Interesting Interview with Ben Bar Haim of ATI.

[Aquaman]

Tea, drivers and biscuits with Ben Bar Haim

Cheers,
Aquaman

 

[MarkFahey]

A nice read - Thanks! "we pay unbelievable attention to driver quality" - A very good thing...

 

[gregor7777]

There are/were stories that WHQL certified drivers perform slightly lower than non-WHQL certified ones. Is this true?
BEN > This is exactly the point. A non-certified driver could include "cheats" that would permit it to run faster - at the expense of image quality or compatibility or stability. Using the FDA analogy again, one could create very potent medicine, if you are not concerned about it killing you.

Good read, I like the above quote.

 

[NFS4]

Originally posted by: gregor7777

There are/were stories that WHQL certified drivers perform slightly lower than non-WHQL certified ones. Is this true?
BEN > This is exactly the point. A non-certified driver could include "cheats" that would permit it to run faster - at the expense of image quality or compatibility or stability. Using the FDA analogy again, one could create very potent medicine, if you are not concerned about it killing you.

Good read, I like the above quote.

LOL, I liked that too. He used it TWICE!

 

[chizow]

At ATI, we have made software quality a strategic objective for almost two years.

Scary to think how they viewed software quality during the other 16+ years of existence. :Q Too bad we can't go back in time and smack this guy around a bit so that we'd have better drivers today.

We were the first in the industry (and so far the only one as far as I can tell) with fully compatible and certified DirectX9 drivers.

This is very important news for all of you looking to run your DX9 games!!! I chose ATi b/c nothing else was compatible with the plethora of DX9 games on the market.

I woulda asked him why their UDA isn't truly a UDA. I mean, it might support multiple cards in the same driver, but the fact that more than one download/installation is required kinda defeats the purpose. It really can't be that hard to merge all the necessary updates into one install package.

Chiz

 

[Mem]

I do wish they would combine the control panel with the drivers,I know a lot of ATi users that don`t like the seperate driver,control panel software installation.

Also they need to work on the uninstall driver/control panel process,ATi users want a cleaner uninstall and not quite a bit of old stuff still left in the registry.On the bright side at least their drivers are getting better.

 

[Aquaman]

Originally posted by: chizow

At ATI, we have made software quality a strategic objective for almost two years.

Scary to think how they viewed software quality during the other 16+ years of existence. :Q Too bad we can't go back in time and smack this guy around a bit so that we'd have better drivers today.

We were the first in the industry (and so far the only one as far as I can tell) with fully compatible and certified DirectX9 drivers.

This is very important news for all of you looking to run your DX9 games!!! I chose ATi b/c nothing else was compatible with the plethora of DX9 games on the market.

I woulda asked him why their UDA isn't truly a UDA. I mean, it might support multiple cards in the same driver, but the fact that more than one download/installation is required kinda defeats the purpose. It really can't be that hard to merge all the necessary updates into one install package.

Chiz

Well I don't thing it was always bad with the drivers. I think it was the Rage series that had the bad rep for ATI drivers. I had really old ATI cards & the drivers were alright.

Cheers,
Aquaman

 

[gregor7777]

The drivers that shipped with my 8500 were worthless.

 

[chizow]

Yep, I sent the 8500 back to Dell after 2 weeks. The original Radeon had poor driver support as well, and both those cards post-date the Rage. Even the 9700pro didn't have very good drivers until 2.5 a few months after its release.

Chiz