Interview with ATI's soon-to-be CEO Dave Orton 138
wolfgang writes "Tom's Hardware has published an interview with Dave Orton, who will become ATI's next CEO in June. Orton talks about the transformation of the company within the last three years, the current competition with Nvidia and what can be expected from graphic chipsets in the near future. Orton believes that ATI can grab more than 50 percent market share in the desktop market in the short term."
Well... (Score:5, Interesting)
I agree (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Well... (Score:4, Interesting)
It seems ATI has only recently begun to release Linux drivers (no they're not open source, but there's no reason everything has to be.) Whereas NVidia has been supporting Linux for much longer. Recently my ATI card toasted, and I can't get it covered under warantee so I'm looking for a fairly decent but inexpensive card - and this time I want it well supported under Linux. NVidia seems like the only choice for me, since only ATI's most recent line of products (ie: expensive products) are supported.
Anyhow, the Linux marketshare is obviously expanding, and if ATI wants a piece of it, they'll have to do as the parent suggested - support it. It would be nice, because I prefer ATI products for their design, innovation, and the fact that they're Canadian.
Re:Exactly. (Score:3, Interesting)
Besides, I don't think games are going to come to the Linux market yet because Linux doesn't have enough of the desktop market.
Re:Well... (Score:5, Interesting)
DRI [sourceforge.net] covers virtually all of the ATI chips up to the 9200.
FGLRX [ati.com] covers everything from the Radeon 8500 to 9800.
The only remaining problem is that some commercial developers just assume Nvidia is the standard. DRI in particular has come a long way. I've been using a Radeon 8500 with Michael Daenzer's DRI packages for Debian [debian.org] with few problems. Out of 30 commercial Linux games I have, 3 don't work properly: Descent 3, Savage and Heavy Gear 2. Savage's problem is trivial to fix, the others I'm not sure about.
I'd rather see ATI release the 3D specs on the R300 chips than see further improvements in the FGLRX driver.
Re:Exactly. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Well... (Score:2, Interesting)
What annoys me most about both ATi and NVidia is not poor quality in their linux XFree drivers, and it's not a lack of resources dedicated to solving Joe Average's problems getting hardware acceleration working on his new Linspire box from WalMart.
What really annoys me about these guys and other hardware manufacturers is that they are willing to sell me a piece of programmable hardware, but they are unwilling to tell me how to program the damn thing!
What annoys me is their shortsightedness in assuming that keeping this programming information secret gives them a competitive advantage.
What annoys me is their arrogance in assuming that their programmers can write a better driver for their hardware than I ever could.
There is an implicit assumption in their approach that says the user is buying not a video card, but rather an extension to XFree86.
Well, I don't want an extension to XFree86! And I don't want an extension to the Linux framebuffer driver instead! What I want is a piece of hardware, and a GODDAMN MANUAL to go with it, so I can do whatever I GODDAMN want to with it!
Why my next Card will likely be a Retail ATI card. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Well... (Score:3, Interesting)
OTOH, wait, maybe I don't want the 3D... when I used those drivers for ATI cards, I'd randomly wake up in the morning to find my or my wife's computer crashed hard in the midst of running one of the spiffy acceleratophilic screensavers.
Can anyone out there recommend a graphics card with decent performance and Open Source drivers?
Re:Well... (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm running an NVidia GeForce FX 5700 under linux 2.4.25 with the NVidia drivers (build 1.0-5336) and I have exactly the same problem. I'm not sure whether you meant that "those drivers" were ATI's binary ones, but I am finding NVidia's drivers unstable as of late. Also, they were late out with 2.6 support. Who knows if they will support 2.8?
Now that ATI's gone down the same route with binary drivers, I'll be buying Radeon 9200's for my next two computers, being the last card with opensource support for 3D. I'm not a hardcore gamer, so that's plenty of power for my needs.
Re:Well... (Score:2, Interesting)
So far I can get 2D acceleration, but not 3D, I've found some links (ATI IGP 320 [online.fr], Linux on a Compaq Presario 900US [wsu.edu] to name a few) but DRI is disabled (I use debian sid, and the dri-trunk-sid [debian.org] packages by the way)
I can't get a working radeon framebuffer, all i get is a garbled screen mode and I can't seem to fix it (I've even installed a kernel patch [directfb.org])
All I'd want is a working 3D acceleration, the framebuffer is not important to me.