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Are ATI GPUs optimized for dual core?

You don't optimize the hardware you optimize the software.

Which they did (with their drivers) not too long ago.

So through the driver software ATI cards can take advantage of dual core CPUs.
 
Can you confirm this or provide benchmarks? I haven't heard any official information on multithreading in ATI drivers, but plenty of info on nvidia's multithreaded drivers.
 
I think ATI did optimize their drivers in 5.12, however, I don't think the change was as big as when Nvidia optimized their drivers.
 
PRIME1 said:
You don't optimize the hardware you optimize the software.
Click to expand...

This is what I meant - the drivers. Thanks! I found an article about it on Driver Heaven too, so super!
 
ATi isn't terribly interested in working with OpenGL. I won't pretend to try and understand the politics of what ATi does, but their stance seems to be that most people aren't interested in OpenGL, even though that's clearly not the case.
 
What uses OpenGL, for example? I'm a bit ignorant about these things, but all of this is relevant to figuring out which card to purchase.
 
Sifu said:
What uses OpenGL, for example? I'm a bit ignorant about these things, but all of this is relevant to figuring out which card to purchase.
Click to expand...

Doom 3 Engine
 
Sifu said:
What uses OpenGL, for example? I'm a bit ignorant about these things, but all of this is relevant to figuring out which card to purchase.
Click to expand...

Here is a list of OpenGL games from OpenGL.org.

http://www.opengl.org/applications/windows/games/

The list does seem to be missing a number of titles though, I would guess there should be about 25% more commercial titles on the list.

A couple years ago I figured out the ratio of D3D to OpenGL games released commericially based on that list and the commercial PC games listed at Gamerankings.com. Only about 9% of all games released were OpenGL based. So even if you allow for the games that were missed on that list you still only get about 12% of all games being OpenGL, which isn't all that many. Heck, even if you also clear out all the crappy titles on both sides OpenGL probably doesn't get more than a 50% boost, to about 18% of all GOOD titles. That is still considerably less than D3D.

So really I think the lack of titles on the OpenGL side is a big part of why ATI doesn't bust their butts trying to resolve the technical issues with their hardware that keeps it from performing as well in OpenGL as it does in D3D.
 
Sifu said:
What uses OpenGL, for example? I'm a bit ignorant about these things, but all of this is relevant to figuring out which card to purchase.
Click to expand...


Recently? Doom3, Quake4 and Chronicles of Riddick(very kickass game with awesome in-house engine). Nothing else immediately comes to mind.
 
I think developer embracement of OpenGL will continue to dwindle, but as far as everyone knows, id Software (John Carmack) will continue to use it exclusively. Like it or hate it - that's a big deal. How many benchmark articles did the [H] publish on Doom 3, for instance?

There are a lot of graphics programmers who really don't understand why developers have been relying on Direct3D for so long and why exactly it's so dominant. I imagine that's in due in part to real technical support from the DX team while OpenGL is a bit more "you're on your own".
 
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