Interviewing Palit Microsystem’s Darren Polkowski

New Products, The Frog, and ATI vs NVIDIA

Are there any sweet products coming down the pipeline that the hardware enthusiast should start saving pennies for?

We announced our Revolution 700 and your readers should be able to see it here at Legit Reviews. There arent any major announcements from the chip makers in the short run. There will always be new chips at some point but until then we will keep delivering improvements to what is on the market.

Anything hitting the stores or currently on the shelves that you particularly like?

We have the fastest single graphics card hitting the shelves, the Revolution 700 Deluxe. It is the first non-reference HD 4870X2 based product in the world and it is totally different than any other card on the market. For starters it is a three slot solution with dual PWM cooling fans. It runs less than 70OC at full load which is awesome compared to the reference design at 90+OC. It has DisplayPort, HDMI, Dual-Link DVI and 15 pin VGA. Of course this is not for the budget conscience consumer but it proves that we have the engineering and manufacturing to bring forth the worlds first card of its kind. It is the peak of performance to date but we have cards that fit all needs and uses under the flagship. Your readers should stay tuned to Legit Reviews for a full write-up as you already have the card in for testing.

Any particular reason why a frog is the mascot of sorts for Palit?

Frog is symbol of luck and prosperity in Asia. This is the reason we chose the Frog. Some people love it and some dont. I guess you cant win with everyone. If you look at ATI with the Gargoyle, some people thought it was too evil. So the next generation they used the metallic Minotaur, still some thought it was too menacing. Then they switched to Ruby. Was everyone happy? Nope. Some said it was too sexual.

We’ve jumped around a bit, is there anything else you’d like to add?

For those of you who are looking for something new, you should keep looking to Palit. We have done a lot to revitalize the industry, give more to the tech enthusiast community, and we still have a lot in the hopper. Keep an eye out for some more things to unfold. We are not the cookie cutter company North America is used to.

To tie things off let’s end on another easy question. ATI or Nvidia? Rarely is somebody unbiased, have you got a preference?

While it may be professional suicide to side with either one when we are strong partners with each company, I can say what I like about both. On the Nvidia side, they simplified the way the entire engine works. The work on projects like CUDA and multi-GPU has driven the market forward. Single and Dual instructions on a single instruction per shader can be highly effective for the small batch problem.

AMD on the other hand has had forward looking technologies every step of the way. Without ATI there wouldnt be GDDR as we know it. That has helped the entire industry and not just graphics. Tessellation, we dont hear much about it anymore since the HD 2900 launch but it will be revolutionary in the long run. All of AMDs current products have it and DX 11 is supposed to implement it. The memory footprint savings alone should make developers want to utilize it. That coupled with the advances in offline rendering (movie industry) using consumer cards with tessellation is huge. I mean you could see real time movies at todays movie CGI level in 5 years. That is mind boggling.

Both companies are working on physics simulations, procedural computations, and a host of other things that will not only make games look better but hopefully be less computationally demanding. With advances in the standards for Direct3D in DX11 there should be an even more level playing field for developers. Lastly, as the cinema and the home PC converge, we will see some amazing interactive content with the best visuals imaginable. Graphics is a great industry and I thoroughly enjoy being involved in it.