More ATI Driver News from Derek Smart

[SirXcalibur]

]

I can imagine that someone saying what he says will get a hard time at rage3d, and here too in some extent

Why, you think I'm scared of whining fanbois? You're kidding me, right?

I only leave when (a) trolls start posting nonsensical rubbish which NO basis in reality and/or facts (b) people start making personal attacks.

So, if trolls can post all the crap they want, why can't I leave when I want?

So far, I don't see ANYONE countering ANYTHING I've written. Instead, you folks are spending your time dissecting ME and not the posts or the implications therein. Bad form, that.

And no, I'm not here to make friends. I have a enough of those and its hard to keep track of them. I'm here to defend my posts because some ignorant person decided to start spouting nonsense off at the mouth.

Wel I don't know if you remember at all derek but you were having a pretty good discussion about some of the driver problems the 8500 was having. You just got kind of wrapped up in some of the flames and other stupid people instead of ignoring them, and never came back. Obciously youknow that your posts are flamebait most of the time and you could choose to ignore such flames if you wanted.

As for replys to your technical query's here, I would say you have to wait a little longer, you did just post them in the last hour.

 

[Galilee]

]

I can imagine that someone saying what he says will get a hard time at rage3d, and here too in some extent

Why, you think I'm scared of whining fanbois? You're kidding me, right?

Where did I write that you were scared of fanboys? I just said that what you say is somewhat controversiol and if you post it on rage3d people will try to kill you
Personally I don't mind what you say, it's good that people are critical about stuff. Maybe the fix the stuff a little faster.

 

[Sabastian]

]
That said. My claims remain the same. GREAT card. TERRIBLE drivers.

You will note that your opinion while was once a fairly popular one is now a rather small minority. The majority opinion on ATI driver now is great card/Solid drivers. Not that I actually think that you give a dam. The last time I read about you nearly a year ago it was much the same opinion. Even though the vast majority of opinions with regards to ATI drivers have changed for the positive you remain dogmatic and carry the same argument. Personally I think you have ulterior motives, what they would be is beyond what I can fathom, but you are waging some sort of personal vendetta here IMHO. ATIs drivers are not "terrible" your exaggeration shows you have other then altruistic motives.

 

[Galilee]

Drivers might be experienced different from a users standpoint, and from a dev's. If he works around his problems, the users playing his game will have a good time with ATI's drivers.
I can understand his rage, because there is nothing more irritating that other peoples bugs that interfere with your own work.

 

[Derek Smart [3000AD]]

IS MT really ‘broken’ or just broken in the way you are coding for it? Why hasn’t anyone noticed it? Why have I ran Serious Sam through the various levels of multitexturing options it has and got performance improvements?

If you actually *gasp* did MORE reading and LESS posting, you would see the excerpt in my FIRST post to the board, from ATI confirming that there is in fact, a problem.

And in that same post is another excerpt again confirming that one of the reasons W buffer support was removed, was in the interest of speed.

Do yourself a favor and act like the smart guy I think you are. Go back to my first post and READ it.

 

[SirXcalibur]

] If you actually *gasp* did MORE reading and LESS posting, you would see the excerpt in my FIRST post to the board, from ATI confirming that there is in fact, a problem.

And in that same post is another excerpt again confirming that one of the reasons W buffer support was removed, was in the interest of speed.

Do yourself a favor and act like the smart guy I think you are. Go back to my first post and READ it.

But Derek, why don't you answer him and tell us why all those other games are working fine (as well as all the games I have played on my 9700) with multi - texturing and only you seem to have the issue. It seems the problem you are pointing out must be a very minor one.

 

[Dave Baumann]

This is kind of comical in a way, but I’ll refrain from any ‘Smart’ comments.

]If you actually *gasp* did MORE reading and LESS posting, you would see the excerpt in my FIRST post to the board, from ATI confirming that there is in fact, a problem.

Yes, Derek, I did read it – it says they have reproduced the problem, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the problem occur in all cases does it? Perhaps that is just saying ‘way have reproduced the problem the way you are doing it???

And in that same post is another excerpt again confirming that one of the reasons W buffer support was removed, was in the interest of speed.

