Had a though about ATi drivers

[Lonyo]

Everyone knows ATi sucks at OpenGL. It's a fact, not even a fanboy can argue with it.

Everyone has seen nVidia often get lots of extra performance out of their cards as they release newer drivers (not comments as to how this may be done, lets say they do it legitimately)

And everyone says the new ATi cards are very similar to the old ones, so can't get much faster through driver changes.

So what if ATi manages to make a better OpenGL section of the drivers?
I've just been reading an interview here with ATi's marketing/technical guy, and it says that ATi can use their F-Buffer tech in OGL because they write their own compiler, and also that ATi are making som ebig changes to the driver suite.

So any idea's on if/when/how ATi might be able to improve their OGL performance, and maybe better match nVidia?
(People with technical knowledge would be greatly appreciated)

 

[rbV5]

So any idea's on if/when/how ATi might be able to improve their OGL performance, and maybe better match nVidia?

You would almost think that they concentrate on D3D and disregard OGL. Maybe this goes back to Dave Orton and the gang split from SGI, you would certainly think these guys would have intimate knowlege of the API.

You never know what the future may bring

 

[Matthias99]

Originally posted by: rbV5

So any idea's on if/when/how ATi might be able to improve their OGL performance, and maybe better match nVidia?

You would almost think that they concentrate on D3D and disregard OGL. Maybe this goes back to Dave Orton and the gang split from SGI, you would certainly think these guys would have intimate knowlege of the API.

You never know what the future may bring

Well, Doom3 is going to be a big OGL title (and it and its engine will be around for a few years), and just about everything that's not on the Windows platform or XBox uses OpenGL. So it's not like they can just ignore it.

I don't know enough about the internals of their drivers to say why NVIDIA has better performance, but I think it's safe to say there's probably room for some improvement there.

 

[CaiNaM]

Everyone knows ATi sucks at OpenGL. It's a fact, not even a fanboy can argue with it.

sucks is a relative term. while they certainly aren't quite as fast as nvidia, i don't think you can find an OGL app where it performs anywhere near poorly. (unless 100fps at max settings is somehow "unplayable")

example: CoD 1600x1200 4xaa 8xaf:

6800u: 119.5
x800xt: 102.7

Everyone has seen nVidia often get lots of extra performance out of their cards as they release newer drivers (not comments as to how this may be done, lets say they do it legitimately)

And everyone says the new ATi cards are very similar to the old ones, so can't get much faster through driver changes.

that's absolutely incorrect. look at the difference between the cat 4.5 and cat 4.5 beta.

So what if ATi manages to make a better OpenGL section of the drivers?
I've just been reading an interview here with ATi's marketing/technical guy, and it says that ATi can use their F-Buffer tech in OGL because they write their own compiler, and also that ATi are making som ebig changes to the driver suite.

So any idea's on if/when/how ATi might be able to improve their OGL performance, and maybe better match nVidia?
(People with technical knowledge would be greatly appreciated)

where is ati's OGL performance unaccetpable?

 

[rbV5]

I think there's plenty of OpenGL games today that should give plenty of incentive to develop decent OpenGL drivers, let alone going forward with a greatly anticipated title like D3 and its offspring. It is curious why there is such a discepancy between API performance.

 

[SilverTrine]

The bitching about ATi and OpenGl centers around people trying to run certain OpenGl based design aps.
Theres no problems with Ati cards in OpenGl games, games like RTCW actually ran better on Ati cards than Nvidia cards. So the person who wrote this is simply wrong unless he clarifies his statement intensively.

 

[rbV5]

Originally posted by: SilverTrine
The bitching about ATi and OpenGl centers around people trying to run certain OpenGl based design aps.
Theres no problems with Ati cards in OpenGl games, games like RTCW actually ran better on Ati cards than Nvidia cards. So the person who wrote this is simply wrong unless he clarifies his statement intensively.

Clearly, Radeon cards do underperform in a variety OpenGL games, while performing quite well in others. Its not just pro apps that users are complaining about.

 

[Genx87]

Well what he is saying is the F-Buffer is actually usable in OpenGl unlike DX. Just like the F-Buffer on the 9800 it is virtually worthless. Although this time at least one API has it exposed in drivers unlike the original F-Buffer which was nothing but vaporware.

 

[Pete]

ATi is supposedly totally rewriting their OGL code, so they may yet offer performance improvements...in a few months. Still, most OGL games tend to be rather easier on the GPU than newer D3D games, so this probably won't be an issue until D3 is released.

 

[SilverTrine]

Originally posted by: rbV5

Originally posted by: SilverTrine
The bitching about ATi and OpenGl centers around people trying to run certain OpenGl based design aps.
Theres no problems with Ati cards in OpenGl games, games like RTCW actually ran better on Ati cards than Nvidia cards. So the person who wrote this is simply wrong unless he clarifies his statement intensively.

Clearly, Radeon cards do underperform in a variety OpenGL games, while performing quite well in others. Its not just pro apps that users are complaining about.

Is there even a 'variety' of Opengl games out there, other than RTCW and the Quake 3 engined games I cant think of any. I personally wouldnt call that a variety.

 

[nitromullet]

Originally posted by: SilverTrine
The bitching about ATi and OpenGl centers around people trying to run certain OpenGl based design aps.
Theres no problems with Ati cards in OpenGl games, games like RTCW actually ran better on Ati cards than Nvidia cards. So the person who wrote this is simply wrong unless he clarifies his statement intensively.

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.html?i=2044&p=20

Anandtech's benchmarks for Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory and other OpenGL games disagree with you.

 

[LTC8K6]

I think AT's OGL benches agree with SilverTrine.

ATI is slower, but not fatally so.

 

[Mem]

Everyone knows ATi sucks at OpenGL. It's a fact, not even a fanboy can argue with it.

I never really had any problems with OpenGL in games,you can argue performance should be better and not so dark in some OpenGL games,I`m sure I read somewhere that ATI was going to have a new OpenGL team working on improving OpenGL drivers in all areas.

 

[nitromullet]

Originally posted by: LTC8K6
I think AT's OGL benches agree with SilverTrine.

ATI is slower, but not fatally so.

huh...?

Originally posted by: SilverTrine
...games like RTCW actually ran better on Ati cards than Nvidia cards...

 

[Acanthus]

So everyone magically forgot that it had to be patched to run decent at all in RTCW :shocked:

 

[rbV5]

Is there even a 'variety' of Opengl games out there, other than RTCW and the Quake 3 engined games I cant think of any. I personally wouldnt call that a variety.

There's no variety because you can only think of 1 + a derivative? Here' s a list of OpenGL games for the Windows platform Link

They pretty much run the gamut, and OpenGL development is going forward. Even in David Nalasco's interview in the Tech Report, ( Link ) he touches on the fact that OpenGL driver development isn't as high on their priority list. I said they underperform in a variety of OpenGL games, not that they don't perform well.

 

[LTC8K6]

Nitromullet, I was thinking of CaiNam's remarks, not SilverTrine's.