The "2900 XT Lacks UVD" Thread

Still waiting for reply how to set up hardware accelerated HD-DVD playback testing environment with Radeon HD 2900 XT. I'll post info and results as soon as I get them.

 

I thought it fairly sleazy to suggest it is there and broken unless he has proof of the matter. I wonder if that was "suggested" to him by others. Tho he's been deeply annoyed with AMD graphics for some months. He threw a fit awhile back, I seem to remember.

 

I think the whole issue is not so much about the fact the top line product HD2900XT doesn't have UVD, or that AMD should have delayed R600 just to include it...
It is that the general perception shaped directly or indirectly by AMD that R600 does have UVD when in fact it doesnt have... people get pissed because they feels deceived by AMD.. this whole issue wouldn't have existed at all if AMD have been upfront about this fact...

 

The important question is not "why doesn't R600 have UVD?" but "why did AMD mislead everyone into believing that it did?" That's what everyone is so angry about.

Indeed. He sounds quite sour.

And, in his conclusion:

 

When even the AIB partners are incorrectly putting UVD on the boxes, then AMD has completely failed to communicate what new R6xx product has what features. If the AIB partners selling the cards have got the wrong end of the stick, then it's no surprise that customers and press got the wrong idea too.

There's only three possible conclusions I can draw from this:

1. AMD is stupid. They really don't understand what they are selling and just got it wrong for months and miscommunicated to everyone while no one inside the company corrected things. Homer Simpson is running the company.

2. AMD deliberately misled people to cheat them. Monty Burns is running the company.

3. At the last minute UVD was found to be broken, and AMD ran around like headless chickens inadvertently (but still dishonestly) misleading people by accident. Maybe there was some hubris on their part that it might get fixed in drivers, or they would jump straight to R650. That's still no excuse. Bart Simpson is running the company.

 

OT:
Ok so we can take it that BZB is a big simpsons fan

 

That certainly seems like it is the case. It's not every day you have a journalist name their PR contact and then give a mini-rant about how they left left and that the rest of the department is nowhere near as good:

 

Does that mean AMD is shedding elements of ATI's marketing?

Shouldn't they be booting the less impressive of the two marketing departments?
From what I've seen of the old AMD's marketing, I'd be keeping the ATI folks.

 

I think we're all missing the most important bit of that article, Will Willis has left AMD and did so shortly after the R600 launch.

Who else left around that time, anyone know?

 

Now AMD's Dave Orton is saying that R600 has UVD:

"AMD's Dave Orton told the press that attended the Press Conference that the ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT in deed does UVD, but due to the power full shader engine in the GPU, it is done in software rather than in hardware as is the case with the HD 2600 and HD 2400 series."

http://www.tweaktown.com/computex2007/13/index.html

 

Because everything that has to do with the launch of this card must be scrambled beyond comprehension. We don`t but we do which we don`t because we do...delays, drivers, UVD, everything must be mushed and murked until it turns into an entropic porridge.

 

well he's absolutely right, software is "Universal Video Decoder" and Hardware is "Unified Video Decoding" .. but the situation is like poo on their fingers with no tissue around..

 

So, the strategy is:

1) Sit tightly and not say a word as both the websites and partners unwittingly misinform the public.
2) When pressed, admit that R600 does not have "UVD", aka universal media decoder.
3) Redefine what UVD stands for?

At least they don't do soft launches.

 

i think the r600 have a "universal media decoder", but this r600 version "universal media decoder" lack the harewire VLD part that is the most important part of UVD .

 

Via 3rd party apps, such workarounds are simply just not in all OSes natively. That's how Linux users coped for years.