AMD just bought ATI.

[Torre82]

It is said that AMD is 'betting the company' on the success of this acquisition.

I, for one.. hope this works in their favor. I havent been keeping up, but I remember back when there were glaring incompatibilities.. or at the very least performance issues when using an ATI card with an AMD setup.

(Or am I thinking nForce boards with.. oh well, probably both.)

Thoughts, gentlemen and hotties?

 

[barrell]

I´m not so sure how good this step was. All the time I preffered AMD as a CPU manufacturer because AMD targets gamers and advanced users as a customers. Not like Intel, which sells CPUs to chimps who doesn´t know a single bit about computers. When I saw the size and amount of profit of these two companies I liked AMD even more, because they started a fight against a collosal company...something like a David and Goliath. Now I see that AMD is selling 70% more CPUs than a few years ago and Intel is selling less and less. Dell company finally after 20 years starts using AMD CPUs ( another big step for AMD, just like the first 1GHz CPU, like first Dualcore CPU, like first 64bit CPU - everything shows who is the leader ). Now, when Intel presents their Core2 starts another challenge for AMD. So AMD responds with buying ATI. Nice move, but only the future will show how good this move was. My personal opinion is that AMD and ATI wants to produce some kind of multifunctional Processing Unit ( let us imagine a GPU, CPU and PPU in one piece ) All-in-one.

 

[Torre82]

Nice work with the PPU, I dont know of a single other person thats heard of it. Ageia is trying to jumpstart the physics bandwagon but.. I honestly dont know if theyll be akin to '3dfx' of the video card revolution as Ageia is hoping to be... etc etc. I *want* a PPU to be an essential part of the equation, but these days we're not nearly as advance-oriented as we were ten years prior. Cheap dells still reign. (I remember when Compaq was the enemy) Sure, sure.. there's quad-nVidia boards in 'theory'.. but even SLI boards or DualCore boxes are still rare like albino pornstars.

Ah, well. +Rep to you for finally giving me somebody to talk to on this matter.

 

[georges]

For me the best in terms of graphic is the geforce made by leadtek the winfast px7600-px7950 series of graphic card. I have heard people having probs with their ati when they played games. I never liked ati to be honest. My next graphic card will be a leadtek from the px7600-7950 series.

 

[barrell]

Dual Core is rare. Dear pal, I have AMD Athlon 64bit 3800+ X2 overclocked on 5200+ and I have this CPU since 08/05. So what is so rare about it. No offense - really...two my friend have 4200+ X2 and 4800+ X2 ... I think it is starting to be common. But maybe it is just me and these two pals
I do not have my graphics in SLI, because it is all bullshit. I have nVIDIA NX 6800 GT 256 and my friend borrowed me another one. The increase of performance was "outstanding". 5-7% ... I really do not need to spend 200% money to gain 105% of performance.
And AGEIA? Same bullshit. Ghost Recon Advanced Warfigter was first game which needed Ageia PhysX. But when it was tested they got more FPS without Ageia than with it.
That is the main reason I am looking forward the nVIDIA and ATI products in this matter.

Anyway...thanks for chat on this topic...at least something interesting

 

[Torre82]

Well over in Czech.. cheers to you guys for having the money to!

PhysX.. obviously its going to be a performance hit even with the PPU. More objects.. while accelerated in their own way.. well hell, its still MORE stuff to render.

I think a nice lossless compression needs to be put into effect. Its not about performance as opposed to bottlenecks in throughput. Like all the talk of HD-DVD and Blu-Ray.. forget expensive next-gen discs and cutting edge drives, with better compression than DVD's MPEG2.. there wouldnt be so heavy a need for 30, 60 gig discs. DAC's and dedicated decoding chips onboard forces a hardware upgrade, but it wouldnt be a huge investment like HD discs. Not to mention the cost cutting they could save by skipping the retooling process on the disk making plants.

ANYWAY.. I've always appreciated the fact that ATI prefers a beautiful featureset and accuracy in their acceleration... but nVidia still gets my vote because I like raw speed and hey, I dont need a 2048x2048 texture when I'm trying to headshot the 'other guy'.

btw, is that 'Angry guy' in your avatar? (beats the comp until he's armless and bloody? Its a GIF, somewhere)

In closing, if Ageia wants to make real money they'll start talking with ATI/nVidia about ONBOARD PPU's. Everybody wins if its embedded in the video card. A'course if that takes off then they could very well try to stick it ON the mobo like intel accelerated graphics. :sigh: If thats not the crappiest 3D accel that clogs up the a bridge... what is?

 

[barrell]

LOL...Maybe I am from Czech, but I have been working in England to earn money for my lil´ machine. I don´t know about the other guys, but I just wanted to buy somthing that will last for a year or two, so I bought the best what was on market that day ( two weeks after then nVIDIA presented 7800, you can imagine my anger ) ...

I liked ATI ( don´t ask me why ) before I bought their first card ( 9600 SL 128 MB ), but when I was in shop no ATI card supported Pixel Shader 3.0 so I chose nVIDIA. I don´t care about 2048x2048 textures neither, because I like FPS, and I don´t have time to sit down and observe. Their fight full of pipelines, texels per second and rendering units? Who cares? I want to see the performance in games. So, right now, I don´t prefer any manufacturer. but Intel video cards really sucks a lot. They have to focus on CPUs.

