ATI Radeon HD 4800 OpenGL features

As I know ATI Radeon HD 4800 has released.
What about new extention?
How long will we wait for ATI ?
I had been waiting while year for EXT_geometry_shader4 and ect…
I was looking for new extention for http://www.amd.com - I did not found anything.

Maybe someone was lucky than me ? :slight_smile:

ATI didn’t release any DX10-feature extensions for OpenGL, so I don’t think they will in any close future.

I’m almost believing in that there are some sort of arrangements between ATI and Microsoft to intentionally impair OpenGL. Effectively making OpenGL and, consequently, alternate OS like Linux and Mac OS a less attractive gaming platforms. :mad:

I don’t think so. ATI just goes the path of the smallest resistance. There are no big OpenGL games or commertial applications that would rely on GLSL or latest extensions, so ATI just does not implement them. Bad OpenGL support does not hurt the sales. It is true that this makes lives of GL programmers on windows and linux harder… and about Mac: as Apple writes the implementation themself, it has many latest features on every card.

The funny this with that is that “S3” with there last chip, support all those new features (instancing, geometry shader) in their OpenGL drivers…

I agree with Zengar, but think that with GL3 (whenever that comes) Ati will also ship functionality again. Atm there just isnt enough “need” for implementing those features, when you know that GL3 will come anyway, and when you are naturally not as likely to push those resources.

You mean if? While I don’t want to turn this thread into a non-GL3 flamefest (there’s a better thread already for it), I feel I must voice my concern.

We do? We hope, but ARB and especially Khronos has been totally silent, despite earlier promises! For now, I only target the “older” API and way of doing things - any potential GL3 isn’t even considered anymore, unfortunately.

Has anyone emailed AMD/ATI about this?

I am aware we are talking about Windows but as far as Linux,
I wonder if on Linux some decent drivers were made for these latest ATI GPUs. Sorry, I’m out of touch with the latest developements. Last I heard was that AMD was releasing documentations on all their GPUs.

ATI Linux drivers have exactly the same feature set as on Windows except some platform-specific stuff.

I’m not much for speculation and half-cocked prognostications (hoot!), but I imagine ATI will release those extensions when to them it makes sense for them to do so, probably for the reasons Zengar and CrazyButcher mentioned.

A friend of mine just got a Radeon 4850 and it seems the maximum number of vertex-shader uniforms, is as low as 512. Can anyone confirm this? Is it just an issue with early drivers ? If not, it would be a real pain, skinning is practically impossible with so few uniforms.

Jan.

I can neither confirm nor deny it, but I can say that 512 seems suspiciously low for a Dx10 card.

Modus, I like your sig.

( My vote is for SIGGRAPH 2008 instead of bust. )

Ask you friend - what about MAX_VARYING on 4850 ?
And MAX_COLOR_ATTACHTES ?

Thanks :slight_smile:

68 varying floats = 17 vec4’s
max 4 color attachements

Something around 64 varyings seems to be standard. But 4 color-attachments is, IMO, low for the latest product. My Geforce 9600 can do 8.

Jan.

Thanks.

My 8600GT can do 8 color-attachments. And 60 varyings

I’ll place a bet that ATI/AMD doesn’t have basic DX10/SM4.0 hardware level support in their GL drivers even when(/if) GL3 is finished. And yes I would love to be wrong here.

Do they even have working vertex texture fetch now (for the HD cards)?

As for Apple, anyone know if their current DX10/SM4.0 level support (ie unified shader, VTF, geometry shader, etc) for AMD HD cards real or just simply software emulated via LLVM?

Well, last official word was that GL3.0 was DX9 level hardware so not having a DX10 level feature in it would… ya know… make sense…

Sorry. Can you check EXT_packed_depth_stencil on Radeon 4800 ?

Since it is supported on the Radeon 3870 I assume that it is also supported on the 4800.