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What's new... is old again
July to September 2000 News

September 2000 News

September 24, 2000

Linux Penguin

  • The first "Radeon" specific web site can be found in Euroupe at RADEONIC . It has the best rendered version of the "Radeon Girl"...take a look at those shimmering leather pants. For those of you who like your RADGAL the way she appears in ads, demos, and in person...tall and lithe...click here. The page does not come up properly under Netscape3 at the moment...the webmaster has been notified.

  • Do you care about this world ? A seemingly simple question typically answered with a cool and uncalculating eye by many with "yes". An eminent scientist confronts the universal formula of 10% growth in the economic for where the price must be paid for by ecological systems. Lumber that is harvested in the way of travelling nomads by continually looking for "old untouched growths" of forests to meet or exceed the 10% growth formula. It is David Suzuki's idea that we must manage our growth and the growth of our natural resource. Here is the introduction to his award winning presentation on supply, demand and our world ecology in his book called The Sacred Balance.
  • Bought myself a nice little calculator for $10 made of metal with support of hexi-decimal conversions (missing from my HP-11C) made by guess who ? Hewlett Packard of course in the form of their HP 6S entry into the hearts and minds of future engineers by giving high school students an excellent calculator...sadly...only algebraic entry and not Reverse Polish Notation (RPN) is not supported :( I'm going to write and lobby for a low cost RPN unit from them.
  • Apple has again chosen ATI to be the provider of its graphics technology for the sexy new Imac Cube. Responding to simultaneous price point pressures in the value market and the performance segment, it will offer either the Rage 128 Pro or the Radeon based cards in ints slot at a nominal $100 differernce.
  • There is a quote from my hi-tech past about the "future being so bright...that you've got to wear shades". I have been fairly silent in the last little while focussing more so on the management and growth of individuals and new technology. Change for a mid-size company is a welcome and necessary step for future growth. The promotion of David Orton into ATI's ranks has been a very positive step at ATI in terms of extremely professional management...the respect and influence he has drawn to date has a lot of people putting on their shades these days.

    I have been reading the odd review and editorial over the last three months and have the following comments to make. Has Nvidia's X-box ties to Microsoft (and the resultant valuation in stock) been somewhat oversold...I think so. Will there be a market correction similar to the one at Intel (also a X-box supplier) ? The aftermarket high end graphics chip market is owned by them because

    1. ATI chooses not to supply chips to the likes of Hercules, ASUS, and Creative Labs...we could ???
    2. S3 (formerly owned by Diamond) and 3dfx (owned by STB) ,who used to supply chips to card manufacturers, no longer do.
    3. Intel, Trident, Oak, 3Dlabs and Rendition have exited the performance category.
    But this is a small market segment (Intel owns as much of the overall market with 2 generation old technology) and they could not afford to say no to X-box. What they had to give up to their contractor in terms of pricing, exclusiveness of use, and opening up their architecture was what ATI had to consider when they walked out of the X-box deal. I think GigaPixel would have been a better (followthrough) choice in terms of merger potential. Are their sour grapes in the industry? The thing to remember about X-box is that it is in very many ways a lot like Intel and AGP/ATI. Microsoft has picked a chip partner to help them validate what they hope to be a leading gaming platform for their own proprietary application game software (very un-Microsoft-like when you think of DOS and Windows enabling the hardware industry when IBM was being closed with Micro-channel). But after this phase of discovery, they should be free to use whatever they think is the best chip...perhaps Radeon? The potential advantage of X-box is that the "pain" in writing right to the metal can potentially be done only once and for one chip arctitecture. OpenGL takes a smarter higher level approach to the task of writing code and can be adapted to support unique hardware "metal" features. The difference is where the control lies in terms of optimization and the level of abstraction. The level of MIPS offered by modern CPUs coupled the performance level of current sixth generation low cost graphics chips may make a low cost computer platform ($500) coupled with a high end graphics card a more compelling gaming ptatform....but in addition, you can dual boot to Linux. This is not the first time the famous "X" insignia and Microsoft have teamed up together...I still memories of the ill-fated MSX gaming project. Maybe Sega Dreamcast should have been Xbox...a simplified operating systems (Win CE) with an updated graphics core at a reasonable price. It seems as if it has taken a pages in its strategy from 3dfx, Windows, and Apple by introducing a host of outside developers, selected OEMs (Samsung, Dell, etc) to try to invent a new computer, with new software critical mass, aimed at the high end. Sounds a lot like the modern PC with a standardized footprint or what the used to call the "minimum standard" in the multimedia days (sound, CPU, CD-ROM and memory). I would say one way towards this end is to write that killer must have gaming application and let the consumers come out and define the minimum standard. In the end, it will come down to price point and performance as has always been the case in the PC industry.

