Innovation
Intel doubts games support for AMD, Cyrix 3D plans
Fresh from its 333MHz Pentium II and price cut deluge yesterday, Intel is casting doubt on the level of compatibility available to 3D-optimised processors from rivals such as AMD and Cyrix.
AMD and Cyrix will ask developers to write to the next version of Microsoft's DirectX application programmer interface (API) in order to take advantage of a set of instructions that handle 3D graphics functions and take the load of the graphics coprocessor. In theory, the result should be faster overall performance and great graphics for games and other graphics-intensive applications.
Intel market development manager for northern Europe Chris Hogg disputed whether that will happen.
"People say 'write to DirectX or Direct3D and it will all be okay' but almost all the top games vendors write direct to hardware. The vendors don't want to tie themselves to Microsoft's schedule."