Thursday March 9, 2006 Interview with ATI's Terry Makedon
Alex Billington: First of all, thanks for doing this. We certainly appreciate the time you’re giving to answer these, given that there wasn’t enough time for this at EverLAN. For an intro, can you give us a little introduction to yourself and your history with ATI sand current job role?
Hi, my name is Terry Makedon and I work at ATI as the manager of Software and Video marketing in the Radeon area. I have been doing this for 5 years and truly enjoy talking to readers on websites such as your own.
AB: So we saw the release of the x1900XTX video card at EverLAN. It is being showcased as the "world’s fastest GPU," however I am sure many enthusiasts are wondering, how does it compare up to Nvidia’s 7800 GTX 512 top-of-the-line and what makes its architecture so much different/better?
TM: It would be more valuable for your readers to see any of the tech sites on the web or magazines that reviewed the product. It will give a much less perceived bias type of answer. For example you can see DriverHeaven.net for an indication of the performance advantage. To give you an indication of how much faster the 1900 is, note the Call of Duty 2 scores. Our crossfire solution gets 67 frames per second while the competition gets 44 frames per second. That is over a 50% performance advantage for the 1900. However even more important is that the 7800 GTX 512 is not available. I can’t seem to be able to find it on Newegg right now that I checked.
AB: I am sure you’ve seen Nvidia’s announcement for an "answer" to the x1900, a 7900-series set of Nvidia cards. As much as we hate to continually compare ATI and Nvidia, what are your opinions on this announcement and how the x1900 will compare to this new series.
TM: No idea. As far as I’m concerned you are asking me to compare a real physical product that users can buy today with one that is just an announcement. I can’t speculate on the performance of something that doesn’t exist.
AB: Moving on from the x1900, what is next for ATI beyond this? What is coming in the future, what new advanced projects is ATI working on? Will see an x2000 series sometime soon?
TM: The main things we are looking at this year are two big inflection points in the PC industry. High Definition DVD’s and Microsoft Vista. Those two have me very excited as the first one will give users the best movie viewing experience and the second one will give users a truly immersive 3D based desktop.
As for an X2000, who knows. We are always working on future hardware but I have no idea what it will be called until a few weeks before it ships. However I am sure it is safe to say that something better and faster than the X1900 is being worked on within the walls of ATI.
AB: Are there any plans, even an idea, for a dual GPU video card in the “near” future?
TM: Sure, we have many ideas as to what we can deliver in the future, however I can’t comment on any future products.
AB: Is it still “all about the memory?” As game designers/programmers have been progressing technically, is the top level of graphics still dependent on the quantity and speed of memory available on the card, or has it changed to a different dynamic?
TM: Half of the equation continues to be the memory, the other half is the architecture of the shader pipelines. Those two combined need a delicate balance to deliver the best performance at the best image quality. Something we always strive for here at ATI.
AB: Although many enthusiasts focus on the hardware within video cards, what advancements have taken place recently in the software (drivers) side of ATI? Has the “driver support” improved?
TM: As you know Catalyst is the name of ATI’s software and we continue to see record breaking user approval numbers. The last few drivers were independently voted over 9 out of 10 by our users. I think it is safe to say we will always focus on the three main points of Catalyst which are stability (bug fixes), performance (making games run faster), and innovation (cool new features). Keep your eye out for something called Avivo Video Converter in an upcoming release. It will really rock the market.
AB: What is your (and ATI’s) take on the PhysX technology and possibilities for gaming in the future? Are there plans for integration with these types of cards in the future?
TM: No plans currently. At this point I haven’t seen any real support in games for it.
AB: How has the last year (2005) been for ATI? It seems as if there is a continual struggle to provide advancing technology and yet in turn try and make money. Over this last year, how has ATI been able to keep up in this challenge especially on the power versus value? We always look at the newly released video cards, but how has ATI been providing technology to consumers who can’t buy the latest top-of-the-line cards at the moment of release?
TM: The beauty of new architecture is we always come up with lower cost versions of the chip. So for example we have the Radeon X1900 for the high end users but we also have a 1600 and a 1300 for different price levels. That way we ensure that users have the newest technology albeit not the fastest in terms of clock speeds and memory configurations. Beyond that we do continue to look at changing trends in the market and are always ready to lead transitions to more exciting things. Especially in the areas of gaming and video.
Thank you to Terry Makedon to ATI for giving us the opportunity to interview him! We wish for the best for ATI this coming year and hope to see even more great products in the future.
