Radeon HD 7000 Revealed: AMD to Mix GCN with VLIW4 & VLIW5 Architectures

[BababooeyHTJ]

Because it's OpenGL based. Give one or two more Catalyst releases and they will be up significantly. I remember first two or 3 Catalyst releases after HD6970 launch didn't support 2 primitives per clock under OpenGL, bet this is the same issue. Simply you can expect good OpenGL performance around launch of FireGL card based on Thaiti.

OpenGL support is something that AMD needs to work on. Its been a long time problem. I can't think of an opengl source port that I've tried that works as well on an AMD card as it does on a Nvidia card. For example Darkplaces which is a popular quake source port has never ran that well for me with the settings that I use. It never ran well on a 4870 and with a 6950 I still couldn't use pretty water which runs great on Nvidia hardware. Eduke32 with the polymer renderer just isn't as smooth as it should be with AMD cards and I've heard that complaint more than once, seen it first hand. Qrack which is another quake source port saw awful performance on a 6950 for me. Zdoom, same deal. It didn't feel smooth.

Brink and Rage at launch with any AMD card is another good example. Their opengl performance just isn't all that great. Its something that needs to be worked on.

That reviewer has a right to his opinion on a new product with new arc on beta drivers that aint officially on the shelf yet and expect its to be perfect.

Look how things are on hardware that they have gotten to grips with.


CAT Preview 12.1.

That one quote may seem a bit out of context without reading the rest of the article which was mostly very positive. Thats the reason that I like Rage3d reviews. The author is very honest and knows his stuff. No review should be 100% positive. All products have their pros and cons. At the end of the day software support is something that AMD needs to work on. Even the little things like SGSSAA and transparency AA in dx 10 and 11 are nice features and things that I wouldn't mind seeing added in AMD's drivers.