Hi;
Let me first say Thank you for doing the interview.
I'd like to know a little about you current product line.
(models ,direct x 9 compliance etc).
The industry is halfway through the transition to PCI Express, so our product line is more complex than usual.
Currently, we have the following range of cards:
AGP:
RADEON X800 series (including the XT Platinum Edition card - the world's fastest graphics on AGP, 16 pixel shader pipes of ATI shader goodness; as well as the XT, PRO and SE cards)
RADEON 9800 PRO RADEON 9600 XT RADEON 9550 RADEON 9250
PCIe:
RADEON X850 XT Platinum Edition, the world's fastest graphics card, bar none.
RADEON X800 series including the XT, PRO and SE cards), RADEON X600, RADEON X300
The 9250 is DX8.1; all the other cards are DX9.
Where do you see 64 bit computing taking us when it's fully here on all platforms
(besides linux)
64-bit computing is an incremental change - we're not going to see any breakthrough changes in the short term.
Certainly it will help performance, particularly of CPU-limited games (ones in which the CPU is the bottleneck, which is almost all of them if you have an X800).
Games can always use more CPU power, for AI, for physics and so on.
What is your companies stance on Linux???
We have Linux drivers for our cards.
Although the Linux gaming community is still quite small, we realize that it is growing.
As a result, ATI is significantly increasing its development efforts in this area.
What would you like to see happen with the Windows platform and
Linux that could help your drivers be the best etc???
We're looking forward to Longhorn.
As a graphics company, you can bet we're excited to see what can be achieved when DX9 becomes the minimum spec.
of a new PC.
There's a bunch of work we've already put into our drivers in preparation, for example, making them much more crash-resistant, that is absolutely necessary when the GUI goes through the 3D chip.
For Linux, the open community is a really great thing, and we look forward to end users and customers developing their own plug-ins for ATI graphics accelerators.
What type of games do the ATI team play(all your co-workers)???
That's an easy one.
I was addicted to World of Warcraft throughout the closed beta.
I might carry on playing it, but Half-Life 2 has all my attention right now.
The guys in the benchmarking lab seem to play NHL 2004 every night.
Painkiller, FarCry and UT2k4 all have their fans, too.
What do you have planned for pci Xpress,
Are you going to produce a pci-xpress card???
We already have a complete top-to-bottom line-up of PCI Express cards from the X800 to the X300.
These are all native PCIe, too - there is no AGP logic anywhere inside them - so they can reap the full benefits of the extra bandwidth.
What will PCI-Xpress bring to the table with 64 bit computing???
I don't see the two together providing unexpected synergies.
Each on their own will bring benefits.
For example, the extra bandwidth of PCIe opens up new possibilities.
For example, it's now possible to edit HD video on a PC.
PCIe is twice as fast upstream (loading data like textures onto the graphics card) as AGP, and it's way faster downstream.
So developers are looking at several new possiblities, such as performing physics calculations on the GPU (imagine smoke that swirls as you walk through it).
And, as I mentioned earlier, more CPU power is always a Very Good Thing.
What games does ATI think really will use all the features of your product line???
The two most technically advanced games out there are probably Half Life 2 and FarCry, and it looks like (at this stage) HL2 will use more DX9 shaders.
FarCry makes use of DX9's shader model 2.0b, which brings much faster lighting calculations, and it also supports instancing - essentially a fast way of drawing lots of similar models (specifically, trees and grass).
Finally, FarCry and HL2 also support a unique X800/X850 technology called 3Dc, which enable them to massively increase the world detail with very little reduction in speed.
Are game makers giving you feedback on your drivers etc??
Absolutely.
Of course we work very closely with game developers to ensure that games have the highest level of quality, stability and performance as possible.
Would you be willing to tell us later or now of new or
comming products in the pipeline???
No. :-) Seriously, that's top-secret.
December 1 we launched the new X850 and broguth the X800 to incredible new price points.
We can't talk about anything further out than that yet.
What do you think of the modding scene /overclocking that is done to your cards???
We don't officially encourage it, because it can damage your card and it does invalidate your warranty.
But you guys already know that :-).
We have a great relationship with the Powerstrip people at Entech, for example.
