Interview at Comdex with David Lasko, Technical Marketing Manager with ATI Technology.

Luckee: Do you work with the calls from gamers not being able to get things to work?

David: No, my job is to push the new technologies in the graphics cards.

Luckee: So you’re the guy announcing what is coming out with the new technologies for gamers and stuff for the future?

David: Yeah. I’ve done white papers, presentations, things that describe what is new in the chip and what the benefits are.

Luckee: More of a marketing position then?

David: Yes, that is exactly what it is.

Luckee: What do you think is the biggest advantage for gamers in the new Radeon card versus the other cards on the market?

David: There is a variety of things. One of the goals with this Radeon card was to achieve a minimum level of 32 bit gaming performance. Which means you can play any game available today in 1024 x 768 resolution and 32-bit color. You can play these games at like 60 frames per second on a Radeon 64. So that was kind of the goal. We have no performance drop between the 32 to 16-bit color so there is no reason to play at the lower resolution with less color depth.

Luckee: Will this hold up to even the highest performance of 1600 x 1200?

David: Yeah, even at 1600 x 1200 you’ll get frame rates of 30 or 40 per second. You can turn all of the details on and still run at a decent frame rate.

Luckee: What technology are you using that other companies are not using?

David: One of the things we’ve gone for with the Radeon is to still have all the performance and the most complete feature set like the new 3D technology people are using in games like Microsoft’s DirectX, for example. The Radeon actually supports more features of DirectX 8 in graphic terms than any other technology. There are all these 3D textures, morphing and things like that. It has a lot of features found in other cards, but a lot that is unique to it as well.

Luckee: We should start seeing other companies then taking advantage of this technology?

David: Yes, we’re just the first to incorporate it into the hardware. The Radeon has been out for about five months now, and we had the technology before DirectX 8 was even released. So if you buy a Radeon card now, you’re set for all of the games coming out next year.

Luckee: If you’re a new gamer without much money and a low-end system, and you can’t afford the Radeon 64 is there another card you can buy and still have similar performance from your games?

David: Have you seen the Radeon B? It was just released at Comdex and is our mainstream value card.

Luckee: You just released it at Comdex?

David: Well actually we just announced it, it won’t be available for another two months or so. But that card gives you most of the Radeon feature set and about 60% of the Radeon performance for about $100. In addition it gives you the dual monitor support.

Luckee: Will that have at least 32 Megs?

David: Yes it is all DDR memory and up to 32 megabytes. Only the full Radeon supports 64 megabytes.

Luckee: How can you afford to do that?

David: Actually the memory is the bulk of the cost in the card.

Luckee Not only, then, are you able to play all the newer games, but you get the option of the DDR memory with the dual displays. So it is basically everything in the Radeon 64 only toned down to apply to everyone.

David: It is for the guy who likes to play games but doesn’t do that all of the time. It isn’t the sole reason for him purchasing the card. The Radeon B is more of an all around card for word processing, surfing the net and getting e-mails and things like that.

Luckee: Thanks a lot for your time.