I was busy working on a few things today and suddenly a question popped into my head. Isn’t it interesting when one hardware manufacturer introduces a certain feature and its competitor says it’s not necessary, yet they catch some heat for not having this feature and suddenly implement it? That’s been happening a lot these days in various IT field it seems. Let me give you two major examples of "back tracking" in the hardware industry, specifically from ATI and Intel with Shader Model 3.0 and 64-bit extensions.

Let’s take one scenario at a time. Maybe you remember how ATI stated that Shader Model 3.0 was not necessary in its X800 and X850 series graphics cards, as it wasn’t being used by game developers at the time. This is the reason that ATI gave for failing to implement this feature in its product line. Well, we now see that this statement is true, and there’s nothing wrong with leaving the feature out if you are talking about inexpensive hardware, which does not describe the high dollar X800 and X850 cards. Now, I think NVIDIA knew that SM 3.0 wasn’t likely to be utilized as well, but went ahead and implemented the feature as a means of future-proofing their cards. After all, NVIDIA was working on its 6800 series for three years prior to the actual launch date, so they had to bring out something impressive after they had faltered with their 5xxx series. Otherwise, ATI would’ve continued its winning streak and NVIDIA would’ve fallen further down the revenue pipeline.

I can possibly understand that NVIDIA most likely had a bit more time to think through its features and implement them architecturally in a more strategic manner, but it still doesn’t excuse ATI from simply putting off the feature and criticizing it as being unnecessary. It may be unnecessary today, but not in the future with upcoming games. According to certain graphics card manufacturers I have talked to, an average graphics adapter upgrade is around two and a half years. I am not sure how true that statement is in the enthusiast community, but for the purposes of this column let’s just say that it is in fact true. This would mean that an average user with an ATI card would most likely have to wait for at least two and a half years before they can get this feature enabled in another card for better image quality. And if I am not mistaken, the upcoming PC games should have support for SM 3.0. Does that mean users with ATI cards won’t be able to take advantage of superior image quality when it’s supported? Yes, it looks like that’s exactly what it means.

Next