Development Hardware

As I trudge through developing my game, I can't help but notice that I only have special features enabled for nVidia cards, like register combiners and vertex programs... Although nVidia controls a powerful portion of the market, I'd love to also include the ATI audience, but I don't have an ATI card nor do I (as a student) have the easily spent funds to get one just to what amounts to play around with.

What are the chances I can appeal to ATI and get a basic feature card and work on learning their extensions and later implement them?

Failsafe scenario, yes, I'm saving up. I'm no where near done development, so in the meantime I can probably buy a card anyway. Oh well.

I would first finish the program with a nvidia and a standard path. After that could you send the program to ATI for testing and if it is really cool will they help you.

[yakuza]

Right now you can get a:
ATI RADEON 32M SDR 4X AGP for $46 shipped from Newegg.com. That would allow you to code and test some of the Radeon features, although not for the 8500, of course.
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...ry=1126&DEPA=1

[Jambolo]

Originally posted by ULTIMATE MAXIMUM POWER:

What are the chances I can appeal to ATI and get a basic feature card and work on learning their extensions and later implement them?

If you can show ATI that your game will convince 1000 people to buy their video card, I have no doubt they will give you one for free.