Charlie Foxtrot

Posts Tagged ‘software’

There has been an unusual amount of activity in the forums from Radeon users complaining about stability issues with HD 5000 series graphics cards.  Most of the complaints appear to be focused on the HD 5870, HD 5850 and HD 5770.  Problems include grey screens, crashes, colored stripes on screens and system hang-ups.  Here are some of the reports from around the web.

“A significant amount of ATI users have taken to the AMD user to user forums to complain about grey screens, crashes and colored-striped hangups. (There’s actually countless forums out there with threads like this…between them, have collected nearly 40 pages of possible causes…”

This comes soon after reports of a stop ship of the upcoming HD 5830 graphics card:

“A last minute issue discovered during the validation of ATI Radon HD 5830-based reference boards has prompted AMD to postpone the cards from their scheduled launch on January 25…AMD has already decided to retrieve related boards for further investigation.”

Blame this one on Tweaktown:

“Let’s not kid ourselves. Just days before the end of the month comes to a close, ATI squeezes out a Catalyst driver, I think it’s safe to say that this driver is more so to keep the flawless monthly release record than to bring massive improvements or new features. The driver seems so rushed out that someone forgot to update the Catalyst Control Center to actually say 10.1.”

We work to avoid issues like this with a robust developer relations program we call “The Way It’s Meant To Be Played.  AMD hates it and tries to mis-position it in “Fuddy” interviews by calling it a marketing program where we pay to have a logo in a game. But the proof is in the pudding.

“NVIDIA has forged a close relationship with many game developers through its “The Way It’s Meant To Be Played” program and other initiatives. Often, lately, newly released titles have worked better on NVIDIA GPUs”

We work closely with developers, often in their own buildings, to help them program games.  We provide them numerous testing tools, sample code and large scale compatibility testing.  That is what makes “The Way It’s Meant To Be Played” such a threat to AMD.

Power for High Definition gaming and ultra portability in a single laptop is no longer a fantasy. In fact, fantasy games are going to look great! The Alienware M11x redefines the gaming capabilities of a truly portable laptop by cramming in graphics capabilities that enable 720p gaming at 30 FPS (Frames per Second). Add on long battery life and light weight, and then ask what more could the ‘on the move’ gamer want…

A list of notes from game developers (PDF) was sent in a letter to the FCC which represented a net neutrality discussion between the developers and FCC representatives. Game Politics sums it up nicely, but the surprise is that developers are concerned with latency, not bandwidth, unlike the members of many other net neutrality discussions. One concern is that each and every game developer will need to negotiate with each and every ISP to ensure their traffic achieves acceptable levels of latency for users. ‘Mr. Dyl of Turbine stated that ISPs sometimes block traffic from online gaming providers, for reasons that are not clear, but they do not necessarily continue those blocks if they are contacted. He recalled Turbine having to call ISPs that had detected the high UDP traffic from Turbine, and had apparently decided to block the traffic and wait to see who complained.’ It seems a lot of the net neutrality discussions have only worried about one part of the problem — Netflix, YouTube and P2P — while an equally important source of concern went unnoticed: latency in online games.

The third annual Defense Gametech Conference will be held in Orlando Florida at the Orlando Hilton Hotel. Gametech is a conference for users and developers of technology for serious gaming and virtual worlds applied to military training. Additional information on the conference and registration may be found at the conference website. The suspense for nominations for the Innovations in DoD Gaming Award has been extended to 1 February, 2010.