Zardon

It gives me great pleasure to present an exclusive interview with Ben Bar Haim, ATi VP of software. I asked him alot of the questions that people had been asking recently on the board so I hope this is helpful to the community. ATi are dedicated in supporting the end user and Ben gave alot of his time between a hectic schedule to give us this interview, so a special thank you to him.

For the full interview please head to this section

you can discuss the interview in this thread in the forum.

special thanks once more to ATI, and of course Terry and Chris for their continued support to both Driverheaven, its community and all ATI users.

Xp2000

While i Did enjoy the interview alot one question that wasnt ask that Im more than sure should have been is why the frame rate loss with the 9700 pro. With as many people out there having the problem I thought for sure this would be ask. I dont like ati's take on overclocking and I sure didnt like the driver uninstaller answer. These are important things.
I was happy about what he said was going on with ati. I just want to play my games with a better than 20 fps rate.
When I pay 400 bucks for a card thats not to much to ask is it?
SHould have ask him. Oh well!! Good work anyways

Zardon

the stuttering was mentioned I have a 9700 pro myself and am aware of the problem you mention. They are working hard on the drivers. sets will be released to address this. trust me on this one.

digitalwanderer

Nice interview Zardon, seriously nice! The biggest surprise to me was how good Ben's answers were, the man seems like one seriously bright puppy who knows his business. Kudos and thanks to him for taking the time and trouble for the interview, me perspective of ATI is gonna be forever changed knowing he works there.

Nice range of good questions, and you threw a few good hardballs in too. Ben did sort of dodge a few things, but he did so gracefully and I can dig the situation he's in. I think he more than made up for it with the new info he gave us, and I am seriously looking forward to seeing what ATI has coming in the future.

Great job again Zardon!

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Xp2000

Thanks Zardon. As I said you done a nice job. I just get so tired of trying to play my favorite game (Ut2k3) and cannot play it.
The card works mostly fine on the rest of my games such as
sof2, nascar 2003, nightfire, 1942 battlefield.
I just dont play those games as I do ut and when I get killed due to a game pausing and stuttering it pisses me to no end.
Nice work however as I said, Im looking forward to ati and the improved drivers and hardware.
I have no issues with people who try. They are showing they care about people as customers and Im happy with that.

Chaos

Well I must say that was an interesting read Zardon.

I also agree with Digi's comment about Ben, he seems very much dialed in to what is going on.

Who knows I may even break down and give ATi another go.

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Veridian3

Great article - interesting reading. Thanks

Stu

craig5320

Great stuff Zardon, interesting read. Finally all the hard work you put in pays off

/me dusts off the old Xpert '98. Ati hmmm.... maybe maybe

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Chaos

The Xpert line was the reason I left ATi and got a TNT

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toddsmack2k

Good interview zar, I really did not expect many straight out answers to the questions as we all undertsand he really cant give definite answers to some things. I do however feel better thinking that they are more dedicated to having reliable drivers and better customer support.

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PoopyTheJ

I have one complaint or not a complaint really but a point. There's another interview linked from here and the same question and answer is there regarding the stutter. The other answer to the question says in parenthesis that ATI has released drivers fixing the issue. They have not! Not the READ/WRITE error found in DX anyways. OGL stutter is gone D3D stutter is there and bad as ever. just thought I would point it out as it can be a little misleading. However nice interview and I'm glad to hear they're taking this stuff seriously. One thing I was psyched about was DMA transfers to system memory very good to hear.

Mac Daddy

Great work Zardon, I found the interview quite informative, and Ben seems pretty kewl, wouldn't get those types of answers at a UN Press conference thats for sure.

Although I'm running an OLD G2 at home, I have had the opportunity of using the 9700, 8500 and G4 at our studio.
And the biggest issue we have is stuttering on the new ATI products.

I like Ben but I have some questions/issues

1) Stuttering
I find it very odd that this problem should persist through two generations of hardware releases. I'm starting to wonder if this problem is hardware related, and cannot be properly rectified by a software driver release.

2) Overclocking
I think I saw a post on this thread disliking Ben's views on overclocking. Personally if a VP can encourage someone pushing there product to the limit, without reservations, then in my opinion, that shows a lot of confidence in there product(ATI)

3) OpenGL2
Now this was a point Ben seemed to duck on. Newer NVIDIA drivers as far as I'm concerned do live up to the boast, 25% improvement, affects my G2 more than the G4 as it should.
Running BF1942, which was blacklisted in the readme for that software, with a few alterations.
One major setting was provided by Tosh/UBER.

4) DMA data transfer from AGP RAM to SYS RAM
That was an excellent question.
Again Ben seemed a bit vague on that one.

5) Testers
And this is the only real beef I have with Ben.
If ATI is so dedicated to testing their product, how did the whole ASUS AGP 8x issue arise?
ASUS is a major motherboard manufacturer, would that not have been "tested?"
Maybe a question for you next interview.
I'm still holding off on buying my new VC, we'll wait and see.

Having info like this at hand is certainly nice to have
thanks, "NUMBER 1"

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