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#1 2008-01-03 03:02:18

iBertus
Member
From: Greenville, NC
Registered: 2004-11-04
Posts: 2,228

Current state of ATI graphics for linux

I'm building a new PC (maybe SFF or small mini-tower) and need a video card. I've noticed that alot has changed since I last shopped for computer parts (this is an AMD64 single core, GeForce 7600GS graphics) and I seem to remember ATI being the devil back in the day. Now, I see that AMD has purchased them and made a few promised to the F/OSS community. Well, have any promises been kept? I know that nVidia has decent drivers (most of the time) and that ATI has drivers but that not all of the newest ATI products are supported yet. How do these drivers perform? Does anyone have an ATI? I used to love my Raddy 8500 back in the day (before I became hooked on linux) and would prefer to go back to ATI if possible. Thanks...;)

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#2 2008-01-03 04:10:41

The_Nerd
Member
From: Syracuse, NY / Baltimore, MD
Registered: 2005-11-30
Posts: 134
Website

Re: Current state of ATI graphics for linux

I have an ATI X700, not bleeding edge, but recent enough that I've been using the FGLRX drivers.

They have improved a great deal since the old days when ATI was just ATI. We now have AIGLX support, new OpenGL code which brings performance up to an acceptable level with games and such, and relatively stable code which works with the latest video cards, xserver and kernel.

That said, I still find myself using the open source driver for my X700. I find the open source driver to be more stable and less temperamental, not to mention that it's open source. Certainly, ATI's drivers have made huge strides, and there is a new RadeonHD open source driver for the latest X1xxx and X2xxx series of cards, but that RadeonHD driver has no 3d support as of yet, and the fglrx driver for those cards, while it works, I believe still has some bugs.

I also would like to continue to buy ATI cards, but at this point, their closed source driver is still up and coming really. If you don't mind praying for the next ATI driver to fix your problems or add a feature, while you live with decent support, then I'd say give ATI a shot. Otherwise, Nvidia is still about as good as it gets (aside from the open source intel driver) in linux for video cards.

Good luck in choosing!

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#3 2008-01-03 09:16:14

mico
Member
From: Slovenia
Registered: 2004-02-08
Posts: 247

Re: Current state of ATI graphics for linux

I have an integrated ATI at home. On major xorg update a few months ago colors and contrast became weird and only recently (few weeks ago) got fixed with system upgrade.

I also had 2 nvidia cards (not integrated), first one got overheated when the cooling fan broke after few years. I bought another nvidia which is still there. Despite often and heavy usage I never had any problems other than cooling fan failure.

And I have 2 intel integrated cards, they have bad performance, but otherwise work ok. I had some problems getting the one on my laptop to work (it's called 945GM or something like that), glxgears still shows less than 1000 fps (it's a recent intel core duo laptop) but 3d works ok.

From my experience, nvidia have always been by far the best in performance, reliability and linux support. Of course it is unfair to compare "real" cards with integrated ones, but that's all I have at the moment.

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#4 2008-01-03 11:14:51

Dheart
Member
From: Sofia, Bulgaria
Registered: 2006-10-26
Posts: 956

Re: Current state of ATI graphics for linux

The ati fglrx driver made a MAJOR improvement recently, however they haven't catched up yet with nvidia's linux drivers. Of course if you don't play a lot of games it's down to the price (and the prefered brand - for me is nvidia, for a friend at school is ati...)

And also I noted that you're going for a single core CPU - In my oppinion there is no point of that because more and more applications start to use the second core and there is no point of buying a new box with "obsolete" proccessor (but that's only my oppinion)


My victim you are meant to be
No, you cannot hide nor flee
You know what I'm looking for
Pleasure your torture, I will endure...

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#5 2008-01-03 12:28:30

Wilson Phillips
Member
From: Vicksburg, MS, USA
Registered: 2007-09-24
Posts: 70

Re: Current state of ATI graphics for linux

They will never open it up fully, but promised to give us working drivers. This will take some time to come to fruition. I would guess we will still be waiting when this year ends and 09 rolls around.