Derek, here is what I read:

The 9700 hardware doesn't support w-buffer. We do not plan to implement software support as this will de-stabilize the driver and we will take a significant performance hit.

That’s say it was just removed from the hardware and gave no reason why – they do not want to emulate it through software for reasons of speed

Do yourself a favor and act like the smart guy I think you are. Go back to my first post and READ it.

[/quote]

No comment.

 

[Derek Smart [3000AD]]

Joe, just when I thought that I'd never see a sensible nor eloquent post here, you go and surprise me. Cheers mate.

Some good points all around. I will ignore the subliminal jab because I've heard it all before. Stale news.

And don't get me wrong, they ARE fixing my problems because they said that they would.

Thats NOT the point I was making.

If you follow the flow of my rhetoric, you will see that I am particularly pissed that the drivers aren't getting better. They're getting worse. To the extent that even basic legacy support, gets broken.

And I have reported, to date, ELEVEN problems with ATI drivers and which were first discovered by me and confirmed by them. Then some were fixed. Others I had to work around (e.g. that whole ZBIAS issue).

I have always states that the ATI dev support folks are really, really understandable, easily accessible and have a good handle on what we [devs] are going through (I'm speaking of Mike and his crew). Its the driver dev team that I am most concerned about.

Tell me, WHY do I have to WORRY each time ATI releases a new card or driver, when I don't have such worries with ANY other card? Tell me this please. I should NOT have to babysit their drivers. But I do. Why? Well, because I use those cards as my primary dev cards because I LIKE THEM. About as much as I like my nVidia cards.

Heck, even Matrox's Pahrelia card worked out of the box and so far, not a SINGLE problem has been reported on it. And thats a new card that came out the same time as ATI's. Now why is that?

Just because other devs dont' report these problems, doesn't mean that they don't exist. I have very, very advanced technologies which not only stretch gamer's systems, the games themselves they were developed for, are in a niche all on their own. If there were more developers with games like that, they too would be screaming bloody murder. Even on the Rage3D forums and others, thats the order of the day. Everything nowadays is mass market and so only guys like me have to endure this crap on a daily basis. I don't have games that sell millions of units. In fact, I have yet to release a game that has sold more than 250K units. As such, EVERY gamer to me that has a problem with my game due to driver problems, is a gamer that I CANNOT afford to lose. And I don't run a faceless corp which uses a web front for customer interaction. I'm out there, under fire and on the line all the time. Just the way I like it.

 

[Doomtrooper]

Wasted opportunity. You should post the date/time stamp of the post. And then have the dev folks check the date/time stamps of my reports to them. In fact, WHY didn't you just link to the thread?!?! Instead doing a bad cut/paste job which doesn't have the date/time stamp.

Derek here is your link, I will HIGHLIGHT the important part for us consumers:

http://www.3000ad.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=7;t=002161#000000

The 9700 (I have the 9700 Pro) is a damn good card. In fact, currently the best there is and with drivers that I have so far found no problems with.


Again its seems what side of the Bed you fall out of when posting about ATI. at least stay consistent and say they 'suck' all the time

 

[Derek Smart [3000AD]]

The 9700 hardware doesn't support w-buffer. We do not plan to implement software support as this will de-stabilize the driver and we will take a significant performance hit.

That’s say it was just removed from the hardware and gave no reason why – they do not want to emulate it through software for reasons of speed

You're kidding me, right? Which part threw you off. The

we will take a significant performance hit

or maybe the

and we will take a significant performance hit

You'd be surprised just how one word can change the context of a sentence.

 

[Mize]

Cripes this thread has really degenerated.

Word of advice to Derek:

The ride of life is oh so much more pleasant without that pole up your ass.

Try getting more fiber in your diet.

Mize

 

[Joe DeFuria]

If you actually *gasp* did MORE reading and LESS posting, you would see the excerpt in my FIRST post to the board, from ATI confirming that there is in fact, a problem.

And if you actually *gasp* took a deep breath instead of flying off the handle at every comment, you would know that no one is questioning whether the problem has been verified.

