Topic: In responce to comments made about ATI Technologies and their products

[SeanDumas]

Hello to Everyone,

            On behalf of Taldren, I would like to offer sincere apologies to ATI for some recent comments posted on our Forums.  These comments are not the opinion of Taldren, nor are they accurate in any shape or form.  Though there may have been driver issues in the past, over the last few years ATI has made great strides in improving their drivers? compatibility and performance.  ATI is a great Graphics Hardware company with exciting new products which are leading the market in performance, DirectX 9 compliance and robust feature sets.  Taldren and ATI are pursuing a closer relationship to ensure that our future titles will look great on a larger variety of ATI products.  I truly appreciate the way ATI is raising the bar with their new 9700 series.  Their work will help to make our games and all other PCs games look dramatically better.

 Sincerely,

Sean C. Dumas
Co-Owner Taldren, Inc.
 

[kevlar]

A paced strategical move of Taldren, proving that diplomacy is a must on this bussiness  

Nevertheless I do agree with what was said earlier. I think no one should doubt that in hardware aspects, ATI most recent cards are, in price -performance ratio, much better than  NVIDIA and company  equivalent products. The problem is that PC's still need software drivers,  and ATI was yet to walk a couple of miles in order to catch Nvidia on that aspect ( altought I wouldn't stop laughging  at those  new detonator drivers that made resolution changes take like 2 or 3 minutes,  I woudn't stop if I hadn't experienced the problem myself  )

The remarks about ATI driver quality were a bit harsh...but not completly untrue.    

[Dash Jones]

In response to reasonable answers concerning the original post, this has been edited to state (drastically), I use ATI and Nvidia cards.  They both have good aspects about each, and their competition has me undecided as to which card I will next upgrade to, the FX or 9700, or perhaps wait till the generation after those.  Other cards and chipsets may have their advantages, but don't really interest me at the moment.

I typically lean more towards Nvidia cards, but that has never prevented me from using ATi, or other chipsets and cards in the past.  I tend to agree with general consensus that whilst ATI has come a HUGE distance from what they have been in the past, and their drivers are much better than they were even a year ago, there are still some differences between them and Nvidia.

Thanks for the explanations.

[kevlar]

From what I have read,  It had nothing to do with your or any other taldren customer post but with . hm..well..... let the past pass...  

[Cruis.In]

I have a radeon9000m in my laptop myself which play sfc on, actually its the cpu i use for everything now.

ive never bought into the ati bad drivers bull. since i got an ati a couple years ago with 2nd pc, always liked it.
never had a problem.

[SeanDumas]

We have removed a thread which had some unwise comments.  One very poor comment came from our staff.  I would like to point out that I do not agree with the comment that was made.  And Taldren as a company does not support the statements made either.  Typically, one of the most difficult aspects of PC developement is compatiblility.  Not a single hardware manufacture can be singled out for poor driver writing.  As a developer, one of the worst things you can do is become lazy and choose one particular brand and try to conform to its standards, yet ignore the others.  This is something Taldren does not wish to do.  Many developers made this mistake in the past when tailoring their game engines to the then industry leader, 3DFX.  Their games had trouble running on NVidia or other brands.

Regards,

Sean C. Dumas

[Toasty0]

{WARNING: Thread hijacking in progress}

Sean,

It the myth true that Taldren is/was the name of a AD&D character you once role-played?

Best,
Jerry  

[SeanDumas]

No, that was Zachary Drummond's D&D character.  We had many name ideas including Ronin.  Watchfire Games was the name we originally founded the business on.  Erik came up with Watchfire.  It has something to do with our history of coming in and rescuing Publishers from blazing projects.  However we were poor at the time and a company in Canada was already using that name, so we sold it to them.  We liked the sound of Zach's D&D character/handle.  It was a made up word so it was easier to get the rights to the .com,.net.org...  We also wanted to associate ourselves with imagination and fantasy role-playing.

Regards,

Sean C. Dumas

[Subspace]

didnt know that   Cool !!  

[Scorpion]

I personally use an ati card and I have had no problems with it whatsoever.  I have had nothing wrong with the drivers either.  So I can't really see why anyone would say such things about ati's drivers.  I have used both nvidia and ati cards before and I personally prefer ati over nvidia.    

[**DONOTDELETE**]

While we're plugging video cards...

I'd just like to say that my good old Matrox Millenium G450
runs the full SFC series flawlessly!

Wish I could afford the new Parhelia...

 Matrox  

[Corbomite]

My Etch-A-Sketch makes real pretty pictures.

[David Ferrell]

Quote:
I personally use an ati card and I have had no problems with it whatsoever.  I have had nothing wrong with the drivers either.  So I can't really see why anyone would say such things about ati's drivers.  I have used both nvidia and ati cards before and I personally prefer ati over nvidia.    