I would still buy nVidia if I were making a purchase now.


Guarantee does not cover shark bite, bear attack, or children under 5.

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#6 2008-01-03 15:41:29

jacko
Member
Registered: 2007-11-23
Posts: 840

Re: Current state of ATI graphics for linux

I wouldn't buy an ati card for the life of me. I used to be a ati advocate, but then I bought a nvidia card and never looked back.

But then I have a friend who uses windows and he won't buy anything except an ati. Then again he doesn't use an software that even comes close to testing out the limits of his hardware. I on the other hand, do!!! Maybe that's the difference???

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#7 2008-01-03 15:59:59

Cerebral
Forum Fellow
From: Waterloo, ON, CA
Registered: 2005-04-08
Posts: 3,108
Website

Re: Current state of ATI graphics for linux

I've always been an ATI advocate.  I just bought a new Radeon HD 2400 pro to replace my old Radeon 9600.

It's no secret that the state of catalyst (fglrx) is unstable at best at the moment, and certain things like dual-head being totally screwed up and corruption in the bottom-right of the screen are annoying.  I've been able to work around them for the time being, and I have faith that they'll get their proprietary driver up to par soon.

As for the opening of the specs, they are indeed working with Xorg guys to make an OSS Radeon HD driver, and at current it only supports 2d.  It's in our repos as xf86-video-radeonhd if you wanna give it a spin.  This looks very promising, and it's great of AMD/ATI to contribute to this.

In short, at current, the Radeon situation isn't pretty, but I have full faith they'll fix it.  Call me hopeful if you will. wink

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#8 2008-01-03 16:28:13

stylopath
Member
Registered: 2007-07-26
Posts: 112

Re: Current state of ATI graphics for linux

I have an integrated Ati chipset in my notebook (Radeon Xpress200M) - This graphics adapter is the worst thing that happened to me in the past 4 years!

Fglrx should now (more than 1 year after nvidia!) support AIGLX, but in fact its very buggy (less than 30 frames with AIGLX and xcompmgr, compiz doesn't even start).

That's only the top of the iceberg - i could tell many stories why i hate this card, but that would be too much.

After 1 and a half year of praying i have LESS features than before - because with the current fglrx (new codebase) XGL doesn't start anymore. The performance boost the driver brought doesn't give me any benefits because i don't play with this notebook (too slow for the most games).

Before this Notebook i had a Desktop computer with a nvidia Geforce4MX 460 - From the first day on the Drivers worked like a charm. It was really fast (though it was an rather old card), stable and everything worked flawlessly.

Comparing these to experiences i would never never never never never never never ever buy anything that runs with an ATI card, EXCEPT (!!!) if there will be a full featured open source driver. By now, ATI made a lot of promises but didn't release as much documentation as i expected.

Of course it takes time to clarify things on legal issues, but if ATI releases documentation as fast as they smash bugs in their drivers they will have released all specifications of current cards by 2020, excluding the cards that are current by that time. wink

As well as that, i think the fglrx will be a good working driver by the time "Duke nukem forever Part5" will be released big_smile

Yes, i still feel heavily pissed and so i recommend buying a Nvidia-device.

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#9 2008-01-03 16:53:08

thayer
Fellow
From: Vancouver, BC
Registered: 2007-05-20
Posts: 1,560
Website

Re: Current state of ATI graphics for linux

As with Cerebral, I too have faith that market pressures will eventually force ATI to produce adequate drivers for Linux.  That being said, if given a choice I would choose both Intel and Nvidia over ATI at the moment.  I have had nothing but problems with my ATI X1400.  Like my blackberry, I can only wait so long for OS support until I reach a point where I will never recommend a product to anyone again.


thayer williams ~ cinderwick.ca

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#10 2008-01-03 18:23:41

Dheart
Member
From: Sofia, Bulgaria
Registered: 2006-10-26
Posts: 956

Re: Current state of ATI graphics for linux

stylopath wrote:

As well as that, i think the fglrx will be a good working driver by the time "Duke nukem forever Part5"

[offtopic]That reminds of a joke:
"How the astronauts of the 22th century will kill time while traveling through space?"
"They are going to enjoy the alfa version of DN Forever"


My victim you are meant to be
No, you cannot hide nor flee
You know what I'm looking for
Pleasure your torture, I will endure...

