Mr. Godfrey Cheng Director of Marketing, Multimedia Product at ATI explains ATI's latest strategies. Cheng explains that the Radeon X1800, X1600 and X1300 support at least one dual-link TMDS transmitter and depending on PCB options ATI is able to support 2 Dual Link TMDS transmitters. On the high-end cards like the Radeon X1800XT, ATI enables both the 2 Integrated Dual Link TMDS transmitters out of the box so there is no need for any third party silicon. This would mean that an ATI card could drive two 30 inch Apple Cinema displays at its native resolution of 2560 X 1600 without third party silicon.

ATI also offers HDCP protection for DVI without using any extraneous third party silicon for those OEMs who want it.

Commenting on Avivo's strength points, Mr Cheng said the technology ensures the minimum degradation of video & images as they go through a series of steps before they displayed. He continues saying that ATI will invest in each of these different steps to deliver the best available video quality and that it currently focuses on HD H.264 decode and display capabilities of the new Radeons. New TV tuners as well as new mobile or new chipset technologies should be expected in the next Avivo version.

Another interesting part of this interview is the comments of Mr Cheng on the CPU utilization when HD content is play backed on R520, 530 and 515 cards. Cheng said during Computex this year, ATI showcased the decoding of a 1080i HD H.264 stream at 30% CPU utilization on a modest P4 3.6Ghz, using an 520 GPU. However, he added that the company has not finished optimizing the performance yet.

Read the whole interview at The Inquirer website.