    If you had to pick a feature packed and architecture smart technology today, I would pick Radeon's Hyper-Z and DirectX8's fully compatbile feature list. While I applaud the efforts of the OpenGL team(ex SGI) at Nvidia, their focus on Quake-only and 3D has caused a stall in the evolution of performance in DirectX games such as UnReal ( 80% faster on Radeon in 1600x1200 ) and just plain unsightly 2D in the form of blurry text on Spreadsheets and Word processing programs:

    Radeon could actually run without a heat-sink, today, but GeForce2 power consumption is on the order of three times more(...that is hot). Real world 3D quality image and play (image realism (colour, strange texture artifacts, you are there realsim) and the lack of stuttering( Hurry up in some sections but stall on others) beat out the tweaked benchmarks of the GeForce2. Try a Radeon card and then a GeForce1/2 card and you will see what others see in drivers designed for smooth game play. August 2000 News

    August 22, 2000

  • The GLX initiative that promises to unify game developers with LINUX has taken a bold step forward with the fastest Open-GL implementation to date using the forward looking RADEON chipset. Read about it here

  • There have been a ton of new reviews for the ALL-IN-WONDER cards of late with great praise for balanced performance. Go to Rage 3D for the links. Yep, 32 MB of DDR memory is a lot of power when combined with the RADEON "smart" HYPER-Z engine. What is not talked a lot about in the press is the much lower power consumption of the RADEON chips compared to the GeForce/GeForce2 chips which lead to longer life, better reliability and greater compatability with a wider range of motherboards and power supplies. The chips are cool to the touch. The second aspect not talked about much is the excellent 2D quality (low jitter and sharp text) mentioned in some of the reviews who focus on other aspects besides the excellent 3D performance. The most recent review from an S3 site has also commented on the sharpness being equal to that of 2D image quality leaders, Matrox. High praise indeed since there products have traditionally used seperate external DACs. Here is a quote:

  • Great summer so far and that means taking it easy with regard to work and staring into the depths of the internet. I'm getting a little internet itchy this morning after managing to get my NEC 4FG back into a useable state (no contrast and brightness controls). During this period, I thought I give all you ATI users a brief report on the other ATI sites starting from the best to worst:
    1. Rage 3D is the most current and balanced ATI specific site. The operators here have amazing savvy in finding out almost any information on the number one companies in computer graphics (revenue and boards) from other sites and thus give a balanced view of our product. However it also caters to the loyal ATI fanatic (and there are many) by providing in depth and well organized information and help forums to discuss
    2. @3D is a ATI site that has taken a year plus sabbatical. Despite this, it is one of the pioneering ATI sites that got ATI right in terms of praise (and criticsm) of ATI's strength as a graphics company. Fast loading, great layout, and most of all, it has great useful commentary and perceptive reviews. I've written to Phil recently and he promises me that after adapting to his promotional duties he will be back in RADEON form...good news for all of you 3D, HDTV, convergence, and camcorder pokers.
    3. ATI 3D Gaming Site was once the pride and joy of ATI users who wanted to get the skinny on ATI's cutting edge features. Sadly, the writers (like in any TV series) moved on to other things (like school and other sites). Alan Dang and Chris Angelini can still be found at FiringSquad and SharkyExtreme. The moderated forum is now rarely used sinced Alan moved on but the forums at Rage3D are now the active ones the ATI users have migrated to. Currently the RADEON's have unsurpassed 2D visual quality (low jitter and sharp text) and the lowest power consumption...cool to the touch...of any modern chipset...even lower than the previous generation Rage 128 chipsets. The most useful feature of 3D gaming may be the searcheable archives that you can find on the home page by searching on the strings "Fury" and "Radeon".
    4. Rage Underground is a sharp looking site ...but all that glitters is not gold. Prone to creating controversy for its own sake, it seems at times, it is nonetheless a useful resource in these days of extreme Nvidia hype.
    July 2000 News