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#11 2008-01-03 20:23:13

iBertus
Member
From: Greenville, NC
Registered: 2004-11-04
Posts: 2,228

Re: Current state of ATI graphics for linux

Thanks for all the input guys! I'll probably go with a GeForce 8800GT (the single slot version) if I build the SFF box. That should provide plenty of power for what I do. The most important thing for my project is CPU (thinking Intel QuadCore) and RAM (maybe 8GB) and then Arch64, of course.

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#12 2008-01-04 02:42:22

iBertus
Member
From: Greenville, NC
Registered: 2004-11-04
Posts: 2,228

Re: Current state of ATI graphics for linux

Alright, I guess the next question should be about which processor to select. I'm looking more at Intel now (I've had nothing but AMD for last 3 years, no trouble) because it would seem AMD has fallen behind in the price/performance ratio. I don't know alot about the new AMD Phenom processors, but I've seem good reviews of all Intel chips with quad-cores. I've decided to build a SFF (probably Shuttle Cube) with a quad-core CPU and maxed out with memory, if possible. I'm planning on doing some heavy duty hydrologic models for my thesis and so a portable and fast computer is a must.

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#13 2008-01-04 15:46:42

zenlord
Member
From: Belgium
Registered: 2006-05-24
Posts: 1,221
Website

Re: Current state of ATI graphics for linux

Graphics card: will you be playing games or not? If not, you should definitelt look into the new Intel X3500, available on G35-chipset-mainboards. These are not up there with nVidia or Ati when it comes to 3D-gaming (although it supports DX10, OpenGL2.0 and SM4), but it supports HD-video and its drivers are completely open. A nice bonus is that this adapter doesn't need the insane amounts of Watts like the ones by nVidia or Ati do and thus that it'll produce much less heat inside your SFF...

Processor: Any Intel C2D is up to everyday tasks. I'd go for one with at least 4MB cache (E6750 f.e.) if your budget is adequate. Quad cores are nice, but unless you're a high end user, I don't think you'll need it.

Zl.

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#14 2008-01-08 03:18:33

iBertus
Member
From: Greenville, NC
Registered: 2004-11-04
Posts: 2,228

Re: Current state of ATI graphics for linux

So, I finally ordered my parts for this new rig. I went with one of the Shuttle SFF cube systems (SP35P2-PRO exactly), a Intel Xeon X3220 Quad Core CPU, 8GB RAM (4x2GB DDR2 PC2-6400), GeForce 8800GT 512MB, 2x750 Seagate SATA drives, and a Samsung 305T 30" LCD monitor. I'll start getting these parts by Thursday and I'll let everyone know how the build goes. I'm really looking forward to 2560x1600 res on that monitor. I think that I'll need to clear some space on my desk....

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#15 2008-01-08 03:30:14

Wilson Phillips
Member
From: Vicksburg, MS, USA
Registered: 2007-09-24
Posts: 70

Re: Current state of ATI graphics for linux

Should be a nice rig. You won't have to worry about running a swap file. You have more than enough RAM to do away with it. In a couple of years, when programs get larger, you may need a swap partition, but for now, no.


Guarantee does not cover shark bite, bear attack, or children under 5.

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#16 2008-01-08 03:51:32

iBertus
Member
From: Greenville, NC
Registered: 2004-11-04
Posts: 2,228

Re: Current state of ATI graphics for linux

I just realized that I forgot to buy an optical drive. I'll be putting Arch on a flash drive and installing from that. Does blueray/HD-DVD work with linux yet? I've been too busy with my thesis project to keep up with the latest trends in linux software. I guess that I could also just go and pick up a drive at the local Best Buy (and pay three prices for it).

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