ATI 3D chip for mobile devices

[chiQ]

From Gama:

"ATI Launches First 3D Mobile Phone Gaming Chip
ATI today announced the Imageon 2300--what it claims is the industry's first 3D gaming chip for mobile phones, supporting both the JSR-184 and OpenGL ES 3D graphics APIs, as well as many 2D graphics and multimedia features, including MPEG-4 (full specs).

No design wins have been announced, but the chips will be shipping in quantity during the first quarter of 2004, and ATI says several customers have been successfully developing, using the sampled chips that have been available. Mascot Capsule (HI Corp), for instance, has ported its Micro3D V4 game engine to the Imageon.".

Could open up some cool new possibilities for John's boys  
 
 [ January 07, 2004, 09:53 PM: Message edited by: chiQ ]

[Pyros]

Even more interesting, it could be used to power the next Gameboy. ATI is working with Nintendo on a gaming product. Everyone assumes it's Gamecube (and that makes sense), but what if it's Gameboy, or both?

[Gryd]

Wow that pretty cool. I know ATI makes Exp. packs for PDA's so i guess it was only a matter of time before they came out with something like this

[Zn]

The Gameboy should definitely get better graphics.

Long live ATi!

[chiQ]

quote:Originally posted by Keeper:
Long live ATi!

Amen brutha!

I've been a Matrox, and then an Nvidia creature until GF4/9800 came out, and now I'm ATI's bitch. Their toys are the best  

[Gryd]

Well right now ATI is the best "Bang" for your buck. The down side to ATI is their drivers, they are not good at all(I have a Sapphire 9700 PRO 128). I use the Omega's drivers. The best thing about Nvidia is that they always update their drivers and they are good strong drivers unlike ATI. I wouldnt see ATI holding the reigns that much longer Nvidia is bound to come out with something that is going to be Wow!

[chiQ]

They had better, because they've gone the route of brute force problem-solving, rather than elegant design solutions, and we all know what happened to the Voodoo line of tech when they were approached that way. ATI are in the same position now that NVidia were a few generations back - they're a better proposition than all their competition.

BTW Nvidia's great software support is all that's keeping them in the running just now. It's coding that makes them more than a blip on the hardware shootout horizon, and if they're not careful the GeForce will go the way of the Voodoo and other dinosaurs.

[Zn]

Indeed - nVIDIA has released some good software packages - even a C compiler. But, in my opinion, nVIDIA hardware is very mainstream-oriented. Try and compare a Rage 128 Pro desktop with a TNT2 desktop. I believe that, at least the 2D chip on ATi cards is much more professional.
I saw my friend's TNT2M64 desktop the other day and I couldn't believe how ugly it was, compared to mine.
ATi drivers are pretty buggy, and I think that's the main reason why the Rage 128 cards didn't make it big as gaming cards, at their time.
Nowadays, the Radeons can produce both 2D and 3D graphics of better quality than those on nVIDIA. And the FX is pretty much a brick ("brute force", as you said).
Matrox has engineered some professional chips throughout history, but they've made some mistakes (e.g. releasing outdated versions of the G400).
I think nVIDIA hardware is pretty much kiddie-oriented, even though their drivers are good.
Ah, good thing that ATi has opensource drivers, so that someone else can fix the bugs.

[JohnRomeroWorshiper]

I got an Nvidia Riva 128 (4MB) graphics card, while ceratinly not imrepssive, what I do like about it is that all the games with Direct 3d works fine (older games), its a very compativle card  

[Bad Sector]

I have a GeForceFX 5950 Ultra and it goes well... :-)

[Zn]

Never said that FX isn't powerful - I just stated that I think r9800 is better than any FX.
Better doesn't necesarily mean "faster".

[satori]

I haven't had single ATI problem since I got my 9600pro... I mean I know they had problems with older drivers, but I thought most of the main driver issues were covered off with the Catalyst 3.6 drivers.
Are the Saphire drivers called Omega, rather than Catalyst?  On the ATI side I only buy ATI, on the Nvidia side I've only bought Asus, although I know there are better out there. I just liked the Asus support.

[Gryd]

No Omega Drivers are made by a guy named Omega.
They are amazing. He has been working with ATI's driver dept. for awhile now. He takes aehole bunch of the stuff that gamers wouldnt use

http://www.omegacorner.com/ati.htm

[Pyros]

5900 is actually the best value for your money. However, the best card all together is either a 9600 XT overclocked, or the 9800 Pro

[The Romero]

I've known about the Imageon for almost a year now and in fact have a huge prototype device of a Pocket PC with this Imageon 2300 in it.... I was working on an accelerated version of Congo Cube for ATI directly, in fact, so they could show off their chip.

This chip is going to be in most Pocket PCs and I don't need to beat anyone over the head with my N-Gage speech, but don't be surprised when, all of a sudden, *POOF!* a nice fast N-Gage appears.

Mobile Gaming Future.