Will we have drivers code from ATI?

crackers · Post by **crackers** » Tue May 15, 2007 6:16 am

http://enterpriselinuxlog.blogs.techtar ... s-drivers/
Sounds really good

Colonel Kernel · Post by **Colonel Kernel** » Tue May 15, 2007 7:38 am

It's about time! I wonder if Nvidia will follow suit...

JAAman · Post by **JAAman** » Wed May 16, 2007 7:23 am

well, im not surprised, AMD has basically given up trying to compete with nVidia in the high end market -- so if they no longer have any IP worth protecting, and there most powerful card can barely qualify as mid-range, then it makes sense to open the documentation

unfortunately this wont be of much value to us osdevers, becuase the gaming cards will all be nVidia only -- so basically it wont give us anything we dont already have (most graphics controllers are intel, not nVidia/AMD, but intel controllers dont have the features/performance of the 'gaming' cards from nVidia/AMD)

i dont know about nVidia doing the same thing though -- at least not in the near-term, as they will want to make sure AMD graphics department is truly dead before they make such an open move

i actually see this as a very bad sign -- confirmation that AMD has no intention of competing with nVidia, and there will be only 1 gaming-graphics controller manufacter

pcmattman · Post by **pcmattman** » Sat May 19, 2007 8:40 pm

It could just be a market ploy. Think about it, all us osdevvers needing a codebase to write drivers with. Us + ATI driver code = buy ATI card so we can test = more money!

Of course, I hope that NVidia doesn't take over the market. I bought an NVidia card and within a year had to get it replaced (still have trouble with the new NVidia card).

gaf · Post by **gaf** » Tue May 22, 2007 2:20 pm

crackers wrote:Will we have drivers code from ATI? Sounds really good

Seeing is believing, until then its just another rumour for me..

ColonelKernel wrote:It's about time! I wonder if Nvidia will follow suit...

If ATI is really going to unveil its specifications I would expect it to be linked to the upcoming fusion design, which will attempt to provide graphics and general processing on a single chip. Whether this will increase the pressure on nVidia is hard to say as I could imagine that (at least initially) fusion will be targeted on the lowend/notebook market

well, im not surprised, AMD has basically given up trying to compete with nVidia in the high end market -- so if they no longer have any IP worth protecting, and there most powerful card can barely qualify as mid-range, then it makes sense to open the documentation

So you have a SLI system equipped with (at least) 2 overclocked Geforce 8800 Ultra and a still shining Core 2 Extreme QX6800 ?

Congratulations ! The vast majority of game-playing-people (as opposed to the so called gamers) however has to live with a somewhat more modest configuration - and still manage to get a decent framerate with their quite unimpressive cards. These people represent the big money for game studios and graphic-card manufacturers alike and I refuse to worry about ATI as long as they're still that strong in this field. Seeing that nVidia's midrange cards are overly castrated I could even imagine that ATI gains some marketshare, provided that the small versions of the r600 show some decent performance

JAAman wrote:Unfortunately this wont be of much value to us osdevers, becuase the gaming cards will all be nVidia only -- so basically it wont give us anything we dont already have

The difference between a discrete ATI card and an Intel chipset ? Hmm, let me see...oh: At least one order of magnitude in every single benchmark

pcmattman wrote:It could just be a market ploy. Think about it, all us osdevers needing a codebase to write drivers with. Us + ATI driver code = buy ATI card so we can test = more money!

As if ATI really cared about a few hundred OS developers

If at all it's a step towards the open-source community as a whole and in that I really don't care about any not so selfless reasons that the CEO might have in mind

regards,
gaf