Now, be the smart person that your posting style doesn't suggest your are, and read the following carefully, and repeatedly until you get the point:

IS MT really ‘broken’ or just broken in the way you are coding for it? Why hasn’t anyone noticed it?

What he's SAYING is that the way YOU are coding for it, BREAKS IT. He's not questioning if it's a "real bug" or not.

Now, the fact that this bug doesn't apparently manifest itself ANYWHERE ELSE leads us to the following 1 or two conclusions:

1) You are doing some poor or otherwise "bad" technique.
2) You are doing some valid technique that's unique enough that the bug has not manifgested itself elsewhere.

In EITHER case, why does it seem surprising that such an apparently UNIQUE approach failed to work right out of the gate?

 

[Derek Smart [3000AD]]

[quote="Doomtrooper]Again its seems what side of the Bed you fall out of when posting about ATI. at least stay consistent and say they 'suck' all the time [/quote]

And right there, my man, you made my point for me.

Now, S_L_O_W_L_Y this time, read this sentence

The 9700 (I have the 9700 Pro) is a damn good card. In fact, currently the best there is and with drivers that I have so far found no problems with.


Now, that was when I ran the card through its paces and noticed no problems.

...then the problems started unveiling themselves, one by one.

So, WHICH part about all this, is unclear? I mean, no, really, tell me.

I know that some of you here are used to this flocking mentality (see: ganging) but for crying out loud, facless alias on a board or not, DO show some COMMON SENSE and make some SENSIBLE arguments, m'kay?

....but then again, faceless aliases care nothing for credibility. So, posting nonsensical rubbish is not such a big deal.

 

[Dave Baumann]

You're kidding me, right? Which part threw you off.

Derek - which part of 'software' support do you not understand?

They have given you no reasons why they have not supported it in hardware, they have given you a reason why they are not going to support it in software.

 

[Derek Smart [3000AD]]

Now, the fact that this bug doesn't apparently manifest itself ANYWHERE ELSE leads us to the following 1 or two conclusions:

1) You are doing some poor or otherwise "bad" technique.
2) You are doing some valid technique that's unique enough that the bug has not manifgested itself elsewhere.

In EITHER case, why does it seem surprising that such an apparently UNIQUE approach failed to work right out of the gate?

That not-so-unique approach works fine on ALL cards, INCLUDING the 7xxx and 8xxx series. OK? And as soon as ATI tell me what exactly is causing it, I will post about it here.

Next!

ps: Yes, I am deliberately ignoring the stupid jabs

 

[Doomtrooper]

Just stating facts written by yours truly....I didn't write that..you did...in fact reading that thread you go to great lengths to defend the card meanwhile trash it on other forums..

Consistency would be nice... that is all I'm stating.

I do find it strange that this multitexturing driver bug seems to be isolated to just you, with alot of titles running problem free Like Serious Sam...what is different in your code ??

 

[Derek Smart [3000AD]]

You're kidding me, right? Which part threw you off.

Derek - which part of 'software' support do you not understand?

They have given you no reasons why they have not supported it in hardware, they have given you a reason why they are not going to support it in software.

*sigh*

Software support in that context has nothing to do with the technology itself. Why? Well uhm, because we're not talking about emulating a W buffer in software. I even doubt that its possible. As such, it is a hardware technique. So, to me, that software support bit has to do with the software support as it relates to drivers and the DX sdk.

Nevertheless, the fact remains, they removed W buffer support from the card for seemingly NO reason - other than, as I understand it, stability and performance issues.

 

[noodles]

Perhaps Derek, if you spent more time wokring on your game titles and less time responding to posters and praising yourself, your games would be better and you'd sell more and then your voice would carry more weight in the gaming community and on and on it goes...

Grow thicker skin Smart. It'll do you more good than any new driver release.

noodles out...

 

[Derek Smart [3000AD]]

I do find it strange that this multitexturing driver bug seems to be isolated to just you, with alot of titles running problem free Like Serious Sam...what is different in your code ??

Serious sam uses OGL. I use DX. Doh!

 

[Doomtrooper]

Actually Serious Sam: SE uses both Direct X and OGL....and run fine in both modes...