We already support automatic overclocking within warrenty with OVERDRIVE, in our driver.
Keep your eyes peeled for more news here...
Why should a new user or older computer user choose your product over
another card makers???(What are your key features )
We're the fastest in each product category!
We also have better (i.e., lower) power consumption, which can be an issue if the older machine has a less-than-meaty power supply.
Our cards also have the best image quality available.
How could we help ATI help us???
Keep up the feedback; we take our customers' opinions and problems extremely seriously.
Do you have a dream game that you would love to see be able to be played
on a systen with your hardware???
At the moment, it's Half-Life 2 at 16x12 with 4xAA and 8xAF - it looks AMAZING.
What would be the end all be all hardware,OS,etc
that you would love to see be built for your hardware????
I don't think I can answer that except by saying the opposite.
We jump through hoops to make sure that our hardware and drivers are compatible with just about everything that you're likely to come across.
I don't think I could choose a favorite.
Where do you see gamming and multimedia going in the future???
I could write a dissertation on this but, to keep it short: Gaming...more and more realism.
Realistic skin and hair, like in our Ruby demos.
Soft shadows. Ever-better AI.
We're really excited by gaming on cellphones.
We have a cell phone chip - the IMAGEON 2300 - which can be used to run full 3D games on a cell phone.
We demoed it with Quake II and MotoGP2 in January, and you'll see it in phones this winter.
Cell phone gaming is going to be huge - 500 million phones were sold last year, and 150 million of these were color models.
The worldwide PC market is only around 140 million.
Do you see gamming on Linux OS comming of age soon???
Would you like to see Linux gamming take off??
What do you think is needed for Linux gamming to take off
(what would you like to see change etc)???
Let me answer all those questions in one go.
It's all about the content - there need to be a lot of games on Linux for gaming to take off.
Unfortunately, game developers have to develop for a large installed base, so Linux really needs more users before it really takes off.
What do you think of Microsofts new OS in a rom ideal???
I haven't heard of this...?
was a bit I read on a yet unreleashed M$ OS what i got from the story online
Will you support the new Amiga os???
We don't have any plans to at this stage.
Has anyone from Amiga Inc come to you and asked for drivers for the new OS???
No.
What is your Mac driver support like ???
Excellent.
ATI has been working very closely with Apple for 10 years now, and has always fully supported both the OEM and Retail space with a variety of products.
ATI has a large, dedicated Apple development team, with the most robust and highest performance drivers on the platform.
ATI chips can be found across the Apple product lineup from the low-end eMacs to the highest performing G5 desktops, not to mention their PowerBooks and iBooks.
What would you like to see happen in the MAC OS???
I'll leave it to Apple to comment on that one :-)
How does the Mac os code help your driver building for that platform???
Apple provides a very robust and extensible framework for driver development that includes a variety of development, profiling and debugging tools that simply the process of driver development.
What would you like to see happen to driver software for your hardware???
We write the drivers, so what we want to see, we can make happen!
Will you be building different drivers for PCI-Xpress???
No.
PCI Express is essentially transparent to the drivers, so the existing ones work fine.
Our card needs a different BIOS, obviously.
When do you see PCI-Xpress hardware comming out ???
It's already here.
Already at least half of all computers sold are PCIe.
How do you cope with the ideal based on current drivers and older drivers that your hardware is a pain to install???
People's opinions take time to change.
Our drivers have been great for at least a couple of years now.
I've been told that in order to install your hardware in a computer I have to remove my audio drivers even in a already running /installed os why and is this true???
I don't know who told you that.
I've switched cards in and out of systems many times and never encountered that suggestion, or any problems.
How could a new system builder prevent having problems
when building a system with your hardware???
As a result, we have a great record for stability and software compatibility.
How could a system upgrader prevent problems
from happening with your hardware???
The hints are all the usual ones...make sure you uninstall the old driver before you install the new one, try not to fry your machine - so earth yourself before you crack open the case, etc.
But hey, it's just like Lego, really.
Will you be putting out hardware with new designs/mods
already installed from the factory???
We make the chips, and our board partners (mostly) make the boards.
They're always adding new features, new cooling solutions, etc - if you want it, it's probably out there.
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