Fire GL2 & 3 release dates

[claforte]

Well, my job is to fix problems with the Radeon opengl driver affecting professional apps like Maya, XSI, 3DSMAX, and other CAD programs. Our support isn't perfect, but definitely on par with the competition. We're working on getting certified on the previous three apps.. here's the unnofficial status:

• Maya: small known problems. Most of them are slowdowns, due to creating large numbers of GL contexts. For general modeling it works perfectly. Painting isn't as fast as I'd like it, but we are collaborating with the Maya engineers to implement a better solution.

• 3DSMAX: Very stable. No known important problems. Performance is very good.

• XSI: Same as 3DSMAX. Small slowdowns when an image plane is present in the background.. there is a workaround in the drivers that will be available to the public soon.

Christian

OpenGL Driver engineer, workstation products
ATI Research Inc.

[geoffcrowther]

and i can sorta vouch for this.

a friend tested the radeon on xsi, maya, houdini, and max.

max = perfect
maya = everything is great and artisan is super fast if you turn off the red circle
xsi = not tested thoroughly, nothin serious noticed.
h = dreamy, but the pulldown menues redraw slowly.

... just the stuff noticed.

hows that for a 400 dollar (thats canadina, aka. 250 us if you take a trip up here), that also comes with tv support, dvd support, etc.

very nice. i think i will be getting one.

[claforte]

Thanks for the feedback! I transmitted to my team members; we're glad our product is appreciated.

Christian

OpenGL Driver engineer, workstation products
ATI Research Inc.

[blk]

id just like to say the card i had before my current one was an ati rage fury pro with 8 megs and never gave me any problems and i loved the card but needed something more for Maya and i got a Viper II back in january and regret every F*****G day of it it is a piece of crap video card even under 98 it crashes my system all the time i put it in a friends machine and started crashing his machine itll just freeze up it constantly gives me memory dump errors under nt i for one will never ever ever buy another diamond product again because when i email tech support with my problems they dont help they tell me to either go out and buy a fire gl card for nt or one of their older Vipers for 98
im saveing up money right now for a new card gonna get either a Geforce 2 or the Radeon well see what happens
at least you and Nvidia are trying diamond just doesnt give a f*** about their customers unless they spend a grand on a video card

and at least your companies dont lie and say you have open gl under nt and actually dont but mean ohh a driver will come out some day that has it just not yet

sorry i need to rant a bit im just getting more and more pissed off when i slowly cant do anything with my computer cause my vidoe card sucks wish i could get back the 200 bucks i spent on it

[blk]

a question for you Christian
any idea when those fixes for Maya (im guesseing they would be driver releases) will be out for the Radeon
also how is the Radeon with hardwar everlays and Maya
im really looking for a new card right now and its down to either the Radeon or the Geforce 2 gts card from guilemont

[claforte]

Some of my test machines came with those cards. They made nice frisbees.

Christian

OpenGL Driver engineer, workstation products
ATI Research Inc.

[claforte]

Most of the problems I mentionned were indeed driver problems. They are being worked on, and it's fairly high priority for us, since expect new drivers in the coming month or so.

Some of the problems (mostly the slow software overlays code) will need fixes in the Maya source code. I am collaborating with them and suggested solutions, hopefully it will work and they will include it in the next service pack.

Regarding your future buy... I won't pretend to be objective here... I love our product and think it's got the best ratio of features+performance versus price. Good luck, regardless of your choice.

OpenGL Driver engineer, workstation products
ATI Research Inc.

[blk]

no they make crappy frisbees too only thing thet are good for is putting your drinks on i hate this card

i thank you for your help though my purchase is gonna be some time in the next month or so
so ill keep a look out for those new Radeon drivers
i am leading towards your product cause of past experience with my last card which i had no problems with what so ever and my friend has one of your rage 128's that he runs maya on with windows 200 and it smokes
i guess it really all is in the video card you have his system is a 733 PIII with 256 megs ram ive got a 800 with 384 megs ram and his runs much faster then mine when workin gin maya i guess its all in the video card

[blk]

ill trade some one a 3d card/frisbee/drink mat in one for a radeon card S

[frand]

Hi all,

I had a Radeon 64MB OEM for testing with Maya3 under Win2K, and the problems I came across weren't exactly minor.

The two earlier driver revisions randomly corrupted the windows desktop and caused BSODs.

The latest 3043 driver didn't corrupt the desktop anymore, but it still causes BSODs if you run Maya in very high resolutions (1900*1080 etc.)

Even in lower resolutions, using the shaded mode is quite an experience, since the basic grey lambert is switching colors on screen at will, sometimes turning green, blue, yellow etc. The same happens even with textured models, their colors get corrupted.

Using paint effects brushes leave trails on screen, and the brush itself is grey instead of red ( oh, the tragedy!

All vertices and cvs are displayed as single pixels, which makes picking them extremely hard.

Also the Radeon has a texture handling problem. If you load the card's local memory full of 32-bit textures, your system locks up so it needs a hard reset. Switching the "force 32bit textures to 16bit" option on in the driver OpenGL settings alleviates this problem.

