ATI Technologies

The Wonder Of It All

ATI has been a major player in the PC graphics market for some time. I remember how cool the ATI Wonder cards were back in the DOS days. They built the VESA standard into the hardware and it was awesome to be able to run games and programs on the ATI card in high resolution without the need for extra drivers. I was a huge fan of their Mach 64 cards too, even when they went up against Tseng 4000 based cards, my previous favorites.

They became the masters of the OEM market, and back when Gateway was the big cheese, they used to be the primary card configured in those machines. The Rage chipset, then the Rage Pro attempted to get some oomph into the 3D accelerator portion of their product line, but they really did not hold up all that well. When you had the Voodoo and Voodoo 2 boards, ATI seemed caught at a loss as to how to proceed. They had a good following in the 2D market, but not so much in terms of 3D. Unlike Matrox, ATI decided they were going to throw their weight behind 3D with a solid commitment to furthering the technology.

Of course, one thing that ATI continued to do was provide enhanced multimedia cards for the masses. They were going to work towards a vastly improved 3D engine, but they never lost sight of the potential of integrated video capture and TV viewing solutions. Their “All-In-Wonder” cards, while not perfect, have been very well received in every segment of the marketplace. They offer some of the best value and features out there, and continue to do so to this very day. If there is one thing that ATI does well, it is make hardware.

The renewed ATI commitment to 3D manifested itself in the Rage 128 product line. The Rage 128 was a pretty impressive product from a few standpoints. First, it had excellent 2D and 3D image quality. It was crisp, clear and visually impressive. It was also their first real effort to improve hardware assisted video playback. But perhaps most importantly, it focused on 24 and 32 bit 3D graphics instead of the 16 bit that had been made so popular by 3dfx. They showed that you need not take too much of a speed hit to get the improved visual quality that true-color graphics provided. The Rage 128 was a pretty good success, however the product had a major flaw holding it back: poor quality video drivers.

The Recurring Plague

As impressive as the Rage 128 was from a hardware and technology standpoint, it would not do consumers any good if they could not get the card to work properly. ATI had focused so hard on the technology that they had not bothered to put the needed resources into proper driver development. They would refresh the Rage 128 line with the Pro and the MAXX, their dual chip solution, but because of the irregular quality of the drivers, neither was that effective in the marketplace, and as a result, ATI earned a somewhat tarnished reputation.

Instead of folding and throwing in the towel, ATI, in what looked to be an inspired re-dedication to the 3D graphics arena, decided to forge ahead strongly with a renewed commitment to driver quality. They toiled for many months and would introduce their long-awaited follow-up, the Radeon card. It was (and still is) a very impressive piece of technology. It competed head to head with everyone in the marketplace in terms of features and capabilities, and held its own in terms of performance as well.

Unlike the Rage series, the drivers for this card were in much better shape, but still, work needed to be done. However, ATI representatives made it very clear at the time that they were going to do what it took to make sure the Radeon was not held back by their drivers. Looking back, they did a pretty good job of solidifying the core functionality of the card, but some of the advanced video capturing capabilities never quite got fixed the way they should have been. One of the best features of the card was DVD playback. The hardware assisted DVD playback on this device became the absolute best in the industry and is still the standard from which all others are judged. As I’ve said, you put WinDVD 2.3 and the Radeon together, you have awesome playback indeed. All in all, the Radeon looked like a big step in the right direction. But the story doesn’t end here.