State your questions about the R300:

[Ante P]

I'm doing an interview with ATi within a week or two and I'm gathering questions.
It will mostly concern the "tech" parts and less about sales, PR and such.

For an example I'm gonna ask them about 30 bit color precision, ie what Matrox calls Gigabit Color. How the currecnt TRUFORM implementation works (since the performance hit is so severe). etc.

So not too complicated questions (I assume I'm not gonna talk to some genius here, rather one of the foot soldiers so to speak )
But if you have any good ideas about what I should ask them please let me know.
But again, don't get too technical on me now.

 

[Ascended Saiyan]

I've never really had an ATI card before but here are the most important to me & what is witholding me from buying there latest generation of cards.



1.When will we finally see supersampling as an option for anti-aliasing for the Radeon 97xx series ?

2.Why is it that there is no support for 16 Bit AA for the Radeon 97xx series of cardsat this time ?

3.What are the current features that are currently disabled on the Radeon 97xx series & what is there function in detail ?

4.Where do you see the graphics industry in the next 3-5 years ?


This is about it for me.

 

[Ante P]

Thanks. Allready covered those except numer 4 but that's exactly the type of questions I was looking for.

 

[Luminescent]

Check-out this thread: http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3042. It points out some interesting questions which you should not ask.

 

[Ante P]

Check-out this thread: http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3042.

*something just flew over Ante Ps head*

 

[LeStoffer]

Let's talk about how long an effecient pixel/fragment shader can be on the R300. 8)

Okay, ATI has this approach to Phong Lighting in PS 2.0 at GDC Europe:
Normalisation: 3 instructions: dp3, rsq, mul

Radeon 9700 can do this ~800 million times per second

That means that it makes sense to aim for pixel shaders whose length on average is roughly 15 instructions per pixel - 15 because: 15 = ½ * 2400M / (1280 * 1024 * 60Hz)

Figures for other lighting rendring modes could be very interesting -especially for acceptable hacks like the RenderMan thingy they have demoed.

 

[Ante P]

Let's talk about how long an effecient pixel/fragment shader can be on the R300. 8)

Okay, ATI has this approach to Phong Lighting in PS 2.0 at GDC Europe:
Normalisation: 3 instructions: dp3, rsq, mul

Radeon 9700 can do this ~800 million times per second

That means that it makes sense to aim for pixel shaders whose length on average is roughly 15 instructions per pixel - 15 because: 15 = ½ * 2400M / (1280 * 1024 * 60Hz)

Figures for other lighting rendring modes could be very interesting -especially for acceptable hacks like the RenderMan thingy they have demoed.

Please phrase it as a question.

And try to keep them as short as possible, I allready have a list of 30 questions by now

 

[MuFu]

Are dysfunctional R300 dice being binned for use on the Radeon 9500 AIB? If so, did ATi design the ASIC with this economically-attractive idea in mind?

MuFu.

 

[Humus]

I would like to ask why card based on ATi chips takes so long time ship to Europe. It usually takes several months after the cards are available in volume in north america before it shows up in Europe, even from third party vendors. Why is that? nVidia cards on the other hand tends to pop up not that long after it arrives in the US.

 

[Brent]

One thing that still bugs me greatly is no aa'ing on alpha textures

so my question would be

1.) Are you every going to force by driver the OpenGL 1.2 alpha coverage mask call, which can be used to convert Pixel Shader output to anti-aliased coverage?

I understand it could effect some older titles negatively, but I'd still like to have the option in the drivers to toggle it.

But if they also just had a Super Sampling option in the AA that would do it too right? So if and when?

So those are my questions

 

[Dave Baumann]

Beyond3D reserves the right to use any questions posted on Beyond3D's forums.

 

[BNA!]

When will they enable openGL for dual monitor setups in the 9700 series.

 

[Ante P]

Beyond3D reserves the right to use any questions posted on Beyond3D's forums.

OK I'll send you the answers to any questions I get answered that I took from this thread.
Sound reasonable?

 

[Dave Baumann]

Heh, don't worry, I didn't say I was actually going to do anything with them -- just a reminder to state that whatever occurs on this forum is effectively ours.

 

[IT]

Question:

When, O When are non-leaked/official drivers coming out to do ARB_fragment_program so we can program this baby to its potential???

 

[Ante P]

Just sent them the questions. I dunno how long it will take for me to get the answers back though.
They said they might have to forward some of them to different departments within ATi.

Hehe there were at least 40 questions on that list. I assume I won't get them all answered so I stuck an asterix (*) on those I thought were more important.

I'll post the interview in english on our site so I'll just post the link here when they arrive.

 

[maskrider]

As an user of a 9700 PRO, I have some questions on 9700

1. When will ATI officially support 1280x960 resolution (and of course the other HTDV standard resolutions) ? (1280x960 is available from Nvidia long time ago, I have to use PowerStrip to get it with 8500 and 9700)
2. When will the VideoShader be fully supported ? (the time frame for patches for Media Player, RealPlayer and Quicktime)
3. When will SSAA be supported (if they will support it) ?

Well, doesn't look too much 3D related.

 

[OpenGL guy]

1. When will ATI officially support 1280x960 resolution (and of course the other HTDV standard resolutions) ? (1280x960 is available from Nvidia long time ago, I have to use PowerStrip to get it with 8500 and 9700)

1280x960 is working fine for me with my Radeon 9700. I've seen this complaint before, but I can't understand it.

In fact, I just set my desktop to 1280x960 without a problem... Also, I've used the mode in Counterstrike, so I know it works in games as well.

 

[Ante P]

1. When will ATI officially support 1280x960 resolution (and of course the other HTDV standard resolutions) ? (1280x960 is available from Nvidia long time ago, I have to use PowerStrip to get it with 8500 and 9700)

1280x960 is working fine for me with my Radeon 9700. I've seen this complaint before, but I can't understand it.

In fact, I just set my desktop to 1280x960 without a problem... Also, I've used the mode in Counterstrike, so I know it works in games as well.

same thing here. never had a problem with the 9700 using 1280x960

running CS at 1280x960-32 with 6x FSAA and 16x Aniso, vsynced at 85 fps
doesn't feel as smooth as it does on my Ti4600 though, and that bugs me (small hitches every now and then that were not there on the Ti4600)

 

[maskrider]

1. When will ATI officially support 1280x960 resolution (and of course the other HTDV standard resolutions) ? (1280x960 is available from Nvidia long time ago, I have to use PowerStrip to get it with 8500 and 9700)

1280x960 is working fine for me with my Radeon 9700. I've seen this complaint before, but I can't understand it.

In fact, I just set my desktop to 1280x960 without a problem... Also, I've used the mode in Counterstrike, so I know it works in games as well.

1280x960 is 4:3, 1280x1024 is not, this is important for user who watch DVDs or someone who cares about aspect ratio.

If I have to get it through PowerStrip than ATI presets, I think ATI is not doing what ATI should have done, Nvidia has that for years.

That resolution seems to exist in Win9x/Me, but not Win2k and WinXP, I haven't used Win9x/Me too long.

And BTW, DVD is not working fine after I moved from 8500 to 9700 under 1280x960 100Hz refresh rate, I am forced to use 85Hz under 9700 to get quailty ATI hardware deinterlacing. 100Hz give me ugly jagged edges.