Earlier this year we surveyed our Forum Readers and collected a list of questions that you wanted to ask ATI's President & COO Dave Orton.  Well, the responses are in so without further ado here are the responses to the questions you all asked ATI.

We included as many questions as possible and removed redundant questions as well. ATI's responses are in bold

Drivers & Support

We have heard ATI's stance on Windows 2000 drivers time and time again.  What is preventing ATI from releasing drivers that perform properly under Windows 2000?

A. ATI is dedicated to providing solid drivers under Windows® 2000.  We have made great strides in closing the performance gap between Windows® 2000 and Windows® 98.  We will continue to focus on product performance with further optimizations to the Windows® 2000 RADEON™ driver.  

What are ATI's plans regarding Linux drivers for the RADEON, ALL-IN-WONDER RADEON and TV WONDER lines of cards?

Linux drivers are available for the RADEON™.  These are available from 3^rd party Linux/Xfree86 developers. 

The ALL-IN-WONDER® RADEON™ is supported by the GATOS project.  See http://www.linuxvideo.org/gatos/

The TV WONDER™ products are supported from the BTTV project.  See http://www.metzlerbros.de/bttv.html

Information on the latest ATI developments can be found at http://www.ati.com/na/pages/resource_centre/dev_rel/linux.html.

What is ATI's current schedule for public beta driver releases?

A.  ATI is committed to delivering great products for our customers.  We will move to a more regular schedule for public beta driver releases.  We will be announcing this schedule over the next couple of months. 

Public perception in the online gaming communities is still low due to the lack of public feedback from ATI on a number of user issues. Are there any plans to allow a public forum on ATI's Website, or to provide more rapid updates to the online FAQs and Guides to address user comments.

A. We do offer a feedback form on our current website and we do post FAQs and guides to address user comments.  There are several excellent public forums available today on sites such as Rage3D.com and Radeonic.com. 

I know that ATI cannot provide support for "Special Purpose" or leaked drivers.  But would they appreciate feedback from knowledgeable users and forums such as AnandTech to better identify outside issues that could assist in development and release of better official drivers?

A.     There are several forums currently available on sites such as Radeonic.com and Rage3D.com.

Video for Windows support was not included with the RADEON release, rendering unusable many third party utilities that users of ATI products depended on.  It was thought that ATI would provide such support in later driver releases.  Is this planned for the coming unified drivers, or is there some other solution in the works?

A. There is no current plan for Video for Windows® drivers. ATI supports the standards for the PC video industry. The PC video industry is moving to DirectShow® and most of the popular software programs have moved, or are moving away from Video for Windows.  ATI provides comprehensive information (via the Developer Relations section of our web site) to help developers move to WDM/DirectShow, in addition to the Microsoft SDK:

http://www.ati.com/na/pages/resource_centre/dev_rel/atiddwdm.html

http://www.ati.com/na/pages/resource_centre/dev_rel/aiwviddev.html

It has been noted that the beta for ATI MULTIMEDIA CENTER 7.1 has features to save captures as VCD. Does ATI have plans to enter the low-end video recorder market with a product that allows the user to create their own video CDs?

A. We have recognized that consumers want more than just fast graphics.  They want fast graphics merged with video and other forms of media.  Typical desktop computers do more than just play games.  They are multi-media machines.  That’s why we have created ATI® MULTIMEDIA CENTER.  Yes, ATI® MULTIMEDIA CENTER 7.1 includes the ability to capture VideoCD compliant video. We’re seeing a trend towards an increasing public acceptance for VideoCD. We included this feature to enable users to create their own VideoCDs for playback on a consumer DVD player. The customer creates the video with the ATI® MULTIMEDIA CENTER and then uses a CD burning package such as Adaptec Easy CD Creator to make the VideoCD. 

Will MPEG4 support be possibly included for compression/decompression in hardware like MPEG1 and MPEG2 have?

A. We regularly evaluate new video compression standards and codecs for possible support in future releases of the software.

Why is the ALL-IN-WONDER RADEON still not available in Europe?

A.  ALL-IN-WONDER® RADEON™ became available in Europe in the Fall of 2000.

When will there be a (specific) use for that untapped 3rd texture unit?

