ATI...er, AMD Video Cards and Windows Vista

[Tyrant]

Following on the heels of yesterday's article on Nvidia driver performance in Vista, the folks over at FiringSquad (http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/windows_vista_performance_amd_catalyst_7.1/) have tested out the recently released Vista drivers for ATI(or AMD, or AMDTI if you prefer) video cards. If you'd prefer to skip the numbers and graphs, here's the meat of the conclusion:

All is not perfect with AMD’s Vista 7.1 release however. While D3D performance is very good, OpenGL on the other hand isn’t. AMD has totally rewritten the OpenGL portion of their graphics driver, a promise that’s finally been fulfilled, but definitely underwhelming. In all honesty, AMD’s OpenGL portion of the graphics driver is not ready for primetime in our opinion, and probably should have been shelved until they’d had more time to work on it. Fortunately, at least it’s stable.

Despite being the first official AMD/ATI driver released for Vista, performance losses are negligible and in some cases, there are even performance improvements.

[51|RandoM]

I don't know which is more likely, the release of Duke Nukem 4Ever or good OpenGL performance from an ATI product.

OpenGL isn't important for everybody, but it is for some.

[Venkman]

OpenGL is important for anyone working in the major 3d apps. If you are lucky enough to run Maya or something using a proprietary engine, I wonder if Vista is going to provide the performance needed to emulate the engines used on consoles.

[KingGorilla]

Not to diminish this, but drivers are rarely perfect out of the gate. NvIdia and ATI take turns making learning disabled drivers. It may take some revision, but it will all work out.

[webrunner]

OpenGL is completely crippled on vista, isn't it? That's why AMD had to re-write the entire engine.

Oh, and if you're doing heavy 3D development you're not using consumer cards, anyway.

[Jack Random]

OK, now lets see some new Nvidia Drivers!

[Draconis]

Yes Webrunner, if memory serves me correctly, Windows Vista purposefully cripples OpenGL. I do not recollect ATM specifically how, but it does. The reasoning is to try and get everyone to use DirectX for their API's for games programming.

We'll see how it goes. I know ID software loves to use OpenGL for their programming API versus anything else, so, who knows what will happen as time goes on.

[Elysium]

So this OpenGL support from AMD only happened with the release of Vista amirite? I recall not being able to run OpenGL games at all on the release candidates.

[kokyunage]

What game engine other than idsofware's uses OpenGL anymore? Didn't epic move purely to D3D?

[zipR]

Did I miss something or are there no OpenGL games tested in the article?

[MacD]

@webrunner: Not everyone who does multi-million poly or CAD/CAM work has the dosh to spend on a Quadro or FireGL. For smaller operations, the premium spent (three to four times that of a conventional high-powered gaming card) is not worth the few percentage points of extra performance. So a lot of production work is done in OGL with consumer cards.

But it must be said, for gamedeving, D3D is is pretty much the standard nowadays. It's a great way to preview game assets with shaders and normal maps in 3dsmax, and afaik that can't be done when running 3dsmax in OGL mode (although I must admit that I never tried).

[lockwoodx]

Vista is the devil in a blue dress.

[Asylum-GameServers]

I'm glad to see the ATI performance is not too far off the mark of XP.
I'm sure Nvidia will get there in a few weeks. The techage (http://techgage.com/article/windows_vista_gaming_performance_reports) test showed some bad results which given the drivers were less than 24 hours old is no real surprise.

I'll still be a waiting a few months though.

[KingGorilla]

I'm glad to see the ATI performance is not too far off the mark of XP.
I'm sure Nvidia will get there in a few weeks. The techage (http://techgage.com/article/windows_vista_gaming_performance_reports) test showed some bad results which given the drivers were less than 24 hours old is no real surprise.

I'll still be a waiting a few months though.
Actually, the drivers may not be the issue. The version of DX9 that vista uses, probably has much more to do with it. You are talking about hardware and software that were not designed for each other. It is amazing that the performance loss is so minuscule, often 5-10 percent.

[MacD]

The version of DX9 that vista uses, probably has much more to do with it. You are talking about hardware and software that were not designed for each other.

Uhm...I don't get what you're saying here. DX9 is DX9 (on Vista or on XP). That's hw/sw which IS designed to work with each other. DX10 is different matter...but that's not what we're talking about here.
Hell, even if DX9 on Vista is somehow a different beast from DX9XP, DX9Vista is DESIGNED to work with DX9 hw.

[KingGorilla]

Uhm...I don't get what you're saying here. DX9 is DX9 (on Vista or on XP). That's hw/sw which IS designed to work with each other. DX10 is different matter...but that's not what we're talking about here.
Hell, even if DX9 on Vista is somehow a different beast from DX9XP, DX9Vista is DESIGNED to work with DX9 hw.
DX 9.c is the version for XP and DX 9.l(that is the old name) is the version for Vista. 9c was developed and molded over years with the hardware in mind. 9.1 is vista specific, and is kind of shoehorned in. Vista was designed to be run with DX 10, and DX 10 hardware. The two versions of DX 9 are not like for like. and 9.l has some obvious problems to work out. With is in itself a big reason to avoid the upgrade, without hardware upgrades as well.

[Shifter]

Ok, but when the hell are they gonna release a Vista driver for my Logitech G15? Dumbasses. I really don't understand how comanies don't have their act together in terms of drivers for the Vista launch. It's not like it was secret code or anything. They've gotta know that the early adopters who buy the top end gaming hardware are gonna also be the ones who upgrade to Vista first...

[KingGorilla]

Ok, but when the hell are they gonna release a Vista driver for my Logitech G15? Dumbasses. I really don't understand how comanies don't have their act together in terms of drivers for the Vista launch. It's not like it was secret code or anything. They've gotta know that the early adopters who buy the top end gaming hardware are gonna also be the ones who upgrade to Vista first...
Early adopters know what they are getting into. And with any software of this scale, you are guaranteed problems. Hence, I am probably not upgrading until August.

[Shifter]

I know I know... but... it's... so... pretty... arrrghh...

[KingGorilla]

I know I know... but... it's... so... pretty... arrrghh...
Fuck, Shifter crashed. See what you get for early adoption, vista has corrupted your brain, great now you will reboot every 60 minutes until SP1 comes out.

[Shifter]

I'm sad to report that today I folded like a cheap tent and bought a copy of Vista. Someone please help me!! It was like a magnet pulling me into Best Buy -- I couldn't help it.

Oh no... now it's making me download drivers for all my stuff....

Must remember... so... pretty... arrghh....