As if ATI wasn't already pure crap.

[izanbardprince]

Anyone notice that in Windows Vista, ATI didn't even bother packaging a proper OpenGL ICD with their drivers?

Nvidia supports OpenGL on Vista, but ATI's Radeon driver is D3D only, so the only OpenGL you have is the DirectX wrapper, which for a modern game would be completely worthless.

I don't know what to think of this, I think mainly Microsoft is trying to force game developers to go with D3D, making a Linux or Mac OS X port even harder, and at the same time, make it so that 3rd party video card makers have to pay royalties for bundling their own OpenGL implementation, which is likely to make Nvidia eventually go the same route as ATI and say "Screw it, everyone uses Windows anyway".

I think it might be helpful if someone was to arrange a write-in and thank Nvidia for not sabotaging their Windows Vista drivers.

[WalmartSniperLX]

I know as far as gaming I wouldnt be that suprised if MS pushed D3D down everyones throats until the point where openGL is not supported. But I still highly doubt that. Nvidia has always had great support for openGL as Ati has with DX. So its really nothing new. However thats interesting. I havent been up to date with the windows drivers and thats sad if they dont implement any openGL for Vista.

Btw you're right with MS and really trying to push down on DX. Infact DX10 and Vista in my opinion is their greatest weapon to fight against the industry leading openGL as well as other platforms since they made it based on a new architecture incompatible with any previous DX graphics api

[BarfBag]

We don't need ATI and nVidia. Intel is on our side. Didn't they say they were going to release high end graphics cards?

[maniacmusician]

who knows if they'll have open source drivers for that; they may consider it too valuable.

[prizrak]

We don't need ATI and nVidia. Intel is on our side. Didn't they say they were going to release high end graphics cards?


who knows if they'll have open source drivers for that; they may consider it too valuable.
High end? No one ever said anything about high end, they said it was gonna be a discrete video card but never did they say they were going to try to get into nVidia/AMD's world. IMO they couldn't even if they tried, they don't have the brand recognition and experience. I'm sure the drivers will be open, Intel's cash cows are CPU's and chipsets, video is very secondary to them.

[maniacmusician]

High end? No one ever said anything about high end, they said it was gonna be a discrete video card but never did they say they were going to try to get into nVidia/AMD's world. IMO they couldn't even if they tried, they don't have the brand recognition and experience. I'm sure the drivers will be open, Intel's cash cows are CPU's and chipsets, video is very secondary to them.
yeah, I agree. I don't know if they're going to be high-end, I was just going along the lines of what BarfBag said. But you're probably right. They don't want to, and most likely won't, compete with nVidia and ATI.

[izanbardprince]

who knows if they'll have open source drivers for that; they may consider it too valuable.

Too true.

The two reasons ATI and NVidia don't open source their drivers is because it would expose trade secrets to the competition, also there's nothing to stop someone from making a **** poor implementation that makes your video cards look like crap.

Unfortunately, anyone that doesn't want to use Microsoft Windows gets to pay for that.

[izanbardprince]

yeah, I agree. I don't know if they're going to be high-end, I was just going along the lines of what BarfBag said. But you're probably right. They don't want to, and most likely won't, compete with nVidia and ATI.

Yeah, "discrete video card" says nothing about the performance.

You can still buy PCI Geforce 5's at Wal-Mart.

But I have to disagree that it's not in Intel's best interest to create bleeding edge video cards, AMD owns ATI now, so Intel might want to compete with them just to keep all the good video chipsets from going into systems with AMD CPU's.

[Polygon]

i thought it was the same way for xp, that there is no native opengl support but it still has to go through directx... which is why a lot of games run better in wine/natively then they do in windows cause they have native opengl support rather then having to go through opengl and directx

[prizrak]

Yeah, "discrete video card" says nothing about the performance.

You can still buy PCI Geforce 5's at Wal-Mart.

But I have to disagree that it's not in Intel's best interest to create bleeding edge video cards, AMD owns ATI now, so Intel might want to compete with them just to keep all the good video chipsets from going into systems with AMD CPU's.

AMD acquired ATI to combat Intel's ViiV platform. Intel sells more GPU's than both nVidia and ATI combined simply because they sell their own chipsets that often times integrate the video. AMD never had anything like that and they always had a very weak presence on the chipset market (unlike ATI that has a fairly decent position in that market). They also needed their own chipset like Intel does so that they don't have to depend on VIA or something to make one. Basically Intel isn't extremely worried about AMD + ATI merger as it is largely to play catch up with Intel's own way of doing business. Also nVidia is still around and is very much around so there is gonna be high powered gfx for Intel boxes even if somehow AMD breaks PCI-E compatibility.

[prizrak]

i thought it was the same way for xp, that there is no native opengl support but it still has to go through directx... which is why a lot of games run better in wine/natively then they do in windows cause they have native opengl support rather then having to go through opengl and directx

It is my understanding that it would be up to the hardware on the card and the drivers

[dasunst3r]

My gamer friends prefer nVidia over ATi for performance reasons. If nVidia is indeed better than ATi according to gamers, then I guess ATi just wants to remain pure crap, leaving Microsoft out of the equation.

[izanbardprince]

My gamer friends prefer nVidia over ATi for performance reasons. If nVidia is indeed better than ATi according to gamers, then I guess ATi just wants to remain pure crap, leaving Microsoft out of the equation.

ATI's cards aren't bad as far as DirectX, but don't get one with the intention of running OpenGL apps on it.

[WalmartSniperLX]

My friend has told me this, and it's a bit true. Ati's mainstream cards lack openGL, but as far as windows alone, they compete pretty well with others. But in general Nvidia seems targeted more toward the mainstream user (including gamers and multimedia) when Ati markets better on the professional level. This might not be true, and Im not saying Ati makes a better card in a workstation than Nvidia, but generally it seems that other than Windows and DX, thats what theyre focusing on ; giving less attention to mainstream users of a *NIX platform.