A. There has been positive feedback from the development community with respect to the 3^rd texture unit.  There are currently many top game titles under development that will take advantage of the 3^rd texture unit.  Expect to see them available by the Christmas 2001 timeframe.  

Competitors

Now that NVIDIA owns 3dfx, they have access to 3dfx's FSAA and HSR technology.  We all know that 3dfx's FSAA was the best in the video card industry and that all card and chipmakers were working on FSAA solutions even before 3dfx was bought by NVIDIA. Does ATI have something in store to compete with NVIDIA's newly acquired technology? Are they working on Hidden Surface Removal now that it has become a popular issue due to the drivers released by 3dfx just before it sold out?

A. ATI has a variety of exciting new technologies in the mill that will be appearing in upcoming products, including advancements in FSAA technology and many other areas, but unfortunately I can't say more just yet.  As for Hidden Surface Removal (HSR), many people don't seem to realize that the HYPER Z™ feature incorporated in the entire family of RADEON products already accomplishes this in hardware.  HSR is a general term describing an algorithm that determines which surfaces in a 3D scene will not be visible in the final image and discards them before they are rendered.  This is exactly what the Hierarchical Z component of HYPER Z™ does.

What will ATI's response be to NVIDIA's foray into the mobile market, with companies like Toshiba now going with the Geforce2 Go chips?

A.  ATI has had great success in the mobile market, and currently we have a 57% market share according to Mercury Research.  There is a simple reason for that - ATI has created mobile graphics products that are adaptable to the growing number of segments and specific designs in the mobile market.  MOBILITY RADEON™ is a full family of graphics that excels in 3D performance, power management, multimedia, and integration of features on the chip such as DDR memory and TV Out.  This has allowed us to obtain design wins in various segments of the market, from high-end desktop replacement designs, to mainstream and thin and light designs, as well as ultra portable designs. 

ATI has thrived in the mobile market because of this adaptability, while others have survived only by specializing in one area or another.  Some of our competitors concentrate on low power, some on cost.   In each case this really limits you to a small share of an ever-growing market that is getting more and more segmented because of specific user requirements.  We have a strong understanding of where the market is and will be going, and MOBILITY RADEON™ is the first of several RADEON™-based mobile products to effectively address the rapid growth and segmentation of the mobile market.

With NVIDIA in the Xbox, the Mac, and having a serious hold of the retail and OEM PC market, what is ATI doing to ensure game developers are coding their products to work well with the ATI cards?

A: ATI is in the Nintendo Gamecube, which will begin shipping this summer. We are in the lion's share of shipping Mac products, and for the third year running ATI continues to be the world's leading producer of stand-alone graphics chips (with 40% market share according to the latest Mercury Research data).  Combined with the success and great reviews our RADEON™ products have been experiencing, there are plenty of compelling reasons for game developers to invest their support behind ATI's products. 

One of the difficulties that developers face is that the design cycle for cutting edge games is in the 18-24 month range, while graphics companies are releasing new versions of their products every 6-12 months.  ATI is investing more to develop features for the greatest gaming visuals while requiring minimum effort for game developers to implement, as well as maintaining easy backwards compatibility with older hardware.  The response we've received from developers has been great so far, and you'll start seeing the results in games later this year.

NVIDIA seems to have 3 or 4 design teams in order to order to have a new generation out roughly every year. How many design teams does ATI have?

A. With the addition of the ArtX team that was working on the Flipper chip for Nintendo, we now have 2 full design teams working concurrently on advanced, high performance designs, plus additional teams working on transferring these technologies into mainstream and integrated graphics products.

Future Products

What’s the next big thing in PC 3D?

A. I think there will be a significant shift away from concentrating on frame rate, as we have been for the past several years, and instead focusing on visual quality and realism.  This is not to say that frame rate won't be important, but consider this:  If you think about what makes for good special effects in a movie today, does frame rate even cross your mind?  The reason it doesn't is that it's taken for granted that the image will move smoothly, and instead you focus on how cool the images look.  With the performance and fill rate of todays graphics chips soaring to astronomical levels, it will be the ability to display the most detailed and realistic images that becomes the key differentiator.  Of course, this will make it a whole lot more difficult to write meaningful benchmarks...

