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AMD, VIA, and the G400
Fullon3D has a rather extensive piece on the new AMD Thunderbird. They asked AMD, VIA, and finally Matrox about stability issues regarding the G400 and VIA drivers.
AMD and VIA appear to have dodged the G400 part of the questions. Matrox appears to believe they have a handle on it. Here are the highlights:
Fullon3D: Many users have reported problems with graphics cards and the AGP implementation on Athlon chipsets? For example, there exist problems between KX133 and G400 cards and there are problems between Irongate and GeForce2? What steps has AMD taken to help resolve these problems?
AMD: AMD has a dedicated developer relations group which has a sole purpose to work with ISVs and IHVs to ensure not only compatibility with AMD platforms, but also optimal performance. The developer relations group plays a key role within the company to ensure our partners (software, hardware, and infrastructure) are able to make hardware and software that when used on AMD platforms deliver the expected levels of reliability and performance. Any platform reliability issues with motherboards featuring the AMD-750 chipset and the GeForce should have been alleviated through the use of Nvidia’s Detonator drivers (ver. 3.28 and greater).
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Fullon3D: Some VIA chipsets have been plagued with AGP incompatibilities (such as the G400). Have any steps been taking to improve AGP compatibility? If so, what are they?
VIA: VIA works closely with the leading graphics vendors, such as nVidia, ATi and S3 to make sure that compatibility exists between their and our products. It is really a matter of the correct drivers being produced by both VIA and the graphics vendors, and VIA is consistently working to get out the latest drivers to improve overall board performance. In fact we have just released the AGP Driver 4.03 on our website, www.viatech.com, to deal with any existing problems with Microsoft Windows 2000.
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Fullon3D: What are your comments about AMD's new Thunderbird Athlon and your support for the platform?
Matrox: Well upon talking with the top dogs in tech, they let me know that we are fully optimized for all Athlon based processors and that support shall be ported over to include the T-bird as well.
Fullon3D: Some Matrox cards don't have the best compatibility with VIA-based chipsets. Considering VIA's KT133 is the earliest supporters of AMD's Thunderbird, has Matrox taken any steps to cooperate with VIA to ensure maximum compatbility between this core logic platform and your video cards?
Matrox: We have had a high level of success running in AGP 4X mode with certain Via based motherboards after having downloaded various patches from viatech.com. Any previous problems had been eliminated with the test system we were using.
Paul
paulcs@flashcom.net
AMD and VIA appear to have dodged the G400 part of the questions. Matrox appears to believe they have a handle on it. Here are the highlights:
Fullon3D: Many users have reported problems with graphics cards and the AGP implementation on Athlon chipsets? For example, there exist problems between KX133 and G400 cards and there are problems between Irongate and GeForce2? What steps has AMD taken to help resolve these problems?
AMD: AMD has a dedicated developer relations group which has a sole purpose to work with ISVs and IHVs to ensure not only compatibility with AMD platforms, but also optimal performance. The developer relations group plays a key role within the company to ensure our partners (software, hardware, and infrastructure) are able to make hardware and software that when used on AMD platforms deliver the expected levels of reliability and performance. Any platform reliability issues with motherboards featuring the AMD-750 chipset and the GeForce should have been alleviated through the use of Nvidia’s Detonator drivers (ver. 3.28 and greater).
*******
Fullon3D: Some VIA chipsets have been plagued with AGP incompatibilities (such as the G400). Have any steps been taking to improve AGP compatibility? If so, what are they?
VIA: VIA works closely with the leading graphics vendors, such as nVidia, ATi and S3 to make sure that compatibility exists between their and our products. It is really a matter of the correct drivers being produced by both VIA and the graphics vendors, and VIA is consistently working to get out the latest drivers to improve overall board performance. In fact we have just released the AGP Driver 4.03 on our website, www.viatech.com, to deal with any existing problems with Microsoft Windows 2000.
*******
Fullon3D: What are your comments about AMD's new Thunderbird Athlon and your support for the platform?
Matrox: Well upon talking with the top dogs in tech, they let me know that we are fully optimized for all Athlon based processors and that support shall be ported over to include the T-bird as well.
Fullon3D: Some Matrox cards don't have the best compatibility with VIA-based chipsets. Considering VIA's KT133 is the earliest supporters of AMD's Thunderbird, has Matrox taken any steps to cooperate with VIA to ensure maximum compatbility between this core logic platform and your video cards?
Matrox: We have had a high level of success running in AGP 4X mode with certain Via based motherboards after having downloaded various patches from viatech.com. Any previous problems had been eliminated with the test system we were using.
Paul
paulcs@flashcom.net
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