They even flat out told me why my problems didn't come first. And the honesty alone was enough for me and I didn't fault them for that. After all, my games are in a niche. But by the same token, I fully expect stuff that USED TO WORK to continue working. I don't want to shudder everytime a new ATI part or driver comes out. Because thats literally what happens. Do you have ANY idea how much time it took to seek out and disable all those ZBIAS checks (for ATI boards) in my code in order to research this MT problem? Only to discover that it was a busted driver? Did I run out and scream at them without first investigating it? Nope. I didn't. I put in the time required and then reported it.

In fact, the last time I had an issue with nVidia...<me checks log>...was back on 04/04/02 (whoa!! that was my birthday!!) and it was related to an incorrect return issue in a driver. They fixed it in under 24hrs. The last problem before that was back on 12/08/01. And in that instance, they had the ALPHAARG in stage one, ass backwards in the driver. Someone must have done one too many cut and pastes in the code.

As for Matrox. Last issue was back on 08/02/01 about a rendering issue in the G550 which turned out to be my fault. Something I'd missed when doing multi-mon for the G4xx cards. And the last time I conversed with them, was when I was bitching at them to ensure that they didn't even think of releasing the Pahrelia unless it supported all industry standard DX8/9 features. They didn't disappointment me and my games all run flawlessly (albeit slower than GF4Ti or 9700) on the Pahrelia board. Of course, Matrox will still be the third place player and from what I know, they have no problems being parked there. More power to them.

There you have it

 

[Kassandra]

The current state of the battle by combatants:

OpenGL guy: Might know a thing or two about coding, but has a hard time following Dereks concept and is definitely to young to understand adult humor. You lost it.

Joe deFuria: Clearly infuriated to a degree where he has lost the capability to soundly counter Derek's arguments and has to resort to rather vague statements. Needs rest. Should probably leave the arena.

Derek Smart: Growing under pressure, obviously, and enjoying this thread very much. So many people to insult! His combat style is definitely suffering from his attitude. Needs to chill out, prolly. (btw, not that it's important, but are you going to tell us you really had to seek out each ZBIAS check in each of your related source files? I remember you having written something about some #define in this thread and that regard ...)

Dave Baumann: He's the MASTER. Stays calm in every situation. Is never intimidated. Tries to keep the discussion on a decent level. Maybe not always right, but still my personal favorite. Go, guy!



Why don't you stop it now, guys. It's all said.

 

[Dave Baumann]

Dave Baumann: He's the MASTER. Stays calm in every situation. Is never intimidated. Tries to keep the discussion on a decent level. Maybe not always right, but still my personal favorite. Go, guy!

You may want to change that to is never wrong.

 

[ben6]

Add takes forever to respond to PMs

 

[Kassandra]

Dave Baumann: He's the MASTER. Stays calm in every situation. Is never intimidated. Tries to keep the discussion on a decent level. Maybe not always right, but still my personal favorite. Go, guy!

You may want to change that to is never wrong.

LOL. Well, not really.

 

[Derek Smart [3000AD]]

Derek Smart: Growing under pressure, obviously, and enjoying this thread very much. So many people to insult! His combat style is definitely suffering from his attitude. Needs to chill out, prolly. (btw, not that it's important, but are you going to tell us you really had to seek out each ZBIAS check in each of your related source files? I remember you having written something about some #define in this thread and that regard ...)

hehe, well, its like this, see, at one time, I thought I had them all under control via a single compile time #define. But for some reason, when I did a search in my code for all instances of D3DRS_ZBIAS, I found some that were out of scope for those cleverly placed #define. Basically, I had gone back and sprinkled a few in some more places, without using the #ifdefs which were ATI specific. In fact, one would expect this to cause problems with other boards (since they were ATI hacks), but it worked just fine.

At that point, I saw it fit to clean up my mess. Kinda like killing two birds with one stone, don't you think?

btw, I'm with you on the DaveBaumann report. He's even tracked down some info for me (passed along via PM) related to implementing a W buffer via pixel shaders. Bless his heart.

And OpenGL_Guy is currently trying to find out what exactly is broken in the drivers, relating to my MT implementation.

Alls well that ends well. Me? I can't wait for Joe's next senseless rhetoric.

 

[Doomtrooper]

ATI's drivers have come a long way from the RAGE days...We now have active ATI engineers and coders participating in the forums here and Rage3D helping with issues and looking at game issues.

The three things that Derek has brought up only one of them is a major issue IMO, the 9700 is a DX 9 card and DX9 does not support a W-buffer, 24bit Z-buffer is not a flaw but for sure the multitexturing bug is.

I've installed a couple 9700's and ran the card through alot of games OLD and NEW and the card was flawless...BF 1942 Demo was the only issue and and ATI had a fix within a week...
IMO that is excellent for a card as complex as the 9700, without Dx9 being here too.

I would like to see what Dereks comments are to a developer using one IHV to code on and also what his comments are from ATI's Dev Relations fellow Jeff Royle, especially the part about competitors leaving bugs in their drivers...

His reply posted on Rage3D..Thread titles ATI inherited driver errors:

There are a high number of games that were developed on non-ATI boards which means any driver bugs they have may be worked around in code. If the game is not tested on ATI boards before release and these bugs found, the game goes gold and ships that way. When the bug is eventually found and determined to be a game bug, we contact the developers of the game and let them know. We can then request a patch if they are willing and even offer advice on how to fix it. ATI will not knowingly break a driver to make a game work.