What will the next MAXX product be?

A. We are currently evaluating what we will be doing with our MAXX™ technology, and whether it makes sense to use it in future products.  The RAGE FURY MAXX™ was a great product for its time, and we've made significant improvements to the technology since then.  However, the RADEON™ is a far more powerful processor than the RAGE™ 128 PRO, and our next generation processors will even be more powerful.  All that power comes at a cost, and when you consider the expense of a board with dual high performance graphics processors and 128MB or more of memory, how game developers are already struggling to make use of all the power available in existing high-end graphics chips, and how quickly we are now able to design new generations of products with our concurrent design teams, the decision is not an easy one.  Who would have thought we would ever have more graphics power at our fingertips than we could figure out what to do with?

When can we expect to see the RADEON VE? What about the one with dual monitor support?

A. RADEON™ VE, with advanced dual monitor support, is shipping now.  It became available in late January.

Do they plan on releasing anything resembling the Geforce2 Pro/Ultra, i.e., a higher clocked version of the current RADEONs?

A.  We are always working to develop the best performing product for the best price for the gaming community.

Do you see the market headed more towards full integration, or will it remain a low-end solution for the foreseeable future?

A. While integrated graphics products are rapidly gaining market share in the PC world, their wide adoption is primarily driven by their low cost.  In order to keep the cost as low as possible, some feature and/or performance compromises always have to be made.  Standalone graphics processors aren't necessarily bound by this restriction, meaning you can develop high end products where performance and feature set are higher priorities than cost.  So, even though next year's integrated graphics products will improve by leaps and bounds over what is available now (even matching what is considered "high end" today), they will still be considered "low end" compared to leading edge standalone graphics products for the foreseeable future.

Do they plan on making a 64MB version of the ALL-IN-WONDER RADEON?

A. I can’t comment on unannounced products.

When do they plan on releasing the R-200?

A. We’ll be shipping the R200 in Q4 2001.

Will the R-200 be available in dual or quad chip configurations?

A. It’s too early to comment on board configurations.  Needless to say ATI’s next generation of products will be a significant leap in features and performance. 

What is the proposed feature set of the R-200?

A. Our future products will have the most advanced list of features available at the time they are released. 

Future Products (continued)

Is any of the Gamecube’s technology making it to the PC side of things and vice versa?

A. The design team that developed the Flipper graphics processor for the Gamecube is already hard at work designing a future generation of high performance ATI graphics chips. 

Are you actively, or looking at, entering the professional 3D graphics realm? (If so, when will we see a product?)

A.     ATI is aggressively targeting this market segment with upcoming products.  Stay tuned.

On the ALL-IN-WONDER card, rumor has it that it was originally going to release with a Digital Tuner on board, but that design issues forced that implementation to a lower priority. Are there current plans to include a Digital Tuner in the next generation of the ALL-IN-WONDER (R200 based)?

A. Digital TV reception is an area of research and development for ATI.  This functionality has not yet been designed into any shipping ALL-IN-WONDER® products.

How much faster (percentage wise) will the next generation of ATI's HYPER Z technology be?

A. The performance benefits that can be realized with HYPER Z™ are always significant, but they can vary depending on a range of factors including the specific application being run and the memory type & speed being used.  We have made significant improvements to HYPER Z™ that will find their way into future products, but it's not clear yet what the incremental performance improvement will be.  One thing that is clear, however, is that the faster a graphics chip can process data (pixels, texels, vertices, etc.), the more memory bandwidth it requires to operate at full speed.  The bandwidth existing memory technologies have been able to provide has not been sufficient to keep up, and this trend is expected to continue for at least the next couple of years.  This means the importance of technologies like HYPER Z™ will only continue to grow.

With the RADEON, will ATI plan to pursue both the business and gaming market for the long run? Will ATI plan to add "tweaks" for the hardcore gamer?