I said it and I regret having done so.

I am glad ATI users are having great experiences with SFC3.

Sincerely,

Dave  

[Gamester]

I find ATI products to be fairly solid hardware-wise, but they do need to better their driver QA.. My wife is running a Radeon 8500, and my uncle is running a Radeon 7000 - both on my recomendations (My wife got the 8500 when it was the big ATI card, and my Uncle got the 7000 because it is good and cheap - as in $50 at CompUSA for 32M AGP). The problem is that their newest Catalyst 3.0 drivers, while faster then the 2.x series, don't work well with Medieval: Total War (text on menus flickers) and MechWarrior 4: Mercenaries (The background video on the main menu COVERS the menu so you can't see what you are clicking on). I have informed ATI of the problem through their customer service link, but they just brushed me off and told me it was probably ajust my software. This on a fresh install of Windows! I had to downgrade my Uncle to Catalyst 2.5 so he could play these two games. This is of course a far cry better than the laptop graphics abortion known as the Rage Mobility M1 I had in my last laptop.

On the other side of the coin, I  also remember back in the day (lol) when 3DFx was king of the hill and the TNT & TNT2 cards were new nVidia device drivers were equally horrible.  I remember one customer to the computer store I worked in back then needing something like 5 different versions of the video drivers to play all his games. He'd just load in whichever version worked best with whatever game he wanted to play! Also, there was the time a friend of mine bought a TNT (Diamond Viper V550) for his 350MHz K6-2 computer using the VIA MVP3 chipset - that was pretty hellish. Took 2 months to find a VIA AGP driver and nVidia driver combo that would leave his system stable and usable. I swore I'd NEVER buy an nVidia card (now I own a GeForce 3 - nothing less could wean me from my Matrox G400 Max) Oh, the memories!


Gamester

PS - If the Matrox Parhelia had lived up to my expectations, I'd own that. Nothing, and I mean NOTHING can touch Matrox on picture quality, sharpness and color vibrance. I hooked my G400 Max up to a crap monitor once, and it made it look GOOD! This card lives on in my Dual P2-350 workstation.

 

[Lepton1]

I was going to say something but I guess Dave has probably suffered enough.  Perhaps the proof in the pudding could be what happens with ATI-compatibility from here on.

[Alexander1701]

  I would like to apologize. I am the one who started this whole thing. I was unclear, and I am sorry.

Let me begin by saying that ATI makes wonderful products on the whole. I used one failing, the original Rage series video card, in order to illustrate a point. I was attempting to defend Taldren from comments made regarding their irresponsibility for making an incompatible product. One person claimed that they had a top of the line system, so it must be compatible. I was using the Rage card in order to illustrate that the more expensive is not always the more compatible in general. The best plans and tests cannot account for everything. I personally think that the Rage card is a good metaphor for this.

I do not intend to insult ATI. I know not whereing lies the fault with the Rage, nor do I care. More recently produced ATI products are of the highest calibre. I still buy ATI products. This was merely, and a cannot stress this enough, an example of how the most expensive does not guarrantee the best.

I am still, however, sorry if my comments produced a negative reaction to ATI and their products. This was not my intention, as I specifically pointed out no fewer than 3 times in my post the overall quality of the Rage cards. I merely stated 100% compatability to be impossible. Any implications or inferations were completely unintentional.

Alexander  

[Toasty0]

Just to get more familiar with ATI and who they are here are a couple of links. This is more about the corp than the products they sell.

First, a little link to something ATI is a major sponsor of:  http://www.gdfest.com/ This is some really exciting stuff and I hope to see Taldren's next, super secret project as part of this event or an event simular to GDFest.

Next is ATI's very own press release page. My hat is off to them for their very open, all revealing press release statements:  http://mirror.ati.com/companyinfo/press/2003/4602.html .

Enjoy folks.

 

Best,
Jerry  

[Dash Jones]

Quote:
I find ATI products to be fairly solid hardware-wise, but they do need to better their driver QA.. My wife is running a Radeon 8500, and my uncle is running a Radeon 7000 - both on my recomendations (My wife got the 8500 when it was the big ATI card, and my Uncle got the 7000 because it is good and cheap - as in $50 at CompUSA for 32M AGP). The problem is that their newest Catalyst 3.0 drivers, while faster then the 2.x series, don't work well with Medieval: Total War (text on menus flickers) and MechWarrior 4: Mercenaries (The background video on the main menu COVERS the menu so you can't see what you are clicking on). I have informed ATI of the problem through their customer service link, but they just brushed me off and told me it was probably ajust my software. This on a fresh install of Windows! I had to downgrade my Uncle to Catalyst 2.5 so he could play these two games. This is of course a far cry better than the laptop graphics abortion known as the Rage Mobility M1 I had in my last laptop.

