As I already opted in the first mentioning today here, I asked Terry a few questions about the upcoming program. I now posted the interview for you to catch up on what was happening at Lanwar18. An official press release is said to follow later in the day. W2S: ATI has been very strict regarding the handling of beta driver releases in the past. These downloads were only accessible to registered developers from a secure website. Since the introduction of the Catalyst program there has been no ?leak? or 3rd party manufacturer release of a higher version numbered driver than the current official version from ATI. How comes this change of policy? Terry Makedon: Beta drivers were and still are available to developers for development purposes only. That program is distinct from the CATALYST Beta Tester program. CATALYST is now based on the foundation of stability. As such we feel that a driver should be released only to the general public once we have fully tested it and obtained Microsoft WHQL (Windows Hardware Quality Labs) certification. At the same time we understand that people want frequent driver updates and that?s why we committed to the industry?s most aggressive public posting schedule. Our commitment is 8-10 driver updates a year. W2S: What advantages do you hope ATI can draw from such a program? Terry Makedon: The advantages of a beta tester program are two fold. First we can ask our user base to further validate bug fixes for us. Secondly we get wider coverage on different hardware platforms that real end users are using. W2S: When do you plan to launch the driver beta program? Terry Makedon: The announcement of the program was done last weekend at Lanwar18 (www.lanwar.com), and was announced by Tom?s Hardware Guide (www.tomshardware.com). The actual application process will begin as early as today. Beta drivers will be available to the first batch of beta testers later this week. W2S: Will the beta program be restricted in some way - let?s say by the amount of testers for a specific build, or is it an open beta program? Terry Makedon: The program is a closed program for now. We need to evaluate the success of the program first. There will be a requirement for potential applicants to apply first (much like any other beta program out there). The thing we are looking for is a diverse range of users. We will be looking for gamers, office workers, videophiles, people using multiple monitors, etc. Basically as much coverage as we can get. W2S: Will participants be required to report back on the issues they encounter or is feedback voluntarily? What advantages do you hope ATI can draw from such a program? Terry Makedon: Feedback is mandatory. There is no benefit in us having a beta tester that does not let us know what they find with the beta drivers. If a beta tester is not providing feedback we will ask him to give up his beta tester status to someone else on the waiting list. W2S: The Catalyst release cycle currently spans from about 4 to 6 weeks which approximately makes up for 10 WHQL driver releases a year. How often do you plan to update the beta drivers? Terry Makedon: Actually 4 weeks is a misconception. The commitment is 8-10 driver updates a year. This averages out to every 6 weeks or so. The beta drivers will be updated about 20 times a year though (every 3 weeks or so) W2S: How many internal releases do exist until a Catalyst comes out of it? Terry Makedon: There is an internal build (i.e. release) every day. So there are really 365 driver builds a year. However the way a driver achieves CATALYST status is it goes through some major milestones, which we call alpha, beta, release candidate, and posting candidate. W2S: With all the attention turning to the WHQL process ? especially in the recent 3DMark03 / Nvidia discussion ? how important is it really? Is there more to it than just a digital signature? Many companies totally back away from Microsoft?s certification process because they do not want to pay the fees MS charges? Terry Makedon: It is not a recent phenomenon from ATI?s standpoint. Since CATALYST launch we committed to posting only WHQL certified drivers, so in fact we have been supporting WHQL since the beginning. OEM?s such as Dell, Compaq, Gateway will only ship systems that have all the components WHQL certified. This ensures that a third party (in this case Microsoft) has tested and validated the drivers that go with the hardware. WHQL is much more than a digital signature; there are tests that actually look for system stability, driver quality, and compliance to API?s (read DirectX). As a side note the companies that shy away from WHQL will never be able to ship their products in an OEM system. (The MS fees are very small and are just a nominal charge) W2S: Since the first reviews of the new Radeon 9800 Pro, a german developer used the R350 driver path on his Radeon 9700 Pro. Vertex- and PixelShader improvements were observed as well as small overall performance gains. The community jumped right at it with many guides and tweaking tools offering to recreate this routine. ATI said that they would use the new driver path for Radeon 9700 series by default in Catalyst 03.3. How for away is this release now and has the R300 core reached it?s performance limit with Catalyst 03.3? Terry Makedon: I made the public announcement that CATALYST 3.3 will provide these performance boosts to users of the RADEON9700Pro. That driver will be posted mid to late April. I think the R300 core has still a lot of headroom in it (especially when it comes to boosting the clock speeds of the engine and memory). W2S: Massive Entertainment recently announced Aquamark3 a full DirectX 9 benchmark, which is based on their in house development; the KRASS engine. Since games are the real ?gamer?s benchmark? do you think the KRASS engine based performance analyzer entitled ?reality benchmark? is more meaningful than Futuremark?s synthetic approach using DX wrappers in 3DMark03? Terry Makedon: I wouldn?t think one is more meaningful than the other. Both are excellent benchmark tools that can and should be used for measuring DirectX9 performance. The more meaningful benchmarks a consumer can look at, the better his or her buying decision will be. However frames per second is only one measure of how ?good? a graphics card is. The reason why the RADEON 9700 (and now the RADEON 9800) are the top choice for gamers is because of their frames per second performance at high image quality levels. I urge any reviewers of graphic cards to always compare image quality alongside the performance in terms of frames per second. Terry Makedon
ATI Technologies
Senior Product Manager - Software That is it for now. Thanks to Terry for taking the time to answer our questions. Check back with ATI frequently for updates on the beta program.