On the hardware side the card caused wavering on the screen, which was helped in my case by reversing h-sync. Several Sony trinitron-tube -users haven't been as lucky. Check the longest running thread on www.rage3d.com radeon forums for details.

Also the geometry performance on the radeon is surprisingly slow for the numbers advertised. Simple opengl geometry tests showed the radeon to be half as fast as a Gloria II, and this was reflected in the performance in maya, when rotating models on screen. It could be that TL just isn't enabled in the Win2K drivers.

Just to be sure that it wasn't my hardware causing the problems, I tested the same card on a different workstation altogether, which had a clean install of Win2K, and none of the same hardware. The same problems were displayed.

On the bright side, I really liked the Radeon's 2D signal clarity, which was crisp even at the highest 1900*1200 resolution.

I am hopeful that the drivers will get better, and seeing an ATI engineer on this forum is positive news indeed. If ATI won't cripple the Radeon and sell a professional version at triple the price, like some other competitors, they have a great chance of providing a cheap but very capable card for Maya.

~ Frand

[blk]

this is why its so damn hard to pick a video card
ok thats whit windows 2000 how about performance with maya under NT

[mistah_a]

Oh!thanks Frand,for that review,
if the card makers and their driverEngineers could understand the fackt that not all people on this planet,
Play games!and give 110% of hardCore drivers for Hi-end proggs,for a fair prize,Then it would be a very easy task
to pick a Card![img]http://www.highend3d.com/boards/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/wink.gif[/img]

Quest:does people at the driverAppartment test the product
in a actual 3dProgram like(maya,soft,max,etc)

no affend to the Driver Guy:

[blk]

very good question when you gyes are makeing these cards does any one test them their with 3d apps other then quake III

lets see if we get an answer form him cause ever since i asked when the new drivers to fix the problems in maya were comeing out he hasnt said anything

also i saw at a website that the Radeon II with 2 the power is comeing out before X-mas so i may wait to see if tha actually happens

[jerry-hnk]

I must agree that the radeon has limited poly power compared to the Geforce and Geforce 2 cards, Although the marketing sector statest that the radeon pumps out 30million polys, they are only refering to the Triangle setup throughput. according to the test conducted by www.reactorcritical.com, the TL unit can only process half of this value, so you're actually using only half of the performance of the Triangle setup engine.

[claforte]

Frand,

Yes, I am listening.

Thanks for your feedback. I haven't reproduced your problems with high-resolutions yet (lack of hardware on my desk), but I will look at them. The other problems (the color switching, trails in paint fx, grey brush, single pixels) have been fixed in the internal driver source, but unfortunately not released to the general public yet; they are awaiting WHQL certification.

I have informed my manager of the situation and we will attempt to release beta drivers as soon as possible. This is not completely in our control, but I can assure you that we'll do our best to release better drivers in a very near future. (at what time I will post the news on this forum.)

Thanks again for the very pertinent information. Do not hesitate to communicate with me again if you have further problems (or happy surprises!), once a new driver has been released.

Christian

OpenGL Driver engineer, workstation products
ATI Research Inc.

[frand]

Christian,

Thanks for the reply (and the good news!), I'm twitching my fingers in anticipation already

If the next driver release does all that, I consider the Radeon an excellent low-cost Maya-solution. Not to mention a great all-around graphics card.

For anyone interested in Radeon's inner workings, there's a darn detailed review at www.reactorcritical.com (as Jerry two posts above said)

Christian, can you comment on the TL numbers shown on that website?

~ Frand

[blk]

i have another question for you Christian why is it that retail versions of the radeon have the faster 5.5 ns ram which is what gives it its edge (the 64 mb version im tlaking about) but the oem version of the same card only has 6ns ram
this has seriously caused me to not even consider at all the radeon
the reason i say this is cause plain and simple im a student and barely have 2 cents to rub together and if i would prefer a retail version but cant afford so i was looking into getting an oem one but then ati pulls this
i mean a geforce 2 oem card is the same as the reatail ones from most of the companies so why is it different for you guys

[claforte]

I wasn't aware/involved in the technical decision. Anyway, what I can tell you is that from a Maya-Softimage-3DSMAX point of view, it's very unlikely that you'll notice a difference. Slightly lowering the video ram speed is only going to affect situations were memory bandwith is the bottleneck (games such as Q3A in high-resolutions, etc..)

In Maya, the bottleneck is more frequently geometry transformation, or driver issues.

Anyway, you can bet that if OEM version are different, it's because those same OEMs have requested it. If they ask to shave off 40$ of each card, by making it slightly slower in some infrequent situations, then ATI will deliver what they want. That's my understanding. (Disclaimer: I'm only a driver guy, I don't have insider knowledge on that issue.)

Christian

OpenGL Driver engineer, workstation products
ATI Research Inc.

[jerry-hnk]

Can't you just overclock it back up to speed? I overclock EVERYTHING all the time...

[jscheel]

what about the performence of paint effect in maya?