On the other side of the coin, I  also remember back in the day (lol) when 3DFx was king of the hill and the TNT & TNT2 cards were new nVidia device drivers were equally horrible.  I remember one customer to the computer store I worked in back then needing something like 5 different versions of the video drivers to play all his games. He'd just load in whichever version worked best with whatever game he wanted to play! Also, there was the time a friend of mine bought a TNT (Diamond Viper V550) for his 350MHz K6-2 computer using the VIA MVP3 chipset - that was pretty hellish. Took 2 months to find a VIA AGP driver and nVidia driver combo that would leave his system stable and usable. I swore I'd NEVER buy an nVidia card (now I own a GeForce 3 - nothing less could wean me from my Matrox G400 Max) Oh, the memories!


Gamester

PS - If the Matrox Parhelia had lived up to my expectations, I'd own that. Nothing, and I mean NOTHING can touch Matrox on picture quality, sharpness and color vibrance. I hooked my G400 Max up to a crap monitor once, and it made it look GOOD! This card lives on in my Dual P2-350 workstation.

 

 

There are other problems with ATI drivers as well, now that you mention it, with other games.  For example, I prefer to play Neverwinter Nights solely on an Nvidia machine simply because the ones with the ATI cards have a flicker with the mouse controls, and are not as clean in visual quality with that game (which I also have to admit has been buggy in and of itself moreso than most other games in the past).  The catalyst 3.0 drivers, which I have not rolled back (I like them to a degree) have had some pretty painful headaches as far as certain video applications I have.  And then, though the programming itself is probably the cause, and suspect, even admitted by some that it is the problem, I have heard you should not play SimCity 4 with all the bells and whistles and recent ATI cards (Oh heck, I pick that game up tomorrow hopefully!  I'll see then whether those rumors are true as pertaining to the machines I use or not!  Or if I can trouble shoot through it myself!).

I have had some problems with Nvidia I admit, but nothing compared to the headaches I constantly suffer from ATI.  However, ATI cards DO have better specs as a whole in my opinion, which is one major factor some suffer through the problems with the drivers when they have them.  I personally can't really tell the difference all that much, as most of the differences are not instantly noticeable to the naked eye overall, unless used by a discriminate observer in the matter.  This ease which I've had both with Nvidia troubleshooting, and the ease I've had with it's drivers overall have driven me more towards an Nvidia leaning...of course, their drivers have had problems too on occasion which have caused some headaches with some games.

So, basically, I use Nvidia when I want to have pure fun, and ATI when I want speed, such as online gaming such as UT2k and such.  Everyone has their preference.  I can remember the TNT driver thing as well!  As well as 3dfx!  In fact, up until extremely recently, I had a 3dfx machine as well as an Intel chipset Machine both (as far as graphics go).  They are gone now.  Nvidia drivers also have come a FAAAAAAAAAAAR way.  Don't know why I think ATI is better at specs (probably because everyone tells me they are) since when I reflect on it, I don't really notice it, I just trust what others state.  I have experienced more difficulties with ATI drivers than SOME other cards, which should be obvious.

However, as I stated before, ATI is good enough with their drivers that I now consider them valid for heavy consideration on what I will do next with card upgrades.  I've heard good things and bad things about the 9700.  I've also heard mostly bad things about the FX.  My experiences with Nvidia make me still consider it, but I am still waiting for the big comparisons between them and the information that will come down concerning how the FX handles as far as drivers (not as promising as other things in the past) and compatibility with upgrading.  So it means that I do think ATI does have drivers which generally work in most regards, and are great for gaming.

I believe that ATI cards DID have LESS major gamestopping problems as a whole than Nvidia GeForce 2's with SFC3 however (or am I mistaken), though I still have had less problems with Nvidia and games as a whole.

[Uss_Defiant]

Quote:

Quote:
I personally use an ati card and I have had no problems with it whatsoever.  I have had nothing wrong with the drivers either.  So I can't really see why anyone would say such things about ati's drivers.  I have used both nvidia and ati cards before and I personally prefer ati over nvidia.    

I said it and I regret having done so.

I am glad ATI users are having great experiences with SFC3.

Sincerely,

Dave  

Congrats, it takes allot of guts to accept responsibility. I personally have owned both ati and nvidia cards, and although i find the software updates of nvidia to be supperior to those of ati, i'd rather have ati hardware any day of the week. And i'm not saying this because i'm canadian    

[FEDX-Laad]

i don't know $40 bucks for my nvidia geforce 4 and a driver that works vs ati which regardless what taldren says still can't figure out how to make a driver work with their hardware.