In rare cases, developers will not create a patch and then we can only take note of the title and try to remember the bug for future reference. The state of the development community seems to be shifting for the better these days and many bugs are hammered out well in advance of shipping, some later on. We do our best to get all titles tested and bugs found.

The biggest problem we encounter is that end users don't always realize it's not a driver issue that causes the problems. When the game is written as above, on different graphics hardware and bugs are just accepted and worked around in code then it's hard for us to say "But the problem is in the game" because end users see it works for other people on different graphics hardware. ATI already has a bad rap for drivers and yet we won't intentionally leave a bug in a driver. Competitors occasionally will leave a known bug in the driver maybe because they are afraid of what everyone will think when they actually fix it.

 

[KimB]

]It is not my place to give out wanton scores. I leave that to bogus benchmarks.

I agree. I was just trying to make a point that pointing out the faults of one vendor doesn't say much of anything. I don't want a score...I want you to say what kinds of problems you've had with hardware other than ATI's.

I am reporting problems with ATI boards and which do NOT exist on ANY other board so far. PERIOD.

I wouldn't expect problems to be the same from a different vendor.

As it so happens, I don't have a SINGLE open issue with nVidia, nor Matrox not anyone else.

...more stuff about other vendors' drivers...

Thank you, that's all I wanted.

 

[cellarboy]

]I am reporting problems with ATI boards and which do NOT exist on ANY other board so far. PERIOD.

Wow, not Trident, SiS or VIA/S3?

Damn, you must be the only person on the face of the planet that has had no issues with their drivers!

 

[Doomtrooper]

I might add its pretty hard not to have driver errors when (before Chalnoth posts this all over the front page of NvNews)..

1)The Geforce 3 and 4 are probably used for 80% of the development work
2)The Geforce 3 and 4 are the same architecture and have been that way for almost 2 years (pretty easy to code drivers on a established platform)

There was alot of driver bugs on NVnews during the Geforce 4 debut, lockups etc..and the real test for Nvidia will be when Nv30 hits.

 

[demalion]

Wasn't Joe's point only that there was a lack of info and clarity amidts all the "attitude"? It is irrelevant now since DS has decided to cut the swearing and his points and information are not obscured (note the d) anymore due to the discussion, but it was not when they were made or else DS's later statements would not have been necessary. I've actually found merit with about every (except the obviously purely trolling) poster about points being made at some point (not that it means anything to you, but it explains this smile on my face -> )

In any case, this is the only "degenerated" thread that I recall that has been successfully turned around and started to become useful. If all the one-post cheerleaders can keep out, maybe it can even stay that way...?

Here's hoping.

 

[KimB]

I might add its pretty hard not to have driver errors when (before Chalnoth posts this all over the front page of NvNews)..

I didn't even consider it until you brought it up, thanks!

Oh, and one more thing:

There's a world of difference between graphical glitches and instability. Instability is simply caused by incompatibility issues, which are far harder to track down, and I would be highly surprised if ATI had any fewer such issues than nVidia.

In particular, instability-related issues could, quite simply, be a result of any piece of software that is running. On modern PCs, that's often a lot of software.

It's the graphical glitches that are at the heart of this issue. They are relatively easy to track down, and it is very easy to tell whether or not the problem lies in the drivers (from a developer's perspective, that is). These are the things that I'm seeing nVidia not doing, and other companies, like ATI, doing.

 

[RussSchultz]

I'm amazed. After 11 pages, it looks like the rhetoric simmered down and people actually ended up discussing things.

Miracles do happen.

 

[Doomtrooper]

No prob..anytime


I look forward to your post on Nvnews

 

[Steven Hartland]

Just a quick one from an ATI user. I too have had problems with ATI drivers. I use an aging Rage Pro in a machine that drives a TV, no big deal the first drivers where ok they allowed me to set the refresh rate to 50 Hz so the picture was great. Then for some unknown reason one version of the drivers broke this feature. You could still set 50Hz and it would work but it was forgotten on reboot forcing me to plug in a monitor to reset it each time I rebooted. So what did I do. I reported the bug to ATI support a simple fix just fix the registry persistence of said value. But no I get some silly person asking me if I had the latest version installed despite my support mail listing the exact versions of the drivers that:
1. did work
2. didn't work ( the latest @ the time )
I responded saying yes I had the latest drivers again giving the version. No response for 3 weeks. So I mailed again, guess what, must have got the same person as I got the same response 'Do you have the latest driver version installed?' Do these people actually read the email? I 'reported' this minor ( easy to fix ) but major ( system failing ) bug no fewer that 4 times. I have yet to this day been able to use an updated ATI driver set due to this issue.

I think this highlights one of Derek Smart's major issues. Its not that they don't know the issues its not that it would take long to fix some of them ( not all ) but quite frankly I don't think they can be bothered. Either that or the person in charge does not have a clue how prioritise issues.

I know as a previously happy ATI customer ( Mach64 ) and then unhappy ATI customer ( Rage Pro ). It will take a lot to persuade me to buy another ATI card ever again. The hardware can be 2 * as quick as the competition but if their drivers continue to have issues I for one will stay away.

P.S. Just spent all evening trying to get an ATI 9700Pro running smoothly on a friends AMD 2000+ under XP with no joy. Jerky as hell running 3DMark2002 SE ( sometimes benchmarks do show up issues )

Ok so not so quick; so sue me