A. With the recent addition of MOBILITY RADEON™ and RADEON™ VE to the existing flavors of RADEON™ and ALL-IN-WONDER® RADEON™, there is now a RADEON™ product suitable for virtually everyone.  ATI will continue employing this strategy of providing a broad range of products with future graphics architectures.  With RADEON™, ATI has managed to win the support of a lot of hardcore gamers, and in the future we plan to focus more effort on meeting the needs of this important set of customers.

Will the next RADEON revision be a fully DX8 compliant part, or is that offering coming at a later date?

A. The currently available RADEON™, which has been shipping since last summer, already supports most key DirectX® 8.0 features including keyframe interpolation, vertex shaders, and pixel shaders with the latest drivers.  We are confident that ATI products will support any DirectX® 8.0 features that make it into released games.

Future

Will ATI consider licensing its chips to 3rd party video card makers?  Do they think that 3dfx's reluctance to do this attributed to their demise? Might driver development issues we are seeing here be attributed to not having other developers working on them also like NVIDIA does. I can see keeping the OEM contracts with-in ATI but not licensing to 3rd parties doesn't seem to be effective to me at least.

A. ATI was one of the first vertically integrated graphics companies that developed its own chips as well as its own board products, and this business model has enabled ATI to become a leader in the industry.  Other graphics companies have attempted to copy this model, but they haven't met with much success.  Among other things, using 3rd party board manufacturers introduces many organizational difficulties, and makes it hard to maintain a consistent level of product quality unless you exercise strict control.  And if you force all the 3rd parties to use your hardware and software reference designs, that leaves cost as the only meaningful way they can differentiate themselves, meaning they have to cut corners and deliver sub-par products.  At ATI we already have one of the largest and most experienced board design teams in the business, so it really doesn't make sense for us to outsource this to someone else.

ATI recently made a deal for a broad cross-licensing agreement with Intel. What does this mean? What kind of technologies is ATI going to be using from Intel and vice versa?

A. The most important aspect of this deal from ATI's point of view is that it gives us the rights to certain patents required to develop motherboard chipsets that are compatible with Intel processors, as well as the right to actually build them.

What is the ArtX team going to do after Nintendo?

A. As mentioned earlier, they are already working on a next generation high-end graphics product.

Company Questions

Has ATI considered moving beyond the video chip/card market?

A. ATI will continue to focus the majority of its resources on the PC market.  With a strong foundation in that market we can then expand out into new markets such as set top boxes and PDAs.

What do they see as the "sweet spot" price for high-end gaming cards?

A.  We feel the “sweet spot” for gamers is between $150-$200.  We currently offer the RADEON™ 64MB DDR card for $199 (after rebate) and the RADEON™ 32MB SDR for $149(after rebate). 

What has made your company successful in the past and will you rely on this in the future?

A. Success is a result of understanding what customers want and delivering a product that they need.  Future success will rely on our ability to innovate at the right inflection points, lead in technologies and execute and deliver products.

What have you learned from the #9, S3 and 3dfx disasters?

A. That we must continue to lead, innovate and execute to be successful in this highly aggressive market.

There are currently only 2 high performance graphics companies represented in the consumer market; ATI and Nvidia. Is this sufficient for a good level of competition? What other companies are seen as serious competitors in the future?

A. We believe that our people will continue to innovate and create new markets independent of our competition.  We will continue to push the envelope of 3D, and multimedia and drive for the convergence of these technologies in the Game PC.  The barriers to entry have increased significantly, but we would not rule out other competition.   For example, Intel is both a partner and in some segments a competitor.  Competition is good for the industry and will continue to drive the marketplace.   

Where do you see you and ATI 2 years from now?

A. ATI started with the PC market and we’ll continue to build on this base as the market expands in both the desktop and mobile areas.  We announced the Intel cross license to help accelerate our entry into the integrated segment.    We have the talent to continue the product innovation for the games segment, and take gamers where they have never been before.

As a natural product and market expansion, we have moved into the set-top box market, the game console market, and we are making some advances in the wireless area.

Two years from now, we expect to see the PC market continue its drive toward low-cost solutions for the desktop and mobile markets.  The PC market will continue to be the center of innovation for performance 3D and media solutions for businesses and consumers.  We see ATI at the center of this market.

We'd like to thank all of you as well as ATI's Dave Orton for taking the time to respond to these questions.