Anusha
02-20-2007, 08:17 PM
With Nvidia Corp. engaged in damage control after receiving numerous complaints from disgruntled gamers about the performance of its graphics processors on Windows Vista, archrival ATI Technologies Inc. hopes to capitalize on the situation.
ATI, a subsidiary of Advanced Micro Devices Inc. that is the second-largest maker of stand-alone graphics card chips, claims that its Catalyst line of drivers is enabling almost all of its game-playing customers to use Vista problem-free or with miniscule drops in performance from what they were getting on Windows XP.
"We're seeing less than a 5% gap on average," Ben BarHaim, vice president of ATI's software engineering division, said in an interview last week. He added that ATI has been working "very closely" with Microsoft on Vista over the past four years and that all of the company's drivers are now certified by Microsoft's Windows Hardware Quality Labs (WHQL) operation.
Even before Vista's general release on Jan. 30, gamers using beta versions of the new operating system had reported problems in importing games written for Windows XP and its DirectX 9 graphics engine. The problems primarily involved slow animation performance in graphically-intense, first-person shooter games such as CounterStrike, Half-Life 2, Doom 3 and F.E.A.R., as well as occasional system crashes.
ATI isn't immune to complaints about its drivers from gamers. But BarHaim claimed that it has gotten fewer complaints than Nvidia has because all of its drivers – enabling video cards released as long ago as mid-2002 to work with Vista – have been fully tested and WHQL-certified.
Indeed, ATI hopes ongoing improvements to the Catalyst drivers eventually will allow games written for Windows XP to run as fast -- or even faster -- on Vista. "There is nothing that says we couldn't optimize a driver to run faster in Vista than XP," BarHaim said.
ATI also confirmed that it's nearing the release of its first processor optimized for the DirectX 10 graphics engine in Vista. Pictures of ATI's Radeon R600, which would match up against Nvidia's GeForce 8800, began circulating on the Web earlier this month. "You can assume that something – more news, or a release – will be coming in the next month or two," an ATI spokeswoman said.
More spin and nvidia bashing at ComputerWorld (http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9011498&pageNumber=2)
ATI, a subsidiary of Advanced Micro Devices Inc. that is the second-largest maker of stand-alone graphics card chips, claims that its Catalyst line of drivers is enabling almost all of its game-playing customers to use Vista problem-free or with miniscule drops in performance from what they were getting on Windows XP.
"We're seeing less than a 5% gap on average," Ben BarHaim, vice president of ATI's software engineering division, said in an interview last week. He added that ATI has been working "very closely" with Microsoft on Vista over the past four years and that all of the company's drivers are now certified by Microsoft's Windows Hardware Quality Labs (WHQL) operation.
Even before Vista's general release on Jan. 30, gamers using beta versions of the new operating system had reported problems in importing games written for Windows XP and its DirectX 9 graphics engine. The problems primarily involved slow animation performance in graphically-intense, first-person shooter games such as CounterStrike, Half-Life 2, Doom 3 and F.E.A.R., as well as occasional system crashes.
ATI isn't immune to complaints about its drivers from gamers. But BarHaim claimed that it has gotten fewer complaints than Nvidia has because all of its drivers – enabling video cards released as long ago as mid-2002 to work with Vista – have been fully tested and WHQL-certified.
Indeed, ATI hopes ongoing improvements to the Catalyst drivers eventually will allow games written for Windows XP to run as fast -- or even faster -- on Vista. "There is nothing that says we couldn't optimize a driver to run faster in Vista than XP," BarHaim said.
ATI also confirmed that it's nearing the release of its first processor optimized for the DirectX 10 graphics engine in Vista. Pictures of ATI's Radeon R600, which would match up against Nvidia's GeForce 8800, began circulating on the Web earlier this month. "You can assume that something – more news, or a release – will be coming in the next month or two," an ATI spokeswoman said.
More spin and nvidia bashing at ComputerWorld (http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9011498&pageNumber=2)