    July 15, 2000
    A bunch of Radeon Reviews have landed along with Cards that you can buy today:

    1. ATI's New Radeon - Final Release D. Pemberton/Gamers Depot, July 17,2000
    2. The Radeon Experience M. Chiapetta/Hot Hardware, July 17, 2000
    3. ATI's new RADEON - Smart... Tom Pabst et al/Tom's Hardware, July 17, 2000
    4. ATI RADEON 64MB DDR M. Whitheiler/Anandtech, July 17, 2000
    5. ATI RADEON 64MB DDR GuideChris Angelini/SharkyExtreme, July 17, 2000
    6. ...Hands on Test C. Camparo/Planet Hardware, July 17,2000
    7. RADEON 64MB GA-Hardware, July 17, 2000
    Here are a couple of juicy quotes:

  • Note: The following comments were written prior to the reviews written above. ATI had invited people/reviewers up to the Toronto site for a day to give them a look at complex graphics cards beyond the 3D aspects that have so dominated the scene. I hope it was educational experience for them and judging by the reviews, I sense a new appreciation for ATI's approach to balanced performance in all sectors relating to Video in, Video out, DVD, HDTV and of course 3D.

    I admit it has not been as difficult to stay away from commenting on 3D. As wonderful as 3D has been for the PC graphics industry...The press continues to oscillate between jumping on the bandwagon of highest "FPS" (incredible 8 bit performance anyone ?) to talking about image "quality" and confusing it with resolution. The lack of useful real world "before and after demos" to highlight some of the new features does not make it easier. What would be truly neat is to have the software dudes create a demo on a standard platform which emulate the differences between quality features. In the Rage 128 "Rage Dawning" DEMO, an educational mode was included that enabled the user to enable different surface models, transparency models, mip and mip mapping. Users themselves could gauge the importance of features such as "anti-aliasing" themselves.

    It should not be too difficult to setup a DEMO written expressly for the press whereby some minimum hardware configuration would allow for the emulation of framerate tradeoffs between using one generation of 3D chips versus another for a given level of image quality, the same as above with different features as a parameter (i.e. enabled selectively). slowed down sequences of neat features with clickable arrows to train the eye of a evaluater to experience the extra quality obtained in a demo sequence. Remember, your average user is used to seeing realistic rendering everyday by sitting down by a stream or ocean and watching the fanstastic light reflection and redirection shown by the everyday physics of light. I do think that the RADEON is something special in this regard to being one of the most ambitious graphics chips to implement significant portions of the "eye" candy physical lighting world needed to give you that "I am there" feeling. The reviews will be in on Monday and predictably I can already see the tried and true "16 bit FPS" chart(s) occupying 1/4 of the reprort, followed by the "32 bit" results occupying another "1/4" of the report along with some mundane comments about 5% to 10% effects of overclocking that are not really significant. It was OK in the olden days when image quality was a known tradeoff and a benchmark number was it.

    A more useful metric would be to include something like the image/edge/shadow tracing of a ray of sun passing through the surface of the water such that you see in a sea-quarium for correctness. For the less ambitious, the tried and true...see Sharky's Extreme, Tom, Anand, Rage3D and Gamer's Depot for some great 32 bit numbers (relative to Nvidia Gee2 ). The lower 16 results are a deliberate architectual tradeoff of filling more of each access optimally with depth and pixel information with each memory access. Unfortunately, optimizing for one introduces in-efficiency in the other.

  • July 1, 2000
    Gone canoeing and picked up a few paper backs (Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt). Its been great...now I'm squinting into the tube and trying to recall my HTML. I think I'll be adding Jan Arden to my stagnant list of CDs and fising up the porch, back fence, and Sunroom this year.

  • I think the Radeon chipset will please a lot of people. It has second generation HDTV support and DVD, that were widely acknowledged as technically the top of the class. All major functional hiccups have been resolved and expect to see production quality boards being sampled by your favourite web hardward sites. All this competition has made people work insance hours and hard for the right to pleasae your twelve year old gamer but as always, ATI has been focussing on convergence issues dealing with cable and satellite transmission...stuff most people will not care about until 2006 but makes for interesting work for people who want to deploy things this summer on high end PCs.

    I have opened up a collection of previews on early production RADEON boards for those who havent yet heard the news....there is a new girl on the block and her name is Radeon....Ms that is.