BTW...my avatar is Angry Guy and it is a GIF animation, but when I uploaded it here it is a still image. Don´t ask me why. :crash: :dunno:

About Ageia PhysX and stuff. Is it really necessary? Follow me - I have 5200 MHz dual core CPU, that is 2x 2600 MHz CPU. Lot of games in these days ( including new ones ) doesn´t support DualCores and are crashing or acting weird ( very slow or very fast game, unexpected crashes, sometimes doesn´t even start ) so I have to start the games on one CPU ( ex. Serious Sam II, pretty new game, but doesn´t support DualCore. Just like Titan Quest. ) So, one of my CPU is idle while the other one is working. The game is still running fine, because it is still 2600 MHz CPU and the graphics are doing most of the work, co why the other CPU cannot operate with psysics? I don´t mind. And there is no need for another Processing Unit. Just put the algorithms, instructions and operations which is in Ageia in Dual Core and the problem is solved. There is NO game, and I mean it, NO game, that needs 5 GHz CPU...and because DualCore CPUs are still cheaper and cheaper soon the people can decide whether to buy "one more card" or new DualCore CPU with Ageia instructions inside ( they have money to spend, so why bother ).
I know, everybody needs money, but if this will be possible, give me a good reason to not try it. :wave2:

Enough of it, all we can do is to wait, what the future brings. ( and how much it will cost )

 

[Torre82]

True enough that noone needs such things; but as far as gaming goes.. they have to keep up with consoles. Not hit-for-hit, as porting itself tends to take at the very least half a year. Sooner or later any dedicated hardware in a console is outdone easily by a mid-line PC (granted enough RAM and a proper mobo; not to mention the more obvious things like vid card/cpu) so there's some definite forward motion. Noone needs much CPU power these days.. but physics is the next evolution. We can step forward in 'graphical' reality all we want, high res textures and a billion polygons still dont matter.

Admittedly the use of physics in-game is.. of course, really cheesy these days. Because we dont have the hardware for it! Ragdoll bodies, throwing cans away in HL2.. ripples in water.. its all eyecandy because a true physics engine would be like trying to beat the multimedia bottleneck before pentium 2's came out.

But the true use of physics is in presenting a believable reality. Forget translucent texture clouds and particle systems for a moment.. water, dirt, items, clipping through walls..including the physX acceleration properly would dispose of the need for pre-programmed 'model damage animations', first thought outta my mind. True reflexive bodies.. semi-random ricocheting bullets.. leaves falling everywhere, kicking up dirt when you walk..

I believe its where the next thing SHOULD be. I dont believe it will be, anytime soon. The first products to use it.. bleh, the games simply werent designed to use it. Limited in scope. Like you I bought a 6800. BFG Tech Ultra w/ 256 MB and naturally the 7800 comes out. I didnt really mind that.. but I really didnt expect them to more than double the performance of the PREVIOUS/my card. :shrug: History has only shown me increments.. ah well. My point is that.. I'm getting a solid framerate, the games are gorgeous, I could play anything at all, hey.. you know the deal. The problem is where to expand next. Are you happy with what we have now? Everything pre-programmed.. scripted to a fault?

(heh, and yet I'm playing Warcraft 3 and Anachronox on my 'ultra' card. Granted, Ghost Recon Advanced Warfare is an excellent game and all..*my most advanced game installed, ATM* but I think its ironic, nonetheless.

 

[barrell]

I must admit...we have scenes with bilions of polygons and human eye cannot recognize the difference. And all that counts now is the reality look of the game. I think that HDR in games makes a bit difference...I´ve seen it in Serious Sam II, HL2, Ghost Recon AW, but mostly in Oblivion. HL2 and Oblivion have the wonderful soft shadows, simulation of human eye ( when you step out of darkness into the light your eye must adaptate to light and everything is "blurry" and "overbrightened" for couple of moments, then all become nice and normal again. The same on the contrary when you step into the darkness all you can see is darkness, and after some moments you can recognize rough shapes, colors, distant object and so on...), all the real sunflares, in Oblivion ( I am so lucky I can push the details to the max in the 35-45 FPS ), when I for the very first time stepped into the forest I have stopped, gasped and walked around for an hour or so. I was wondering how real they can do all the trees, stones, rocks, animals, grass, flowers and stuff. I am still amazed when I start the game again and again.
I think that HDR really pushed the game reality a big step forward. If you have seen at least one trailer on Crysis, you know what I mean. Depth of field, fog, motion blur, soft shadow on the leaves on dirt. Wonderful. But the physics - it is a different thing. HDR makes the game LOOK real, physics makes the game FEEL real. In these days you can dodge objects, move them, toss them, arrange them in piles and watch them affect the others with their weight but everything is pre-calculated. At least it seems to me like that. The next gen physics has to be much more advanced to satisfy us ( I mean customers ) ... we have some requirements, some dreams, some things we want to see in game ( for me personnaly - I like to see only one car racing game with the tire deformation. I have played Flatout 2, physics are nice, deformations are gorgeus, but the tires are just like from the year 1998...still one indeformable shape and I really think it cannot be so difficult to make them flatten when you land a jump, squeeze a little in hard turns and deform when you drive over some edges like pavement and so on. It is a detail, I know, but it will make the racing games more real.)
Maybe sometimes our wishes will come true.

Enough of talk...this is supposed to be seen by game developers and creators.

 

[arealous]

Go AMD, boo ATI.

 

[dragonwhore]

boo ati & amd..go intel:nanner:

 

[Torre82]

I call upon the power of my hundred-something posts and AMD-fanboy status to SMITE THEE! *insert WoWarcraft random spell sound*

Down, infernal clockspeed-whore!