It has come to my knowledge that ATI somewhat sucks for Linux? I’ll be honest… When I was native to Linux I loved my ATI card… But now it just seems that (although after finally configuring the ATI card) that it is somewhat useless for programs that are say Wine. Although I know the 3D acceleration is turned on and working it just seems that ATI cards somewhat suck on Linux?
So some input would be appreciated, thanks!
On Thu, 2008-08-07 at 23:06 +0000, trizicus wrote:
> It has come to my knowledge that ATI somewhat sucks for Linux? I’ll be
> honest… When I was native to Linux I loved my ATI card… But now it
> just seems that (although after finally configuring the ATI card) that
> it is somewhat useless for programs that are say Wine. Although I know
> the 3D acceleration is turned on and working it just seems that ATI
> cards somewhat suck on Linux?
>
> So some input would be appreciated, thanks!
>
>
ATI support IS improving… and long term, should be better
than Nvidia’s support (which is basically some Nvidia folks being
generous with their time).
The reason why ATI will overtake is because ATI has decided to
help the community develop drivers for their cards. Nvidia is
still convinced that there is too much of an IP liability should
their information be leaked.
So… today, Nvidia stomps ATI (though there are some bad
Nvidia configs out there).
Tomorrow, well… we’ll see.
Nvidia doesn’t believe that there are folks like me who buy
Nvidia because we want the flexibility of using Linux
on a device. Right now, Nvidia’s ONLY concern is Windows.
I wouldn’t go that far. nVidia cares greatly about *nix. The thing is, nVidia provides a high level of support for *nix because of the commercial customers using high-end graphics stuff on workstations with the $$$ nVidia cards. These users don’t care about open drivers or wobbly windows, they just care about 3D rendering and such.
The community has gotten a bit of a free ride on this commercial userbase, but now it is starting to bite nVidia a bit. Things like compiz, and now kwin4, are placing demands on nVidia that they didn’t anticipate. They’re going to have to decide on how committed they are.
I’m fortunately not suffering the issues that some KDE4 users have, but I’m a little wary now. It used to be that using nVidia was almost a given if you wanted decent graphics in linux, and I specifically paid extra to upgrade from ATI in my laptop, but now I’m going to be watching what happens with ATI versus nVidia.
Just my 2c…
Cheers,
KV
I have a somewhat different take on things. I recently asked in a thread what ATI users thought of the driver support. Just like trizicus, I was under the impression that nVidia drivers were leaps and bounds ahead of ATI and that ATI was not a real option for linux users, so I was surprised by the responses I received. I recently switched to a radeon card and I must say that performance is great, drivers install smoothly, and I have no major bugs of crashes. Based on that, I would say that ATI has already overtaken nVidia, and based on plans for driver enhancements, will far surpass them in the near future, at least as far as linux support is concerned.
If you want benchmarks of various video cards under linux, check out
On Fri, 2008-08-08 at 04:56 +0000, else where wrote:
> cjcox;1853037 Wrote:
> >
> > Nvidia doesn’t believe that there are folks like me who buy
> > Nvidia because we want the flexibility of using Linux
> > on a device. Right now, Nvidia’s ONLY concern is Windows.
>
> I wouldn’t go that far. nVidia cares greatly about *nix. The thing is,
The only *ix that Nvidia cares about is Sun because Sun PAID
them to support their platform.
Do you work for Nvidia? Because I’d really like to know where
you’re getting your info from?
> nVidia provides a high level of support for *nix because of the
> commercial customers using high-end graphics stuff on workstations with
> the $$$ nVidia cards. These users don’t care about open drivers or
> wobbly windows, they just care about 3D rendering and such.
Nvidia CARES about 3D on Windows.
The folks at Nvidia that are doing the work on the Linux drivers
are doing only as a secondary job. Some even purely voluntary.
>
> The community has gotten a bit of a free ride on this commercial
> userbase, but now it is starting to bite nVidia a bit. Things like
> compiz, and now kwin4, are placing demands on nVidia that they didn’t
> anticipate. They’re going to have to decide on how committed they are.
They ARE NOT committed. Not yet. Again, Nvidia views the fact
that there are drivers there as a “nice thing”, not a requirement.
>
> I’m fortunately not suffering the issues that some KDE4 users have, but
> I’m a little wary now. It used to be that using nVidia was almost a
> given if you wanted decent graphics in linux, and I specifically paid
> extra to upgrade from ATI in my laptop, but now I’m going to be
> watching what happens with ATI versus nVidia.
ATI, unlike Nvidia, wants the community to create kicking drivers
for their cards. However, it has taken ATI some time to provide
sanitized documentation to allow it… but a lot has been delivered
with promises of more on the way.
Vs. Nvidia which has given zilch for anything contemporary.
Btw, I’m an Nvidia user. They are still (today) the only fast
functional solution … well if you have a 7xxx card anyhow.
Seems things got considerably slower/messed-up with the 8xxx
and 9xxx cards under Linux.
You are kidding, right? High-end graphics rendering is one of the verticals that linux has actually succeeded quite well in.
And nVidia is strong in that market. Those users aren’t running Intel graphics.
Maybe Sun paid them or not, I have no idea. Sucks for them if they did, since most of the graphics work is done on linux and not solaris.
Anyways, big whatever.
KV
else where wrote:
> cjcox;1853417 Wrote:
>> The only *ix that Nvidia cares about is Sun because Sun PAID
>> them to support their platform.
>>
>> Do you work for Nvidia? Because I’d really like to know where
>> you’re getting your info from?
>>
>
> You are kidding, right? High-end graphics rendering is one of the
> verticals that linux has actually succeeded quite well in.
AND… as I said, Nvidia could CARE LESS… (about Linux).
I know we LIKE to think that companies should care about Linux,
but many don’t and Nvidia is one of those. With that said, they
do allow people inside of Nivida to produce unsupported drivers
for Linux… with the idea that the drivers DO NOT have to work,
and the availability of those drivers can STOP at ANY time.
Please don’t lift up Nvidia as some kind of Linux supporter.
Apart from a few motivated individual contributors on the inside,
the company policy DOES not include Linux.
>
> And nVidia is strong in that market. Those users aren’t running Intel
> graphics.
True… you’d think that it would be Nvidia’s best interest
to do more.
>
> Maybe Sun paid them or not, I have no idea. Sucks for them if they did,
> since most of the graphics work is done on linux and not solaris.
Money talks.
>
> Anyways, big whatever.
I agree… this is huge. An ongoing problem. Nvidia’s drivers,
as grotesque as they are, are the best performing accelerated 3d
drivers out there, though they’ve pretty much nuked ALL 2d performance
in the process (btw). ATI’s (current) proprietary drivers aren’t
that much better especially given the lack of uniformity across
their generations of product… which is really why Nvidia has done
so well. But, with ATI’s approach of WANTING to have supported
Linux drivers (unlike Nvidia), eventually (if Nvidia stays the course),
the best 3d accelerated platform may well be ATI (possibly NOT
including older generation product… just new product moving forward).